Category: life events

As I mentioned before, the trip came together around a few things, so once we decided we were going to spend some time in Philadelphia, we also thought we could tack on a few college visits. Since colleges generally don’t run tours on the weekend, we had to schedule the tours for a weekday, and Friday was the most logical option. After that, it was a matter of choosing some colleges that were a). relatively close to one another; and b). had tour schedules that weren’t overlapping.

Brooke and I have been brainstorming some small, liberal arts schools for Meg to at least consider (we’re biased, I know…), and there are a few in that area. I had a friend from high school who went to Haverford College, so once I started looking into it, I found that Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr College are part of what they call the Tri-College Consortium, which allows students from each of those schools to participate in activities and take classes at the other schools. We ended up scheduling tours at Bryn Mawr College and University of Pennsylvania, giving Meg a “small, liberal arts school” to see, and an “elite Ivy University in the city” to compare to one another.

Unfortunately, wildfires in Canada were also happening and the air quality was rather hazardous. That meant that no one really wanted to be outside, so they didn’t opt to run the tours at Bryn Mawr or Penn that day. We still sat for a virtual tour with some other students at Bryn Mawr and got a feeling for the place, but then we rushed to Penn so we could get to that tour in time…even though that one was also canceled. Instead, they didn’t bother with the virtual tour but had their tour guides form a Q&A panel where they could address things.

I don’t know that Meg made any firm decisions based on so little information, but we’re still pretty early in the college search. I think she got a few of her questions answered and at least got a “feel” for those two places, so if she decides she wants to re-visit one, we can always make that happen (probably a plane flight next time, though…)

The next day was a Saturday, but we were going to see all the Philadelphia things and be tourists! Brooke scheduled two tours: one of Independence Hall for the afternoon, but another one for the morning at Reading Terminal Market. That tour started mid-morning, so we stopped at the Philadelphia Mint first (no pictures allowed). There wasn’t much to see, honestly, as it was a Saturday, so none of the equipment was working. It was cool to see some coins and how they’re generally made. They had some brand new quarters there that were minted for the 250th anniversary of the US, so we got some of those!

The Reading Terminal Market thing was really cool, though! It reminded me of the Soulard Farmer’s Market in St. Louis, but this one is mostly food vendors. We went because Brooke got some coupon as a part of using Airbnb so much that included a guided tour of the vendors. We probably would have been overwhelmed just walking through it, but our tour guide walked us around, provided some history for the space, and gave us her opinions on most of the food options. Calvin and I shared a Philly Cheesesteak from Uncle Gus’, and on the guide’s recommendation, Brooke got a roast pork sandwich from Tommy DiNic’s – both were excellent! Meg got a baked potato, because she’s boring….(she said it was good, though).

So yeah, Reading Terminal Market was a nice surprise! Very busy on a Saturday, but definitely worth checking out if you’re in the area! From there, we stopped in Elfreth’s Alley on the way back toward Independence Hall for our tour. Elfreth’s Alley is a cobblestone road between houses built as early as the 1720s, and people still live in them! We took a quick tour of one of them (like, $9 for all four of us) and, yep, it was an old house. High ceilings, wood floors, fireplaces in rooms for heating, no modern kitchen or running water. Most of the houses along Elfreth’s Alley are modernized because, again, people still live in them, but the one we walked through was mostly kept as it was in the 1700s/1800s.

The tour for Independence Hall was run by the National Park Service, and Brooke and I are always fans of those: inexpensive and informative. A lot of the furniture in Independence Hall is era appropriate, meaning it wasn’t actually there during the signing of the Declaration or the Constitution, but that chair in the background behind Meg and Calvin was the one George Washington sat in, so that was cool!

At multiple points during the trip, though especially once we started talking about Independence Hall, it started becoming painfully obvious that the kids really hadn’t learned all that much about the American Revolution in school. Not to say they didn’t know anything, but the timeline, which documents were signed where, why the Bill of Rights exists… I was hoping they would have a bit more grounding in those areas, but alas, they still had questions (usually good ones! …just surprising, at times…).

After Independence Hall, we went and saw the Liberty Bell, as it’s displayed in a separate building just outside. I’m glad we saw it, but Brooke and the kids questioned the point of its existence. I learned that the crack in the bell was actually the result of a repair to the bell – there’s a separate crack coming off of the iconic one, though, that caused the bell to not be used anymore.

The Liberty Bell didn’t take all that long, but there was rain coming in, so we went back to our Airbnb for the night. The one in Philly was in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood, but we didn’t have any issues. We were staying relatively close to where the World Cup Fan Fest was occurring, so there was a lot of traffic and loud cars going just about all night. Still, it was nice to have a kitchen, separate beds, and more space to spread out. Unfortunately, this was really the only spot where we had laundry service available, aside from the errant hotel laundry options, so we caught up on some of that, too.

