Route 66 Trip -- Day 2 -- Weather Delays & Butterflies

Wednesday, July 22nd, was our first full day of travel.

We had stayed overnight at the Super 8 in Kingston, TN. It recently changed from a Comfort Inn and is not yet on the Super 8 computer reservation system. I made my reservation online, but luckily I called the hotel directly to confirm. They had not received our information but happily reserved us a room over the phone. Good news since I knew we would be arriving late at night.



I had resolved to keep our luggage to a minimum so we wouldn't feel crowded in our station wagon over the 2 week journey (and would have space for souvenirs). I also worked out a system so we wouldn't have to unpack & re-pack every day. I brought a large Ziploc bag to hold a change of clothes & our toiletries. That's the only thing we carried into the hotel. In theory it was a good idea. But on our first night it was clear the system needed some tweaking. A few extra trips to the car got us all of the necessary provisions.

The Super 8 facility had had a few upgrades recently and was much nicer inside than it appeared from the parking lot. The mattress & pillows were comfy and the bedding was soft. There were plenty of towels for the four of us.

There were really only 2 problems for us during our stay. The bathroom light could not be turned on independently of the exhaust fan, which sounded like a jet engine. The kids were terrified of it & chose to do their business in the dark (unfortunate for the housekeeping staff). In an effort to streamline our luggage, I left the kids' nightlight at home. I was certain I'd be able to crack the bathroom door & leave the light on instead. That wasn't possible at this Super 8. The vanity light had to suffice -- it made the room brighter than I like, but at least the kids didn't have any nightmares.

The other problem for me was the A/C unit. I'm a light sleeper so I knew motel life on the road might be rough. I was right. Every time that baby wound up its engine, I would jolt awake. It continued into the wee hours. Finally around 4a I was too tired to care anymore. So I woke the next morning bleary-eyed, having gotten 2 hours of sleep.

The continental breakfast was fine -- we snarfed down a variety of cereal, waffles, pastries, bagels & juice. The wi-fi signal was strong. And the lobby/breakfast room had a comfy couch.

Jacob & I are self-proclaimed coffee snobs, so we decided to skip the Super 8 offering & stop at the first coffee shop we spotted.
We departed around 9a -- about an hour later than planned. Yep, we also need to work on our morning routine too.

A few miles on I-40 were necessary to get to our "jumping off" location. But thereafter we stuck to state & local roads, especially ones designated as scenic byways. I pointed the car straight toward Kentucky & Jacob navigated our way.



The scenery was relaxing. We were fascinated by the blasting to widen the road.



Our first destination was Cave City, Kentucky. But just as we got to Glasgow (about 10 miles from Cave City), a nasty thunderstorm rolled through. The rain was so heavy the wipers couldn't keep the windshield clear. And lightning was striking nearby. So we decided it might be a good time to stop for lunch. We parked at the Glasgow city square and ran like crazy across a flooded street to the Fine Arts Bistro.



The bistro had a limited menu, but all the sandwiches were delicious. Jacob & I finally got our coffee -- except it wasn't very good. Mostly we enjoyed the artwork that filled the little cafe. There were paintings & photos & jewelry. And the kids entertained themselves with my camera.






By the end of lunch, the storm was letting up. But a quick weather check showed an even nastier storm just minutes away. So during a break in the clouds, we drove over to the local library. The kids read a book while I finished our household bills.

When the thunder had finally moved on, we loaded back in the car on our way to Cave City. It was still raining when we pulled up to Wigwam Village #2 just outside of Mammoth Caves National Park.

The movie CARS was our motivation for this trip and I wanted to visit as many movie-related locations along the way. Since we wouldn't get as far West as the Wigwam Village along Route 66 in Holbrook, AZ, this teepee would have to do.



The owner had closed the main office until check-in time but he offered to open it for us. He even ran back to his residence to get more Wigwam postcards for us to buy. We managed to get a few pictures in between thunder claps.





There were still storms in the distance. And the main teepee/gift shop was leaking something terrible. So I bought my first cheesy souvenir and we continued on our journey.



