The Church of Beer

We met Paul Floreancig and his family for dinner in Pittsburgh at The Church Brew Works, a fascinating brewpub located in the decommissioned St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic church. The original pews were cut to form the benches for the dining tables, a wood burning pizza oven was installed, and the alter area was reconfigured as the brewery. As a special touch, storage for the hard liquor is in the confessionals. Although they didn't have "all the beers," the beer that they did have was excellent and the food was a cut above typical microbrewery fare. They even had a Kolsch on tap (don't forget the umlaut). I enjoyed the beer sampler and then ordered a pint of the "Pious Monk Dunkel." Awesome! Fortunately, Rachelle had agreed to be the designated RV driver.

Forgive me Father

Paul and I were graduate students together in Paul Wender's Lab at Stanford. He's now a Professor of Chemistry at The University of Pittsburgh.  Paul took me to "The Church" when he invited me to give a talk at the Pitt back in 2006 and I've been talking about the place ever since. I was super excited to get the chance visit again. Paul and his wife, Debbie, and their 8-year old daughter, Natalie, met up with us at our Kailua, HI (rental) beach house during the Pacifichem conference in December of 2005. At that time, Keiko and Amaya were only 3 1/2, but somehow Natalie remembered them and vice versa. I guess memories made on the beach in Hawaii are imprinted pretty strongly!

Keiko and Amaya were thrilled when Natalie invited them to sleep over at her house. Tom and Rachelle were pretty excited to sleep in a real bed too... We weren't expecting a sleepover during our RV trip, but the girls were had a fantastic time. I think they may even have slept for a few hours. Paul made us pancakes for breakfast and we pried the girls apart in order to get back on the road. A great time in Pittsburgh. Somehow, I sense that a pilgrimage back to The Church is in my future.

Amaya, Natalie Floreancig, and Keiko sleepover

Stonewall

After our tubing adventure on the New River, we didn't really have any specific plans for where we'd go on our journey back to Williamstown or where we'd stay along the way. We decided to head toward Pittsburgh where another friend of mine had invited us to visit. We searched for campgrounds in northern West Virginia and found a gem. Stonewall Jackson State Park is located on picturesque lake in Weston, WV, about an hour south of Morgantown. The cool thing we discovered about this park is that the state turned over management of the park to the Stonewall Resort, located just up the road, and all of the amenities of the resort were available to campers.

The Arnold Palmer-designed golf course at Stonewall Resort

Just before we arrived at the campground, Rachelle tweaked her back and had to lie down for the rest of the drive. Quick administration of advil and mucle relaxant mostly nipped this in the bud, but Rachelle would be out of commission for a few hours. Backing in to our campsite without Rachelle as a spotter was an interesting experience. I employed Amaya, in her bright orange shirt, as a pylon to mark the back corner of our parking spot and eventually jockeyed our rig into position. I'm sure we got a few snickers from the nearby campers because it took me a few tries and it wasn't pretty. I can only imagine how jarring that parking job must have seemed from Rachelle's prone position in the back of the RV.

Keiko and Amaya were swimming in the lake within 10 minutes of parking. The water was murky, but that didn't seem to deter them (and I wasn't about to yell "snake!'). The bottom of the lake was lined with clay having an interesting texture—almost like a hard rubber. We showered up quickly and Rachelle made reservations for us to eat dinner at the resort. A shuttle bus drove right up to our campsite and delivered us to the resort. We had an amazing gourmet buffet and joked that it was the best campground food we'd ever had! Our good fortune didn't end there; children 8 and under dined for free with a paying adult and Keiko and Amaya wouldn't turn 9 until one week later! A sweet bargain for us.

We were awakened the next morning to an intense thunderstorm. The volume of the rain pelting the roof of the RV was impressive, as were the nearby lightning strikes. We had to check out of our campsite by 11:30, but we were told that we could move our RV into the parking lot at the lodge and use the swimming pool. I swam with the girls for a few hours while Rachelle got a massage at the spa to help adjust her back. The girls begged me to do some of the "pool dancing" games that I used to play with them when they were four or five year's old and we lived in Hawaii. Back then, though, they only weighed about 30–40 pounds and I could really throw them around. Despite their 9-year old frames and my messed up knee, I still had a few "superman" moves and "grand finales" left for in me.  The girls really didn't want to leave the pool, but we needed to head off to Pittsburgh. After they changed out of their swimsuits,  Keiko pulled Amaya's hair back into a braid the way she often wears it, herself. I just know that these two are going to mess with their 4th grade teachers next year. Can you tell them apart?