The next day, we headed toward…Delaware! When we reorganized the dates a bit to fit in college visits, it shifted things between the Airbnb in Philly and the one in D.C., so we had another day in between. I don’t remember how it came up, though I imagine Brooke was probably talking to the kids and threw out: “Hey, maybe we should go to Delaware,” and they cheered with “YEAHs!”

So, the decision was made to go to Rehoboth Beach, DE. It actually gave us the opportunity to drive through New Jersey on the way, adding another state to the visit. We really just drove through, but ended up traveling through some seaside towns on our way south, along the coast. There were some nice beachside towns along the way, but it seemed pretty clear that these were second/third homes for New Yorkers, etc. where their kids were down for the summer while the parents still worked in the city. A lot of expensive cars and nice condos and houses all over the place. We got out and walked to one of the beaches on our way down, but didn’t stay all that long.

Brooke found a ferry that features a 40 minute ride across a bay between Jersey and Delaware. It also had limited meal service, so we could have lunch while we enjoyed the ride. We hadn’t done one of these since our last Madeline Island trip, so it was a neat return to something from one of our earliest vacations with the kids.

After the ferry ride, the drive to Rehoboth Beach wasn’t all that long. We were there by mid-afternoon, arriving before we could check in to our hotel. We asked if we could park the car there even though we weren’t technically checked in yet (they graciously said “yes”) and we walked about a mile down toward the beach. Rehoboth has a boardwalk, shops, restaurants, and some arcades (we played a lot of Skee-Ball).

After we got something to eat at Dogfish Head Brewery (not their main brewing location in Delaware, but a nice secondary restaurant space about half a mile from our hotel), Brooke, Calvin, and I went to a beachfront state park a few miles away so Calvin could swim a bit. Meg had just started an online class, so she needed some time to get some homework done when she wasn’t riding in a car. The water was chilly, but pretty clear. No seaweed or jellyfish or anything like that along the beaches we saw. There were some seashells, but mostly fragments. It also wasn’t terribly crowded, though Rehoboth Beach itself definitely featured a lot more people. Still, the thing I detest about Florida beaches I’ve been to in recent years (e.g. Destin) is how the beaches feel fragmented by the condos and hotels that are there, with their own chairs and umbrellas you have to pay extra for. I’m sure that exists in Jersey and Delaware, but we didn’t see that here. It was a traditional “first come, first serve” beach space, which I appreciate.

The next morning, we got up relatively early (we were really running on Central Time this whole trip, so everyone woke up in the 6:00-7:00 Eastern Time frame most days), went back to the boardwalk to check out the morning vibes (a lot of cyclists and joggers) and have breakfast before driving to D.C. Rehoboth was a good time, though it’s a hike to get there, so I can’t imagine we’ll go back any time soon.

This trip was a long time coming! Early on, we knew we wanted to take the kids to Washington, D.C., but we knew we’d have to wait awhile, until they were old enough to have some sense of the history of the area, an understanding of what’s in the Smithsonian Museum (and the ability to read…), and a willingness to walk (a lot!). Meg had Missouri Scholars Academy for three weeks in June, so we signed up Calvin for his “sleep away” camp at YMCA Camp Wakonda around that same time, leaving July open for a driving vacation out east!

As this trip evolved, we tacked on a few other things. Calvin had been asking to go to Hershey, PA ever since he found out that Hershey was a real place (with a theme park). We also added Philadelphia, PA to the trip, since none of us had ever been there. While we were in Philly, we also stopped by a few colleges that Meg may consider (more on that later). So yeah, we saw a lot of stuff in 11 days!

On the way out, Brooke had heard from a co-worker about Casey, IL, a small town whose claim to fame was a collection of some of the “World’s Largest ______________” things. For example, here’s a giant chair (with Calvin next to it, off to the left, for scale). We also saw windchimes, a mailbox (below), a golf tee (at the country club, naturally), bird cage, see saw, and pencil. It was a relatively short detour off our course, but we like to add in those bits of Americana into our road trips where possible.

We stayed in a hotel that night (one of many…) in Ohio and got up the next morning to head into Pennsylvania. We weren’t originally thinking about it, but as we drew closer to looking at the route, we realized we could stop at the Flight 93 National Memorial while we were making the trip in. The kids knew about 9/11, but mostly the Twin Towers portion of the story: not the Pentagon or Flight 93. It allowed us to talk about it a bit, and it was also an opportunity to cover what Brooke and I were doing as everything unfolded 25 years ago.

