A Nod to the Drive-By States

We have stayed in so many different places at this point in our journey, and yet whole states go by the window without us really stopping for more than a cup of coffee or to use the bathroom. I've been reflecting on this the last few days. I wanted to give a nod to the states that we only glanced at from the minivan windows.

Alabama was supposed to be a chance for us to stop in Birmingham, and stretch our legs, and see the Civil Rights Institute. By the time we reached Birmingham the museum was closing. So, I quickly got out and looked around while Elijah sat in a meeting in the car, and the kids finished up a movie. Afterwards, we stopped for a cup of coffee, and Izzy threw a tantrum which turned into our first back seat time-out of the car ride.

South Carolina was the next state where we made only a brief stop. This time we had intended to camp in a wilderness at the top of the state that was in both North and South Carolina. The rain was so intense all the way through the drive north that we changed our plans. We stopped in Greenville, SC to have dinner and try to figure out a new plan. We had a great Indian meal, and drove around the town more than once. It's a very sweet little town, with lovely buildings, and very good services. We almost decided to stay the night just based on how inviting it felt, but we didn't.

After Maryland we drove through Pennsylvania but didn't stop. We noticed several bridges in Delaware as we attempted to navigate through them. And we got incredibly lost in New Jersey, just where Elijah said we would, because that spot on the map was incredibly confusing. As a result we ended up driving very close to Princeton University, though we never actually saw it. When we got back onto the highway it became a progressively more and more expensive toll road. We did get coffee in New Jersey also, and we almost stopped to get the boys a haircut, but we decided it was best to keep going. Elijah and I were having a good conversation that couldn't keep.

We spent a lovely mid-day in Connecticut with family for lunch, and then drove through stunning little New England towns as we made our way up through Hartford, and finally into Massachusetts and Boston.

We had dinner with family in New Hampshire. We also had coffee and drove through Portsmouth before arriving for dinner. Then much later in the night, while driving to Vermont, we got lost for a moment trying to find coffee, thinking that the exit number was enough to determine the necessary place to get off the highway.

We stayed overnight in Vermont, having driven through the whole southern mountains in the night. Even by moonlight it was beautiful, with lakes and little villages, and obviously lovely wooded hills. We only stayed for half a day before driving back into upstate New York, but Vermont is simply breath-taking, and somehow homey. I always love to visit it.

On our way from Niagara to Detroit we drove through Pennsylvania. We stopped in Erie for lunch. Then we drove along Lake Erie through Ohio, stopping several times for food and bathrooms. Both places boasted very nice people and a surprising number of colleges and universities of note. It's so clear that once upon a time the cities by the Great Lakes were very powerful centers of industry, just as the cities along the Erie Canal and the Hudson River had once been. The industrial beginnings of this country have not necessarily fared well with time. Many towns rise up in one's sight along the highways with beautiful old buildings. Buildings that no longer house the great and powerful elite who originally required that these places be built. The infrastructures are falling apart, the streets hold more potholes than people, and the businesses that put these places on the map have either shrunk or been forgotten. Williamsburg and Fort Pulaski reenact the past in costumes and teach of a time before the industrial revolution at the beginning of the country, or in the struggles of the early years, but the manufacturing cities and shipping yards of the founding industries don't yet claim enough historical significance to warrant a lucrative tourist trade. Only time will tell whether places like Syracuse or Detroit can become a fascination for tourists based on the powerful markets they once represented. Perhaps someday the Erie Canal will have mule barge reenactments, where you can spend a week pulling a barge up the canal as part of an industrial experiential vacation.

The country is a very big place. For all of the sites we have seen there are, every day, another hundred or so that we pass up. One could spend years wandering the United States and never run out of new sites to see. And so I wanted to just give a nod to those states we have passed by with little more than a thought for how to get through them and on to the next state. Someday perhaps we will stop in Cleveland and see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Perhaps like our babysitter Melissa just did, one of our kids will choose to go to college in the Mid West, and we will find ourselves visiting a city we never thought we would get a chance to know. For now these places will have to remain simply interchanges in our memory. Some of them the kids didn't even look up from what they were doing in time to see. Some of them they slept through.

An Ode To the Durability of Children

My cameras all ran out of batteries today and so I ended up using Elijah's phone to take some pictures. When I went to download my pictures this evening I found a whole bunch of pictures Elijah had taken over the span of our journey. It was fascinating to see the kids in all these different moments along the way. They have grown so much in the last month, and suffered their parents' whims so often. I wanted to post this series of pictures together as a reflection of the many moments throughout this journey in which our kids have shown strength and patience as well as humor.

Their last night in their room before we moved out. Sleeping on the floor in an otherwise empty bedroom.

We've had a lot of moments of waiting with the piles of luggage. This was in Sacramento at our second hotel.

Waiting for food in a weird little town in Nevada. The food took one and a half hours and when it finally came it was inedible. But the kids had fun with the anti-aircraft gun display near by. They had already been on the road for seven hours at this point.

Playing in the park in Santa Fe in the rain. Hannah's leggings are totally wet but the air is so warm she refused to wear her sweater.

They ran around in this park until after dark. Eli made friends with some kids in a nice family that were also there to hear the music.

Izzy was having a hard time that day. He kept getting really angry with Eli. But he and I were the members of the family the most interested in the music. He told me that the singer was very good.

One of the many hikes that started out with a lot of complaining and ended up with happy tired children. This one is in the hills above Santa Fe.

Izzy quietly reading to Hannah on the floor in Texas.

Hannah found a stage for her dramatic presence while waiting in the rain for our table to be ready. The kids have gotten really good at waiting for a table at restaurants.

Everywhere we go our friends and family are doing interesting things the kids get to learn about. This is Mary on her donkey Brownie.

