Archive | September, 2009
This week, for the first time, I am participating in You Capture over at I Should Be Folding Laundry. The theme for this week is the feeling of fall. Hmmmm…well, just this week did the thermometer drop below 90 degrees (we spent one weekend day at a water park all day!); however, when I think of fall I think of farm visits.
Did you know that this past weekend was National Alpaca Farm Day? We made the short drive to Fairhope Alpacas for a visit to the alpaca farm. I am so glad that we did! We saw so many beautiful alpacas and the owners were so friendly and welcoming to all of the farm visitors. My children thought the alpacas were hilarious but “stinky”. We spent some time watching a very cool spinning demonstration and couldn’t get over how soft and beautifully colored the yarn was. Even if you missed Alpaca Farm Days, you can still visit the alpaca farm. Email the owners to set up a visit! Not going to be in the Gulf Coast area soon? Check out the National Alpaca Directory to find a farm near you.
You can find Katy and her alpacas at her blog (Yay! A fellow blogger!), Alpaca Farm Girl or on Twitter as @alpacafarmgirl. I wish I had a chance to meet Katy while we were there but she was very busy with all of her guests! Hopefully we will make it to their next open house!
The alpacas were so curious about all of their visitors! When we went from one end of the barn to the other or when we wander outside, they constantly followed us!
On our summer road trip, we visited a friend in Tappahannock, Virginia. While there, we got the grand tour of her work and what a cool job she has! She works for the Menokin Foundation. The Menokin House is the home of Francis Lightfoot Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It is an 18th cetury house on 500 acres of land. There is a small visitor center where you can see a scale model of the house, explore a little archeaological ”dig in a box,” and fields and fields of corn! As we walked the grounds of the house, I could only imagine how it looked during its prime! The Menokin House is being restored and they are stabilizing the remaining structure.
An original door
A side of the house – You can see the glare of the plexiglass that they are putting up to help preserve it.
Thanks to DeliciousBaby for hosting Photo Friday. Check out all of the other great travel photos!
This picture is of a very young me at Coca Cola World in Atlanta! During our first year of marriage, my hubs and I headed to Tennessee where we visited extended family for Thanksgiving. On the way home, we stopped for a night in Atlanta. That is where I fell in love with Atlanta, a bustling city with southern charm. In a few weeks, the hubs and I will be headed back to Atlanta but this time we will have two kids with us! I am so excited about this trip! I am looking forward to the weekend away, visiting the Georgia Aquarium, the fountain rings in Olympic Park, and the children’s garden at Atlanta Botanical Gardens. I am also looking forward to meeting up with my blogger buddy, Amy, from Atlanta with Kid and The Q Family Adventures. I hope our schedules work out so that we can meet up with the kiddies!
This week marks the 5 year anniversary of Hurricane Ivan. Ivan landed in Gulf Shores, Alabama in the middle of the night (why do hurricanes always hit land in the middle of the night?!) putting Pensacola on the right and dangerous side (in terms of storm surge, winds, and tornadoes) of the hurricane. We had decided to stick it out at home because for awhile it did not look like this hurricane was going to be as dangerous as it was. The hurricane looked like it was going to veer off in another direction and did not seem like it was going to maintain its speed and strength. We are not in a flood or an evacuation zone. We cleaned out the hall closet, which is where my 4 week old stayed in his bouncy seat and the rest of the family spread out in the rooms with internal walls. We were well-prepared. One thing I have found living in hurricane central is that not everyone prepares! They wait until the last minute to purchase supplies, etc. I grew up in California where we always had an earthquake supply kit, so hurricane supplies come second nature! After Ivan hit, we stepped out to survey the damage…