Freaky Friday

Blue Collar Joe's

Adventure time! It was time to start moving north again so that we would have the RV back by the return deadline. We had about 700 miles to cover in our final four days and we hoped to spread it out pretty evenly. Today we were heading north through the mountains of West Virginia. The campground attendants at New River Junction told Rachelle about some special doughnut store about an hour away. That was enough information for me to plan our route! We hit Blue Collar Joe's right on schedule. It  took about 30 more minutes for Rachelle and the girls to pick out their flavors. Gotta say, it was worth the trip.

Mmm, Mmm... Donuts

We had a beautiful drive through the mountains on the back roads of West Virgina. I had never been to West Virginia before, but I loved it. It reminded me of my home state of Vermont. Rolling hills and lots of greenery—but not quite as much agriculture in the areas we traveled. For the third travel day in a row, we took advantage of Rachelle's iPhone to find a lunch stop on-the-fly using her Yelp app. I just searched for restaurants near a town along our route, ranked the results by rating, and then read some of the reviews. In every case, we found a cute & fun place to stop. In fact, we made only one chain-fast food stop during our whole trip (and that was only because we were hamstrung by an RV repair appointment). On this day, we made our way to the Stardust Cafe, a funky little place in Lewisburg, WV. As the sign says, this was a cool town. I don't know if there's anything going on in Lewisburg, but I could imagine living there.

Lewisburg, West Virginia

During these long driving days, Keiko and Amaya would typically split their time reading and watching videos on the portable DVD players that we gave them for an early birthday present (oh, and let's not forget about the quality time they spent bickering with each other). They would peek out the window occassionally, but they weren't particularly interested in soaking up the views. For the most part, though, they handled themselves very well during the long travel days. I wish that  I had taken more photos of the scenery along our route in West Virginia. It was a great drive.

Tubing

It was a long, long, long drive from Charleston to Western Virginia—about 400 miles—but we were eagerly anticipating a tubing adventure at New River Junction. Our camp site was right on the bank of New River and the scenery was stunning. 

New River Junction, VA

The freight trains rolling through every hour haling coal along both sides of the river detracted a bit from the serenity of the scene, but it was a fabulous spot. It was cooler in the mountains (thank God) and we had a nice campfire both nights we were there. 

Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener...

In the morning, we rented inner tubes and launched into the river. It's been a dry summer and the river level was pretty low—resulting in a very slow ride down the river and a lot of butt-dragging on the river bottom. Fortunately, we Smiths are experienced butt-draggers and this was just our speed. It took about a hour to drift down the one mile stretch of river from the campground to the head of the "rapids." My knee was still acting up, so I was a bit nervous about the section of rapids. To play it safe, I sent the women-folk through first :) After it was clear that they hadn't drowned, I decided to brave the rapids myself. My center of gravity being a few inches higher above the tube imparted to me a certain degree of longitudinal instability. Finding myself upside-down in the rapids with no tube and a gimpy knee definitely tripped on my flight-or-fight response mechanisms. Fortunately, I didn't smack into any (big) rocks and was able to retrieve my tube at the bottom of the rapids. I guess Rachelle and Amaya enjoyed the ride a bit more than I did because they shot the rapids four or five more times. As far as I could determine, the only reason they stopped was because they spied some sort of water snake lurking near a big rock on the shore. Rachelle is terrified of snakes and she has no misgivings about passing along her phobia to the twins. Amaya (reluctantly) agreed to accompany me down the lazy river portion of the tubing course one more time, but our otherwise peaceful ride was punctuated by piercing cries of "snake, snake....I felt a snake!" The periodic hysteria also detracted from the serenity of the environment. We had a nice cookout on the shore overlooking the rapids before catching the shuttle bus back the campground launch point. Before we knew it, our tubing expedition had taken up most of our day. It was a fun way to spend a hot summer afternoon. Everyone had a good time despite the (harmless) snakes.