Keeping to the state roads, we skirted the edge of Mammoth Cave park -- gorgeous tree cover. Saw a family of wild turkeys walking in the rain. We continued through the Kentucky countryside to Hartford, KY. Their welcome sign says, "home to 2,000 happy people....and a few soreheads". LOL

It was getting late & we realized it would be impossible to get to the Giant Catsup Bottle in Collinsville, IL before nightfall. So we decided to stop for a picnic dinner at a park in Owensboro, KY. I had packed the bread & deli meat for lunch, but Mother Nature had changed those plans. We were approaching Owensboro & were nearly at the park when a confusing road sign sent us on a one hour detour back through the Kentucky countryside. (See Jacob's previous post)

Once we were headed in the right direction again, there was no time left for a picnic. We were in a race against darkness & also trying to time our arrival around a storm that was battering our final destination.
We bypassed Owensboro & headed straight for Evansville, IN over the Ohio River.



We passed through Indiana briefly and stopped at the Illinois Welcome Center to fix turkey sandwiches for the road. As we cruised through southern Illinois, the weather broke & we got to see a beautiful sunset.



But our day wasn't over yet. A quick check of my Twitter feed showed an update from St. Louis saying parts of the Interstate were closed due to flooding. That set off a flurry of map-checks and a phone call to Kip Welborn. He is a St. Louis resident I met on the Route 66 e-group. He wrote a book about traveling in St. Louis & I hoped he could help us navigate around the trouble spots. Kip assured us that if we took the proper detour straight to Staunton, IL and bypassed the Interstate, we wouldn't have trouble. Thanks, Kip!

We drove IL Hwy 4 through miles & miles of farmland in the dark. It was a little harrowing with all the tractor trailers using the same tiny 2-lane to get around the Interstate fiasco. And the local bugs seemed to be on a kamikaze mission. But we finally arrived at the Super 8 in Staunton, IL.
Our "hotel procedure" went a little more smoothly. We all went straight to bed & straight to sleep. And the bathroom light (separate from the fan) stayed on for the kids. No air conditioning unit could have kept me awake after a trip like that.


Notes for the day:

-- As I was cruising into KY from TN, I was upset when a butterfly got stuck on the windshield wiper & died. I didn't realize then that butterflies would be a common theme for our day. There were literally thousands of them along our path. They were all different sizes & colors. Some were traveling north, some south. It was impossible to avoid killing a few. And after a while I joked that it was a good thing our windshields were engaged & at maximum power because they seemed to be gunning for us.

-- We left our portable DVD player at home, insisting that our children would not be buried in a movie for the entire trip. I questioned my own sanity in that decision, but it worked out just fine. Though the boys didn't spend the whole day oohing & aahing at the scenery (like Jacob & I), they found their own way to entertain themselves. Charlie read his Harry Potter book.



And Will used his binoculars to spot pirates(?) along the way



-- Along the backroads of Kentucky, we started seeing brilliant folk art on the side of old barns. Turns out we were on the Kentucky Quilt Trail. I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of any. But it was quite a lot of fun to find those little "treasures" along the way.

-- I burned a couple of "Road Music" CDs before we left and they were a big hit. I can only imagine how strange we looked to other drivers rockin' out Wayne & Garth style to Bohemian Rhapsody. Party on!

Second Day and Adventures on the Kentucky Road System

Yesterday was the second day of our Rte 66 trip, but the first full day on the road. We traveled from Kingston, Tn to Staunton, Il. We drove through Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and then into Illinois.
The drive was very scenic since we routed around the interstate system and traveled on the byways of each state, except Indiana and Illinois since we had to make up some lost time. The drive was going very smooth until we reached Owensburg, Ky, then everything went to pot!
We were traveling on Kentucky HWY 231 into Owensburg, and we wanted to go through Owensburg to stop at a park and see a couple of oddities while we were there, but the signage for 231 were lackluster at best. To get into Owensburg you must pass over HWY60, which is an express way style road. The signage for HWY231 put us onto the express way that we were looking to avoid.
"No problem" I thought, we'll hop off the next exit and turn ourselves around, but the first exit put us onto another expressway that took us back to Hartford, KY (Home of 2000 smiling faces and a few soreheads). Now I believe that when this express way was designed the road engineers were taking a few shots of Kickin' Chicken, since this expressway had no exits for 24 miles. We had to go back to Hartford, we had driven through on HWY231, so we could turn around and drive another 24 miles back to HWY 60. This little "detour" put us an hour behind schedule and wasted 50 miles of drive time.
I can say that the silver lining of the detour is that it killed enough time for the storms that were rolling through the area to pass through, and made the interstate/express way drive a little less dramatic.