Ivan is often overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina, which we all know hit a year later and devastated New Orleans. However, Ivan did its fair share of damage. Casinos were severly damaged, the neighborhoods and schools near to and far from the water were all but wiped away. In Pensacola, the beach homes had storm surge that filled the first floors. They were scraping mud and sea life from their homes for weeks. There were trees in homes and on top of cars. The homes on the hospital grid got power within the first two or three days, but a lot of the city didn’t receive power for several weeks. Water was not potable and schools were out for about 4 weeks as families put their homes and lives back together. There were bridges to main parts of town that were no longer passable so getting anywhere took hours. You couldn’t go anywhere because the city was on a curfew. Even if we had wanted to, it took awhile because a giant oak tree had to be cut out of the road before I could leave my neighborhood. My family was very lucky compared to some of our friends and aquaintances. We were lucky enough to only sustain about 15,000 dollars worth of damage to our house but with a 27 day old son, things afterwards were trying on us. Our house has no cross breeze so while we had no power, we camped in the front yard. I pumped breast milk in the car using the car adapter. We boiled the bottles to clean them. Luckily, we had enough diapers and formula because stores didn’t open for a long time. I was amazed at how quickly the community banded together. After 5 days, we finally gave up and sat for hours to get out of Pensacola to head to Jacksonville, Florida to visit friends for about 10 days. On the drive, my heart swelled whenever we drove past an emergency or construction convoy headed back towards Pensacola to help out.
What does this have to do with travel? Since the major hurricanes hit, these cities have been trying very hard to put themselves back together. Tourism was down in the beginning but it is picking itself back up again. Restaurants and attractions, both new and old, are thriving. If you are planning a vacation in the United States, may I suggest a trip to the beautiful Gulf Coast?
With Pensacola’s rich history (you did know that we were technically the first settlement 450 years ago but a hurricane wiped it away so St. Augustine is considered the longest continuous settlement, right?!?!), Mobile’s Mardi Gras, Gulf Shores beautiful beaches, Biloxi’s casinos, and New Orleans amazing food and culture, you can find something for everyone. If you are coming our way, give us a holler…we will give y’all the grand tour!
Thanks to Debbie at DeliciousBaby for hosting Photo Friday. Stop by to check out other Photo Friday posts!
Travel with Kids-Family Travel is a website for families who love to travel. The articles include places to go, hints to know, and all sorts of other great information. Recently, she has started a weekly list where she links to travel articles around the web. Some of my favorite articles include:
Free Things to do in London with Kids – A great list of free activities in London
Free Museums in London – If you are headed to London, look at this list of free museums in London.
Bracebridge Ontario – This is an area of the world that I have not been. I love this first picture in this post!
I found out that my sister has moved to the birthplace of Mr. Peanut, the mascot of Planters Peanuts. I made it my mission to find Mr. Peanut and a peanut factory to tour while we were in Suffolk. I knew my kids would get a kick out of it as we love peanut butter! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a roasting plant in the area. If you know of one, please forward me the information!
We did find a great little Planters Peanut retailer called Suffolk Peanuts. As soon as you open the door, you can smell the peanuts roasting. They have one of the original roasters and there is a very small Mr. Peanut in the corner!
Of course we had to buy a burlap bag of peanuts, salted in the shell!
Stop by DeliciousBaby to check out other great Photo Friday pictures.
I have always been fascinated by aquariums. When I was younger, I wanted to be an oceanographer…that is until I found out that most oceanographers actually got off the boat into the ocean. Being bizarrely afraid of ocean animals that might attack me, I quickly changed my career path. My love for all things water has never dissipated and now my children are also mesmerized by even a tiny fish tank. If I find out that there is an aquarium in our destination city, it moves up to the top of the list of places to visit. We have been to huge aquariums, we have been to humble teeny tiny aquariums, and we have been to everything in between. The Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach ranks at the top of my list of favorite aquariums right next to the Baltimore Aquarium.