Amaya negotiates  the rapids

That night, we cooked s'mores over the campfire (astonishingly, something that we hadn't yet done on our trip!) and played a fun Apples to Apples family game at the picnic table. Keiko teases me that I'm too competitive when we play games, but based upon this photo I'm not sure that I'm the one with the problem. All in all, a really fun day.

Keiko declares victory over all mankind

Refuge from the Heat

It was only 120 miles or so from the Willow Tree Campground to Charleston, so after an almost-full day of playing in the pools and driving the golf carts around in the scorching heat (and a final, extended diagnosis at the RV repair facility) we hit the road. Approaching Charleston, we drove through a lightening storm the likes of which I had never seen in my life. We arrived at Lia Johns' house in Mount Pleasant at about 11 PM. Lia is a classmate of Rachelle's from the graduate school of social work at Boston College. Her husband, John, is a priest in a beautiful Greek Orthodox church in Charleston, Their eldest son, Michael, turned 6 that very day and their infant son, George, is 9 months old and teething terribly (might I suggest a bit of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup?). I think the last time that we saw Lia and John together was at their wedding 11 years ago in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I don't know if it's true or if she was just pulling my leg, but Lia told me that the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, was based upon childhood friends in her hometown. Keiko and Amaya, obviously, had never met any of the Johns family before, but I've never seen them more comfortable with strangers. They were chatting it up with our old friends until midnight. 

John, George, Paul, Ringo, Grumpy, Evangelia, and Superman

John and George Johns

Michael and Lia Johns

We spent three nights at Lia's (mercifully air conditioned) home. We got to sleep in a comfortable bed. I got to shave and shower. It was a little slice of heaven after our taste of Hell over the last few days in the heat. We didn't really do much while we were there, but that was just fine by everyone as we were all ready for a little down time. On the first day, we organized a Narnia marathon and just watched movies all day in our jammies. Oh yeah, and Lia fed us constantly. If these three days were any indication, that whole Greek stereotype from the movie must have some hint of truth to it. I awakened every morning to the sounds and smells of sizzling meat. Damn I love that woman. Keiko and Amaya are bacon monsters too. 

By coincidence, I had just written an email to my old college classmate, Keith McIver, noting that I was in Charleston. He wrote back and said that he was in Charleston on business that day. After work, he drove up to Lia's house and had dinner with all of us. I had never seen Keith in his Southern world before; I had only ever known him as a southerner temporarily transplanted in the North. He helped me with some of my confusion about southern culture and we had a great time catching up. Lia fed him non-stop for about 3 hours. I'm not sure how he stayed awake for the 2-hour drive back to Columbia, SC. 

Keith McIver in his home state of South Carolina

On our second full day, Lia gave me an insider's tour of Charleston while Rachelle and the girls slept in. What a cool city. I think it would be fun to take one of those horse-drawn carriages around the downtown area for a guided tour. Rachelle and I had visited Savannah, GA many years ago and these two cities seem to share many characteristics. Since the girls refused to do any more "educational" activities, I was pleased that Lia took the time to indulge my curiosity about the city. Their proclaimed indifference toward academic pursuits notwithstanding, Keiko and Amaya enjoyed learning something about Blackbeard during our dinner outing at Queen Anne's Revenge. We all made out like pirates.

Blackbeard was way scarier than Johnny Depp

Arrrrggh

Happiness Check: July 16
Rachelle 10
Keiko 8
Amaya 9-10
Lia 8
Michael 7
Tom 7
John 8
George 8

 

Willow Tree

Even though it was hotter than the surface of the sun, this campground was awesome! The entrance road to the campground was over a half-mile long and was lined with palm trees and pines.  It seemed like we like we were on the driveway to a billionaire's mansion. Our site was the best one in the park—right on the lake and right next to a little bridge that crossed over to the pool/beach area. 

Our RV at our site inside "The Compound"

There was a mile-long path around the lake (that I wished I could jog on) and nature walks that spurred off into the woods from that. Everything was beautifully kept. There were shuffleboard courts and tetherball and ping-pong and pool tables, but it was too hot to do much of anything that didn't involve the water. The pool had a water basketball and water volleyball "courts." The swim area in the lake had huge inflatable trampolines and a slide.