JStowe

Route 66 Trip -- Day 1 - Sort of

This trip down Route 66 has taken me years to plan. Route 66 was decommissioned in the 80's and no longer appears on a regular road atlas. So it requires special guidebooks to navigate the portions of the Mother Road that are still navigable.



Emily Priddy wrote a free online book called "Route 66 for Kids". I used it as the starting point for our travel plan. I also did my own research to make sure our trip includes plenty of adult-friendly activities too.
The boys originally got the idea to travel Route 66 from the movie CARS. Once I started researching the trip, I found out there is a large community of lovely folks helping maintain the charm of Route 66. I'm looking forward to meeting some of them along the way.

So last night after Jacob got done with work, we set out. Our intention was to get a head-start on our official vacation.



We drove I-40 West over the Tennessee mountains and stopped in Kingston, TN.



As our adventures unfold, I will post the good, the bad & the ugly. Stay tuned.

The Summer Wish List

I read a suggestion in a parenting magazine to have the kids make up their own list of summer activities. The idea is that they will be more enthusiastic & cooperative for an outing they thought up on their own.

Will wanted no part of something that involved sitting, thinking, and writing. His summer activities come to him through movement & happenstance. His list read:

1.) go swimming
2.) skateboard
...and then he left out the door with his skateboard.

Charlie seemed more intrigued by the idea. But he was having a hard time coming up with activities. So I sat down with him to help get his brainstorm started. Here is Charlie's list:

1.) go swimming
2.) see a parade
3.) climb a big tree
4.) ride the trolley
5.) go to the zoo
6.) go camping
7.) make ice cream
8.) see a bald eagle
9.) learn more Spanish
10.) write a blog
11.) ride a horse
12.) go to a baseball game
13.) go see a play
14.) go to the drive-in theater
15.) make real limeade
16.) pick peaches
17.) go on a safari
18.) grow veggies
19.) go to a football game
20.) collect all the quarters for all fifty states
21.) make a movie
22.) ride in a boat
23.) go fishing
24.) go ice skating
25.) read all of the Harry Potter books (Charlie only)
26.) skateboard at a skatepark (Will only)
27.) shoot a bow & arrow

As you can see, once he got started, there was no stopping him. That's a very long list for a fairly short summer. But I'm going to try and cover as many as possible. Clearly he's a young man who wants to experience the world. And I, for one, am going to enjoy being along for the trip.
Keep an eye out for us this summer. We may be shooting arrows from the back of a horse. Or making limeade at the drive-in theater. Time to get started....

A Horribly Entertaining Weekend

We are finally getting comfortable with the lazy days of summer. So I wanted to tell you about how this season began for us.
Due to the boys' Seussical rehearsal schedule, we couldn't go on an extended vacation for Memorial Day. So we settled on a 24-hour whirlwind trip to the North Carolina coast.

We left the house on Saturday morning headed in the general direction of Wilmington, NC. It's a simple drive down Hwy 74 straight into Wilmington. From there we headed south towards Carolina Beach. I had printed online directions to get us through Wilmington and to the beach. They turned out to be completely useless. There are only three numbered highways in Wilmington and they run in all directions. Luckily, the local DOT really wants people to find their way to the beach. So there are road signs pointing the way.

We didn't get to spend all day at the beach, just a few hours. But it was a great way to start the summer. The weather was breezy & beautiful and the water was nice and warm.








My impression of Carolina Beach based on the few hours we spent there:
-- Follow signs to the beach. Online directions are useless.

-- There is plenty of municipal parking at Carolina Beach. Before we left, I checked the city website & located a few lots. The spaces are metered and the automated ticket dispenser accepts debit cards!

-- Other than in the "downtown" area of Carolina Beach, there aren't traffic signals or crosswalks. Pedestrians beware! During busy times, it was really scary crossing the road to get to the beach.

-- Carolina Beach doesn't seem to be as crowded as Wrightsville Beach. There were plenty of people, but it didn't feel like we were falling over each other.

-- At low tide, Carolina Beach is a great place to find seashells. Some big ones were washed up high on the beach. Down in the surf, we only had to scratch off the top layer of sand to find thousands of tiny little treasures. Jacob even found a hunk of sea clay the size of a football.

-- And lastly, my oldest will rarely be featured in our beach photos because he doesn't stand still long enough. He loves the beach!