Many of the places we go Eli introduces himself to children around us and strikes up friendships.

Here he is making friends with some kids who just moved to Texas from Louisiana.

There's been a lot of waiting, and a lot of telling the kids to behave and be quiet. This was a precious moment when they all followed that instruction. Waiting in the rain for the trailer to get hitched onto the minivan so that we can get ready to drive to New Orleans.

Some days we took too long to get to dinner.

Even the silly displays in hotels are interesting when they have guns or authentic costumes. This was a Civil War canon in the lobby of a Hilton just north of Atlanta. The kids have learned a lot about history in the last month.

Swimming pools have been one of the greatest treats of our road trip. The kids love to get to a place and find there is a pool. Hannah is already starting to swim as a result of all the practice.

No matter where we go Hannah likes to charm the people around her. Those feet belong to a guy who was sitting next to us in a coffee house. She went right up to him and started to ask him about his work. We are starting to work on boundaries a bit more.

It's a good thing the boys like each other so much. They have spent so much time together lately they sometimes forget anyone else is there. The imagination game is in constant full swing. Here I believe they were developing plans for piracy.

The best stuff is not always the stuff we expect. It's been amazing to look at the country with children as our companions. Everything looks different when you have to take them into consideration.

The boys got to talk on the phone with their friends during this meal. They were in high spirits. It's been a long haul and they have had to spend most of the time with just their family. These kids are social and not used to being trapped with just us. An interesting side effect to the road trip is that they are mostly in the adult world much of the time.

Hannah gets pretty tired during our adventures, and we have had some struggles with tantrums, but when it really counts she's a hardy little girl and a real sport about it all.

Another Important Civil Rights Site

On our second full day in Atlanta Marisa took us to see the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. This is an impressive experience. Genuinely one of the most important sites to see in Atlanta.

The site is actually several blocks of buildings that include the museum but also MLK's church, his tomb and the house where he was born. Upon entering the entry walkway to the museum we were greeted with several long rows of squares with various civil rights figures names written on them. Among these names was Medgar Evers, which tide the beginnings of our families exploration of the civil rights sites together.

The museum section of the Historic Site is filled with interactive and multimedia displays.

The Room Where the Assassination Pictures Are Hung, and the Cart His Body Was Carried In For the Funeral

The Statue In the Center of the Museum Depicting People Marching for Freedom

SNCC Is One of the Organization Names Listed in the Statue Commemorating the Civil Rights Journey

I found myself tearing up or struck silent with intensity in almost every section. Other people were openly sobbing in the room displaying his assassination, or tense with rage watching video coverage of the various atrocities and histories of racism.

A Description of the Children's March in Birmingham Honored in Kelly Ingram Park

The church that had been party of MLK's family history was just across the street from the museum. It had been fully restored and was an interesting type of historical experience. I found it ironic that we were sitting in a church on Sunday, but that we were there to site see.

The Church Has Sermons and Speeches From MLK's Collection

Sitting Quietly In a Museum Church Is Just As Hard As Sitting Quietly In a Regular Church

The place where King and his wife Coretta are buried is a little bit weird.

It is the obvious location for their tomb, but the fountain that surrounds them is a strange design, somewhat too monumental and austere surrounded by so many other more intimate and personal monuments to his life.

The House Where Martin Luther King Jr. Was Born

We couldn't help ourselves we had to buy books and a CD of his speeches, and we also got t-shirts for the kids. We hadn't been compulsively shopping most of this road trip. It is hard to be sure whether it was because the information was so compelling we wished to bring a bit of it with us, or whether the shopping experience was a balm to normalize and calm us after so much intensity.

After the museum Marisa took us to a wonderful restaurant called Highland Bakery. The food was excellent nouveau-southern and our waitperson was so nice to the kids they didn't want to leave. Hannah. A good thing as we were all pretty wiped out when we arrived.

Tired Girl and Emotional Dada

Burial Mounds Are Kinda Like Pyramids But Smaller

Our drive from Savannah to Atlanta was going to be too long without some sort of stop in the middle. Elijah researched the route and discovered a cool national park called Ocmulgee National Monument just within the city limits of Macon, Georgia. It was the site of an ancient community of Mississippian peoples. They had built burial mounds and a ceremonial meeting room. Archeologists had discovered the floor of the room. It was 1000 years old. They rebuilt the structure above the floor as they thought it might have been constructed.

The One Image Was a Dais Shaped Like An Eagle In the Floor

The Floor Was Preserved Behind Glass In A Special Reconstructed Room

The Only Artifact They Had Found With the Floor Was This Pot. The Floor Was Almost Perfectly Circular and Had 47 Seats In Strict Hierarchy Around the Edge of the Room.

The National Park includes a nice easy walk to the ceremonial earth structure.

The Bridge That Goes Over the Railroad Tracks Looks Like It Might Have Been Part of the Same WPA Project That Created the Visitors Center

The Burial Mound In the Distance

We Could Climb Up To the Top of the Mound

A slightly longer trail to the burial mounds, and a really nice little museum at the visitors center.

Watching a Video About How to Make Arrowheads Out of Flint

Hannah Trying Out a Model of the Ceremonial Seating

Hannah and Izzy Looking At a Miniature of the Ceremonial Room We Had Already Seen

On the way too the burial mounds we ran in to a woman who was documenting nature for the facebook page of the park. She took the kids pictures with this box turtle.

It's on facebook if you want to see it:

Kids With a Turtle

On the way back from the burial mounds I insisted we go a different route. It turned out to be much longer than the original path. The kids got a little irritated with me.

When the Kids Realized the Way Back Was Going to Take Much Longer

Hannah Was Barefoot Because We Discovered On the Hike That Her Shoes Were Giving Her Blisters

"Can I Have Some of Your Purple Berries"

It Was A Very Hot Day