The sun was brutal and everyone got a little burned—even with sunscreen. We stayed two nights here and got our fill of sun and heat. The girls' favorite parts of this place were the pool, the giant slide, and the golf cart that we rented for 24 hours. We must have put 20 miles on that thing with Keiko or Amaya at the wheel. They had a blast and I got my first taste of what it will be like to teach them to drive six years from now! We would have stayed here longer if it had been a bit cooler and if we hadn't wanted to make it to Lia's house in Charleston.

On the Highway to Hell

Hades

The temperature was beautifully cool on the Outer Banks. After a nice morning swim in the ocean, we headed south. Before returning to the mainland, we made a short stop at the Wright Brothers' Memorial at Kill Devil Hill. I had always wanted to visit this spot. My daughters were less enthusiastic. I hope when they read this ten years from now that they realize what pinheads they were (more realistically, they'll point out what a blockhead I was). We didn't stay long. I thought it was cool to see the stone markers depicting the length of the first four successful flights on December 17, 1903. I remember reading lots of books about the Wright Brothers when I was a child. I was fascinated and inspired by their cleverness and persistence. It was a good feeling to walk the site where they made their first flights. It would be fun to see their shop in Ohio, too. Doubt if I'll be able to convince the kids to swing by on the way back to Massachusetts, though. 

The Wright Flyer makes its first hopsOur

Although we had a great (short) stay on the Outer Banks, our luck had started to change for the worse. Bennett Lee must have filled the futon we slept on with rocks because I woke up the next morning barely able to walk. The recovery from my February patella tendon rupture and surgery had been going very well, but it felt like I had reverted three months in just one night. My ankle and foot were all swolen and my knee looked like someone had stuck a softball under the skin. I have no idea what happened, but I must have bruised it somehow while sleeping. The long drives sitting in the car probably didn't help. Whatever caused it, my mobility dropped to almost nil overnight. Very strange. I didn't even attempt to climb the hill to the Monument at the Wright Brothers Memorial site. 

The Wright Brothers Memorial at Kill Devil Hill

We were lucky that it was cool on the Outer Banks because our RV air conditioner had gone on the fritz again (yes, the one that we had "repaired" in Washington, DC). A call to Cruise America informed us that the nearest repair facility along our route was 5 1/2 hours away in Wilmington, NC. We were headed that way anyway, so we hoped that we might be able to get this issue resolved for good. We were headed to one of the top-reviewed campgrounds in the country, Willow Tree Resort near North Myrtle Beach, SC. We expected that this would be a fantastic place for Rachelle and the girls to hang out while I dealt with the RV repair issues. What we didn't expect was that we would heading into the hottest temperatures the region had seen in in four years. 

It was a long but beautiful drive through tobacco fields and state highways. We arrived at our final destination at about 11 PM—at least that's what our iPhone/Googlemaps navigator told us. That we were in a parking lot in front of an all-night Bingo hall suggested that there might be a few inaccuracies in the database. We were all so punchy from the drive that the ensuing scramble in the darkness was like an Abbott and Costello routine. Thirty minutes later, after a few raised voices and a lot of laughs, we were safe in our campground site.

The next morning, I took the RV to the repair facility about 45 minutes to the Southwest in Conway, SC (where Keith McIver grew up) while Rachelle enjoyed some fun in the sun with the girls at the campground. Of course the 98° temperatures chipped away at the "fun" portion of the equation. The repair facility wasn't exactly what I had expected. It was a one-man operation in a field. Fortunately, the one man seemed to know what he was doing. Within a few hours he had determined that the compressor was faulty. It was only drawing 4 amps when it was supposed to be drawing about 12. That's right, it had been defective the for our entire trip—only cooling at partial capacity even when all of the gauges in the RV indicated that it was working properly. So, the whole "repair" in DC was just an illusion. It was vindicating to discover that our suspicions about the AC unit being defective were justified, but that wasn't going to help us stay cool over the next few days of sweltering heat. It took another day to determine that no replacement units would be available in less than four days' time. At this point in our trip, we had spent the better part of 4 days trying to deal with this problem and I had had enough. I decided that I didn't want to spend another minute of our precious vacation worrying about this ridiculous thing. 

OBX

Time to head south, Baby!