After a few hours we headed back to Wilmington to check into our hotel. Once again the online directions failed us & we got lost. But following a lovely tour of the waterfront district, we found the Country Inn & Suites. We needed to get cleaned up and rested before heading out for dinner and a show. The Country Inn & Suites was suggested to us by the theatre owner. Just a few days before our trip, I had snagged one of the few remaining rooms for the holiday weekend. For being a destination city so close to the beach, I thought $109/night was quite reasonable. Especially since breakfast was included. The hotel is relatively new and the staff was quite helpful. We used their business center to print the receipt for our theatre tickets. And later in the evening, the boys went swimming in the indoor pool. We will definitely stay there again when we're anywhere near Wilmington.

Our show was at The Browncoat Pub & Theatre on Grace Street in the riverfront district of Wilmington. As a special package deal, we also bought dinner at the Blue Plate Cafe a few doors down. All the food there is made fresh daily so they had run out of a few items by dinnertime. And the service was a bit leisurely considering we only had a little time before the show. But the food was downright amazing! I especially recommend the ribs -- and I'm not usually a rib eater. We polished off dinner and hurried over to the theatre.









Blue Plate Cafe on Grace Street in Wilmington


The Browncoat Pub & Theatre is a small bar attached to a tiny theatre. The bar is designed for the enjoyment of every Firefly/Whedon fan. There are handpainted murals under the bar depicting each Firefly character. The bar top is plastered with every Whedon-designed comic graphic ever printed. And the ceiling has white Christmas light draped with black to look like outer space.
The theatre has about 40 seats. The Browncoat specializes in independent productions, especially by local playwrights. It is a non-profit and genuinely exists for the sake of its art.

The reason we traveled over hill & dale to come to the Browncoat Theatre was to see the Browncoat-essential production of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog". Every member of our family is a huge fan of the movie. The Browncoat Theatre obtained the rights to adapt it for the stage. They worked with Maurissa Tancharoen, one of the Dr. Horrible writers, to make sure the show adhered to the original spirit of the movie.
We arrived just before the show and very nearly had to sit in the last row. But luckily we were tricked-out in full fan gear. So we got upgraded to front row, V.I.P. seats. Check out my fanboys getting ready for the show.




We were NOT disappointed. The whole cast is really talented. They did a great job overcoming the challenges of bringing a movie to the stage. The Wonderflonium-containing van was merely implied, with Captain Hammer perched atop a ladder. There were some moments when pre-taped video was projected onstage to allow for quick plot changes. What was especially appealing is that a stage production allowed the characters to be more over-the-top. Moist became a sniffling, sneezing mess who occasionally spewed some unknown goo towards the audience. He also served as the stand-in dart board for the "So They Say" number. And the mayor, who was extremely minor in the movie, was a complete goofball onstage during "Everyone's a Hero". Somehow, they rigged the Death Ray to smoke & sizzle when it malfunctioned. That was quite impressive.


Dr. Horrible & Moist (sneezing)


Billy meets Penny


Captain Hammer's here, hair blowing in the breeze


I hate the homless.....-ness problem that plagues our city


We came back to the Country Inn after the show, had a restful sleep, a humongous breakfast the next morning, and hurried back to Charlotte so Jacob could work on Sunday afternoon.
By Monday night, the boys were back at the theatre for their first full dress rehearsal. And there were still a few days of school remaining. But our summer had officially started.

On the Radio

Since late January, Will has been going to school every Tuesday at 7:00a to practice with the 4th grade choir for 45 minutes before classes begin. Their Spring choral presentation was a musical number that required quite a bit of practice.

By mid-March, the 4th grade choir joined the 5th grade choir for joint rehearsals. They practiced every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Finally on April 29th, we got to see the finished product.

Parents & students crowded into the cafe/auditorium for a history of radio music presented by KYDZ Radio.

Here is a picture of the entire stage from my viewpoint. There were tons of kids in this production. Some had speaking or dancing parts.



Jacob was sitting down front so the video is filmed from a "Will-cam" point-of-view. Some of the microphones were malfunctioning so I edited out the portions where the dialogue isn't audible. Will worked really hard on this project and we're very proud of him.

Part One


Part Two

My Birthday by Charlie

On my birthday I went to a hockey game with my dad. I got to meet Chubby the Polar Bear. He’s the team mascot. I really liked the Eyeball Race. It’s where people dressed in eyeball suits. I love hockey!

After that I went to Dunkin Donuts. I got an éclair.