The first thing I noticed was that admission into the aquarium was fairly reasonable. They have a special package that gets you aquarium admission, an IMAX movie, and a Creek Cruise for only $22.50 (adults) or $18.50 (children). We chose to just get admission to the aquarium because of time constraints. When you arrive at the aquarium, you purchase your tickets and the first thing that you get to is the huge beautiful wall of nothing but beautiful fish and other sea animals. My two kids could have sat all day in front of this tank.
We saw sea turtles, sharks, otters, harbor seals, and rays.
There are many hands on activities throughout – the kids got to touch horseshoe crabs, rays and a skink.
I loved this aquarium because so many of the exhibits concentrate on the marine environment of Virginia. It was a great way to learn more about the area that my sister was moving to.
There is a boardwalk in between the two buildings where you can spot some more wildlife.
Beware though…the website states that the boardwalk is about a ten minute walk. With small children, it is definitely longer than ten minutes. After much whining, we ended up heading back when we hit the halfway point 20 minutes later. We were mainly worried about the walk back. We were afraid that the kids would not make it back if we walked all the way!
A few of my favorite things about the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center:
- The Osprey Cafe – We didn’t have a chance to grab lunch before the aquarium visit so we ate at the cafe. The prices were reasonable and the food was good.
- Crowd Control – The layout of the aquarium lends itself to large crowds. It was very crowded but as we wandered through the exhibits the only sections that got bottlenecked were at the touch/interactive exhibits.
- Large Exhibits – The exhibits are all very large…the touch pools are huge and the aquarium windows are gigantic.
A few things that fall under the “not my favorite” category:
- Parking – The parking is ridiculous. Nobody was paying attention to the direction that you were supposed to go. There is a second parking lot directly across the street from the aquarium. If we returned, I would go straight to that lot.
- Gift Shop – The gift shop is very small and super crowded. If you plan on heading into the gift shop, leave the whiny kids outside or skip it all together.
When researching our road trip, I headed to PitStops for Kids to see if there were any exciting finds right off of the interstates that we were going to be on. Mayfield Dairy caught my attention, because everyone in our family likes ice cream! We got a late start from our house, drove about 6 hours and decided to look for a hotel around 11pm…this put us right in the middle of the little town of Braseltown, Georgia! As we pulled off the interstate, we passed a sign pointing to the Mayfield Dairy! We decided to head over the next day before we made the rest of the drive to Virginia (about 8 more hours).
The Mayfield Dairy is a short factory tour. The tour starts in a little room where you watch a short video about the dairy. Then everybody gets to don a hairnet (and for the sake of this blog and Photo Friday I am actually posting the picture here!).
My son was not happy about this but when he found out that he couldn’t go on the tour without it he tolerated it. After everyone is suited up, you head into the factory. The two missing items that I thought I might get to see? Cows and ice cream. No cows-the milk is brought in and then bottled. No ice cream-ice cream is made in the other plants, not the Braselton one. The tour was still great. The kids loved to watch the milk jugs spin all around the rooms and they do sell ice cream at the end. The ice cream is cheap – $2 a cup!
Plan on spending about an hour if you are going to take the tour!
Stop by Delicious Baby to check out other Photo Friday travel pictures!
This week’s Travel Blogger Tuesday (yes, I know it is Wednesday) is Wandering Educators. This website first caught my eye a long time ago because I am an educator myself. I am currently taking a year leave of absence, but I am still educating my children on a daily, hourly basis! On Wandering Educators you will find international job postings and conference information, book reviews, beautiful photos, and great articles. What I really love about this site is the constant interaction via Twitter, other blogs, and the Wandering Educator site. The owners and contributers love to interact with their readers. They comment back, leave comments on reader blogs and actively participate in Twitter conversations. Some of my favorite posts:
Killer Cats of Kwande – The pictures with this article make you feel like these cats are invading your space bubble at home!
DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Book Reviews – I am particularly fond of DK Eyewitness guides. I like reading the reviews here!
Kalahari Indoor Waterpark Resort – A Family Tradition – Sounds like a great family tradition to me! My kids would LOVE this place!