After Richmond, we decided to modify our original "plan" of driving toward Nashville and Memphis in favor of to heading south along the coast on a multi-day quest to visit a friend of Rachelle's in Charleston, SC. Our first long day of driving took us to an awesome RV park called Camp Hatteras, right on the beach at the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

As usual, our specific travel plans centered around eating. This time, we were advised to visit the Virginia Diner in Wakefield, VA. They're famous for their peanut pie. Rachelle had a piece and said it was like pecan pie—only with peanuts. I had something called "Brunswick Stew" and some Virginia (salt-cured) ham in between biscuits. Pretty nice lunch. They tried to trick me with collard greens that were cooked in fatback and butter, but I could still tell that there was some vegetable matter in there. We bought a little can of butter-roasted peanuts for the road and they were awesome.

 

After many more hours of driving past peanut fields and lush green trees, we made it to the Outer Banks. The sand dunes were cool and there were lots of people flying kites and taking very short rides in mini hang gliders. Upon arrival in our campground, just a bit north of Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the girls wanted to get in the ocean as quickly as possible. The water was just a tad bit warmer than at the beach in Maine. The waves were rough, but the girls have had lots of practice handling themselves in the surf. We swam until almost dark.

Camp Hatteras—right on the beach

Water horses

No, we didn't build this, but we can pretend that we did...

BLee

For the third night out of four we met up with old friends. Bennett Lee (Williams '88) and his gracious spouse, Eun, invited us to stay at their home in Richmond. Seems like they have built a nice life in there, where Doctor Bennett has an academic position at the Medical College of Virginia. It was really fun to hang out with the Lee family again. We've met up with them many times in Williamstown, but never in their domain. We had a fantastic Korean dinner (although Amaya snarfed all of their special kimchee) and met some of Bennett's Richmond friends. There were eight kids under eight years' old in the house, but after a few beers I couldn't hear them anymore....

Bennett, Tom, Caton, Amaya, Keiko, Kajia, and Noah

Monticello, Err...Bust

Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home and estate is in Charlottesville, VA—halfway between Harrisonburg and Richmond, our next destination. We spent another morning at the campground in our never-ending effort to manage Keiko and Amaya's energy, and then hit the road. By now, we're pretty good at getting the RV buttoned up and ready for travel. We arrive in Charlottesville at around noon, so we decided it would make more sense first to eat some lunch at historic Mitchie's Tavern than to go directly to Monticello. Totally authentic Colonial buffet....

Cheers!

Yeah. Well, we should have gone to Monticello to put our names in line for a tour before lunch since the next available tour time wasn't for 3 more hours. Drat. Dad screwed up again. I had intended to reserve tickets online the night before, but forgot about it. Dang. Given that the girls had just attempted an "intervention" over lunch regarding my insistence upon educational activities, it didn't seem to be the best time to force a three-hour wait for a tour of a house. We watched a nice movie about Jefferson's life in the visitor's center, but they wouldn't let us walk up the hill to the house. Argh. Monticello was a bust. Perhaps we'll get back there again sometime.

Weird Science

We decided to stay a second day in Harrisonburg to relax a bit in the Shenandoah Valley. An hour of swimming,  tether-ball, and playing around the campground helped the girls to get their ya-yas out. 

Amaya scratches with the chickens

In the afternoon we took an outing to the nearby Route 11 Potato Chip Factory. They were making "dill pickle" flavored chips that day. Keiko was in heaven. They have a pretty small operation, using only 100 pounds of potatoes in each batch, and do a lot of the work by hand. We could watch the different steps through a window into the production line. I wouldn't want to be the quality control guy who has to pick out the burned and stuck chips by hand. Of course, we had to sample all of their flavors. My favorite was "Mama Zuma's Revenge" which was infused with habanero peppers. Yum.

They wouldn't let us photograph their production line. It must be a matter of National Security.

Almost next door was Shenandoah Caverns, a cave attraction that was developed in the 1920s. Since it was pretty late in the day, our family was the only group there and we had the tour guide all to ourselves. The formations were beautiful, but it was a bit of a shame how it had been developed. Back in the early days, tourists would even break off pieces of the rock formations and there were lots of places where this kind of damage was visible. Now there are Virginia State laws prohibiting touching of the cave walls. Our guide told us that we had walked a little over a mile in the caves, but it didn't seem like that far. My favorite part of the experience was imagining what it must have been like for the teenage boys who discovered the caves and explored them with a rope and candlelight—keeping their find a secret for several years before telling their parents. A boyhood dream.

Mmmmm.....bacon

The weirdest aspect of our visit were the "attractions" associated with the cavern. The current owner of the caverns had some kind of connection with a parade float production company. They had designed floats for many of the US Presidential inauguration parades and he had collected many of them in a giant warehouse adjacent to the caverns. Our cavern tour ticket included admission to these parade float displays as well as a number of animatronic department store window displays from the 1940s and 50s. It was all just a bit creepy if you ask me. The caverns made it worth the trip, though.

Proving again that simple pleasures are the best, the highlight of our day may have been the key lime flavored mint that we had after dinner. The concentrated essence of pina colada sent us into a singing and dancing frenzy on Route 11 in New Market, VA.

You put de lime in de co-co-nut and drink em both up....

Johnny Appleseed

We were met by an old friend, Debbie Mohler, and her fiancee, Ken, at the Harrisonburg KOA. Debbie was a postdoctoral fellow when I was a graduate student at Stanford and sat at the desk next to me in our research lab during the few years that we overlapped. Debbie is now a member of the chemistry faculty at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. Like Williams, JMU is a primarily undergraduate institution with a liberal arts focus, but it is part of the Virginia public education system and has about nine times as many students as Williams. Debbie took us to dinner at a cheesy (but totally fun) restaurant called Johnny Appleseed where we got some good ole fashioned southern cooking. It's kind of like a Cracker Barrel, but thrown back to the 1950s or something. It suited us perfectly—just a little goofy. The bite-sized apple fritters were a treat, but be careful: wherever they go, they leave a trail of powdered sugar "fritter dust."  We had a fun time recounting some old stories. Plus, Debbie made me tell Ken the tale of Mr. Meanie...

Heeeeeere's Johnny

Ken, Debbie, and Tom—with A & K doing "the sprinkler"

Addendum:
I forgot to mention the best part of dinner. I asked the waitress what beers they had available.
She replied, "We have all of the beers" and proceeded to list them:

Bud

Bud Light

Miller

Miller Light

Coors

and Coors Light

So there you go.

Oh Shenandoah

Apparently there was a loose connection in the air conditioner unit. It took until about noon to get it repaired and then we were on the road to Harrisonburg, VA. Instead of making the entire journey on the (soulless) interstate highway, we opted to try the first stretch of Skyline Drive, the northern portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway. This historic road runs along the crest of Blue Ridge Mountains through Shenendoah National Park. This time, we weren't turned away from our scenic quest—although the National Park Service gladly collected our $15 fee. We drove just the first 31-mile stretch from Front Royal to VA-211. The beauty of scenery was as stunning as its reputation foretold, but the experience was even better than expected because there was almost no traffic at all. Skyline Drive is intended to be a slow-down-and-enjoy-it road with a speed limit of 35 MPH. It's a 2-lane parkway, but it has very wide lanes and well-designed shoulder areas where you can pull out it you want to let impatient traffic pass. A stone fence borders most of the drive and gave me a comforting feeling of separation between the road and the dropoff just beyond. Scenic overlooks also appear every few miles. We took almost all of those and soaked in the view. It was rather hazy this day, so the visibility was somewhat limited. I can only imagine how magnificent the views would be under CAVU conditions. I hope that we get to drive another section of this road later in our trip. It extends all the way to Cherokee, NC—469 miles down the road.

Overlooks along Skyline Drive

Double-Decker

Rachelle bought tickets for one of the hop on/hop off open-top bus tours for July 6. They picked us up at our campground at 6:45 AM. Keiko and Amaya were not amused. We were at Union Station by 8:00, but the sightseeing buses didn't start running until 9:00. Coffee and an enormous doughnut helped kill the time.

Just imagine how big the coffee was

Riding on the open-top double-decker tour buses was quite pleasant. You get to see the city from a pretty nice vantage point. We mostly just sat back and enjoyed the ride, but we did stop at a few places along the way. We arrived at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at about 9:30 AM, but the only tour remaining started at 5:00 (apparently you have to be in line at 7:00 to pick up  tickets for earlier tours and they only issue same-day tour tickets). Drat. We still enjoyed the visitors' center.

Show me the money!

Later, we stopped at the National Aquarium. Perhaps we've been spoiled by our experiences in Hawaii and the Monterrey Aquarium, but it was extremely disappointing. I did learn something about the location of National Marine Preserves around the country, but the exhibit itself was very small and was located in a strange underground location in the basement of the Department of Agriculture. I wish we had spent our limited time elsewhere, but c'est la vie. The best part of the bus tour was in the Georgetown area where the trees and wires over the streets were only a few inches over our heads. Amaya said that it felt more like a roller coaster ride than a bus tour.

Low hanging trees (and some dude's combover) in Georgetown

The tour included an hour-long scenic boat tour from Georgetown Harbor and we enjoyed that very much. it was neat to see Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials from the water, and the tour was just the right duration.

Washington Monument from the Potomac

After the boat tour, we met up with Mark Schofield (inorganic chemist at Williams from 1998-2005) and his wife, Heather Pierce (a Williams alum). Dinner at a place called Mr. Smith's was very nice and we ended the evening with some decadent cupcakes at Sprinkles. I monitored happiness levels at the start of our meal. After the cupcakes, frosting-induce amplification had pushed everyone's happiness index to "10."

Happiness Check: July 6, 5:30 PM  (start of dinner)

Keiko: 2

Amaya: 7

Rachelle: 10

Tom: 8
Mark: 9
Heather: 9

Schoburgi

It was really nice to see Mark. Our offices were across the hall from each other at Williams and we shared lots of conversations over the years about chemistry (and completely unrelated topics) over lunch and jogs around the Ide Road loop. Keiko and Amaya were a wee bit shy with him at first, but they had lost all inhibitions by the time the buffalo wings and cupcakes had been consumed. 

Keiko the Carnivore

We had a nice day in Washington, DC. It was a bit of a bummer that we didn't have time to go to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum or walk into the Lincoln Monument, but we're already talking about making a separate trip back to Washington—perhaps next spring when the cherry blossoms are blooming.

Chilling Out

We left the RV air conditioning unit on the whole time we were away so that it would be nice and cool for sleeping. Instead, we returned something more akin to a sauna with AC unit blinking "E5, E5, E5..." Normally, I'm not much for air conditioning and you'd think we could just suck it up and do without it, but the RV was easily 10° hotter than the outside air and the outside temperature had only cooled down to the mid 80s. I called the Cruise America Roadside Assistance line and were told that someone would call us at 8 AM. In meantime, they told us that they would reimburse us for the purchase of some fans. That wasn't going to be much of a consolation at midnight.  It was tough sleeping that night.

Guess who called at 8 AM? Nobody. At 9 AM I phoned and was told that a service assistant would call back as soon as they could. It became apparent that this was going to be a "day off" by the pool. We told the campground that we'd be staying another night, I took the girls to the pool and set up a little nest for all of us in the very cozy poolside gazebo, and Rachelle set off on a quest to switch our campsite to one that had some shade.

It turns out that the 5th of July is busiest day of the year for RV repair stations—and this year it was even worse because the 4th of July fell on a Monday. We ended up scheduling a repair appointment for the morning of July 7th and decided that we would spend the 6th touring the city. We endured a couple more hot nights inside the RV, but we did end up buying two Vornado fans at Home Depot which made the heat more tolerable. The kids ended up having an entire day to play in the pool, which was a good break from all of the activities of the last few days. While waiting around for the (stupid) service assistant, I had some time to write a few blog entries and email our friends and announcement about the blog. It was really fun to receive lots and lots of emails from people that day—especially from old friends whom we haven't seen in a long time. Lots of people told me that they hoped to make a trip like this someday—or recounted fond memories from childhood camping trips with their families. Good times. It's fun to think that some of you might be reading this and that Keiko and Amaya will be able to read a copy when they're grown. I love those little monkeys.

With the exception of the day at the pool, I've mostly been writing these blog posts late at night after everyone has gone to sleep (which is getting later and later). It's very peaceful to sit at the "kitchen" table and type away into the night. At first, I worried that I was wasting my vacation time, but I've found that writing about something completely unrelated to work and having a virtual scrapbook to show for my efforts has been very relaxing and enjoyable. I didn't finish my "Poop Nazi" post until 3 AM. That may have been a little extreme, but but once I started writing I simply couldn't stop until it was finished. It's just a different way to chill out.

Dinner at "The Jerk Pit." Jamaican Food is just a bit harder to find in Williamstown.

Purple Stuff: Grape soda with a "Relaxation Formula"

Half Smokes and Fireworks

Independence day in Washington, DC!

Our home base while in the DC area for several days was Cherry Hill Park, an enormous RV park near College Park, Maryland. After a successful RV sanitation mission in the morning, we headed off for the city. Cherry Hill was very convenient for this since the Metro bus came right into a bus stop inside the campground. The bus shuttled us to the Metro train station and we took the green line inbound. The girls really enjoyed riding the train and following the different station stops on the colored map. 

DC Metro map

Our first mission of the day took us to the U Street metro stop where we made our way to Ben's Chili Bowl to try some of their famous "chili half smokes" for lunch. To the casual observer, these looked like big charred hot dogs, but hot damn these things were as good as advertised. The chili was spicy and "made our dogs bite." We also enjoyed the show put on by the manager as he sang and danced along with the disco and funk music recordings. The photo on the wall of Barak Obama snarfing a chili half smoke while wearing a suit was outstanding.

Worth the wait

How did we find this excellent restaurant, you ask? We searched in our travel bible: 500 Things You Should Eat Before It's Too Late. Combined with Rachelle's new Urbanspoon app for her iPhone and a few other books that we bought for the trip, obesity has never been easier to maintain.

Dude, if you're eating this stuff,  it's already too late...

While we were waiting in line for the restaurant, Amaya's molar fell out. Between Keiko and Amaya, this is the fourth molar to fall out in the last three weeks. I'm not sure that the Tooth Fairy knows how to find her while we're on this trip, but I'm sure Amaya will shake her down somehow.

Another hole in the head

We hopped back on the Green line and took the train in to National Archives stop. A few steps later we were dipping our feet in the fountain on the grounds of the National Gallery of Art. It was 95+ °F in the shade and this felt good. I found it amusing that "dipping" feet was permitted, but any wading out into the fountain elicited a shrill whistle blast from the security guards. We had talked about attending some of the events at the Smithsonian Folk Festival that was taking place along the Mall, but it was so hot that we decided instead to visit the National Museum of the American Indian. Since the girls have been studying a lot about Native Americans in school, they were reasonably interested in the exhibits. The exhibit called "Contact" explained that the diseases introduced by the Westerners resulted in the single largest human death toll in history. It also said that, while tragic, this mass wipeout of humankind was a biological inevitability; one world had evolved in the presence of the diseases and the other had no defense—and it was just a matter of time before the two biosystems collided. I'll be interested to talk to my friends in the biology department about the "what ifs" here.

A display in the American Indian Museum

The museum closed at 5:30 and we had a choice to make about whether we would stay in town for the fireworks show (around 9:00) or head back to the campground before the crowds descended upon the Mall. Thousands of people had already taken up residence on the West lawn of the Capital for "A Capitol Fourth" concert. I was keen on going to that, too, but it was still scorching hot outside and no one else showed any interest. Instead, we grabbed some sandwiches and set up camp under the shade of some trees to wait for the fireworks. 

Waiting...

The Mall filled up and we were treated to a 20-minute World-class fireworks display. It was a slight bummer that the wind was light and blowing toward us so the smoke obscured some of the view, but the backdrop of fireworks with the Washington Monument was a sight to behold. Here's the grand finale:

The instant the fireworks ended there was a mass exodus from the Mall. We filed toward the Metro station. The bottleneck was the escalator down into the train station. Fortunately there were guards there stopping the line from time to time. It was pretty intense, but it was clear that they were trying to fill each train car as full and fast as they could to get it out of the station as quickly as possible. It was really pretty amazing how easily we got out of there and I was proud of how well behaved the girls were during this "evacuation exercise." Our campground had a special shuttle bus running from the train station, so we were home by 10:30. Another full day of adventure!