Honestly, it was a pretty somber visit. There isn’t much to see, and their museum is mostly covering the entire 9/11 story, not just the Flight 93 portion of it. There were some artifacts, but a lot of it was news broadcasts, pictures of the passengers, and a timeline of the events on that day. We’re glad we stopped in, as we probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go otherwise.

It did end up adding a few hours to our travel time than we were initially planning for, though. The Memorial isn’t exactly “right off the highway,” so navigating to Hershey from there took longer than we planned, but it ended up working alright. We had tickets for the next day, but like other theme parks, after 7:00 pm the day before you have tickets, you can go ahead into the park and check things out for a few hours.

There are actually two “Hershey” things to do at the park: one is Hershey Chocolate World, which is free (mostly) and is basically a big candy store. The ride above was the only thing we did in Chocolate World, aside from looking around at candy, t-shirts, and having a light dinner. After that, we had to drive the car from the free parking lot around to the paid one to actually enter Hersheypark Amusement Park. As it was relatively late, and we’d been driving all day, we got our bearings and rode Comet (an old-ish roller coaster), the Tea Cups, and Brooke and Calvin went up Hershey Triple Tower (there are three towers, gradually increasing in height – you are shot up the tower, you get dropped, you go back up…you get it…).

Hersheypark feels very compact, like they had limited space to fit in all the roller coasters, so they’re kinda weaving in and out of one another. There is a water park associated with it, too, but that’s more at the back of the park (think of it more like a rectangle than a square, so you park in the lot, and you have to walk through a lot of park to get to the water section).

It was very hot, so that ended up affecting some rides. We waited in line for Coal Cracker (log flume) and got pretty far, only to have it shut down while we were in line, so that was disappointing. Great Bear (kinda like Batman: The Ride at Six Flags St. Louis) was pretty good, but we were delayed as we were ready to load onto the coaster by someone who threw up on the seats, so we had to wait for their cleaning protocol to be carried out.

I think the ride we all liked the most was Candymonium (pretty smooth, relatively new, coaster), but that was the first thing we rode that Thursday morning, so in some ways it was down hill from there. Brooke, Meg, and Calvin did Skyrush (I looked at how high it was going to go and said “nuh uh”), and Meg wished she had taken my lead. She said it jostled them around and forced their heads down. We also rode Trailblazer and soopersdooperLooper, and both were “fine” (the latter only had one loop, so it was mostly intended for younger kids, we think).

Jolly Rancher Remix was the last thing we rode, and it ended up being a solid bookend to Candymonium that morning. Jolly Rancher is also pretty new, so it is smooth, but what it does is backs you up on the coaster, then drops you down the hill, through 4 or 5 loops, then you go up the other side….only to be dropped down backwards through what you just went through. I normally don’t like those, but this one was pretty fun!

One nice thing is that they let you leave the park and re-enter. They have workers taking pictures with a cell phone (essentially…), so when you return, they compare using facial recognition to allow you back in. We had some lunch stuff in the car, so we went out and found a shady spot. It was also nice to just sit for awhile before going back in.

Ultimately, Calvin had a good time at Hersheypark. Was it as good as Disneyland? Uhhhh, no. But probably nothing is. The experience was marred by some delays and broken down equipment, so that wasn’t great. We paid $27 for a refillable soda cup that we could all share, but more than a few self-serve stations weren’t working, making us question whether the cup was worth it in the end. We didn’t pay for the “Fast Pass” they were offering, but it seemed like most other folks weren’t, either.

Would we go back?? Yeah, I think so! One day was enough, though. Disneyland benefited by having 3 days in the parks to walk around. There are a few rides we would have gone on again, but the heat and lines had us focus on the rides we hadn’t gone on yet. After awhile, I think we were all pretty over it, so we stopped in to Hershey Chocolate World, filled up on some candy bars, and headed out toward Philly!

….but that’s a story for another post. 🙂

For our last day in Utah, we visited the famed Four Corners site, where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado all meet. Brooke had been there before, so she kinda knew what to expect. It was a nice facility, with different vendors in booths a la a farmer’s market selling things ranging from shirts and magnets to hand-made jewelry, knives, and arrows.

There wasn’t much of a line, thankfully, so we got our obligatory pictures, did a little shopping, and then got a snack before heading out.

We knew we wanted to do something else that Thursday afternoon, and my vote was more hiking (since we really hadn’t done much….). The downside is that it was 108 F outside (the car said 113 F….eeeeeesh….), so we wanted to limit the mileage a bit.

We searched around for trails and came across one that was about a mile out toward a cave. We had to go off-roading a bit to get to this site, so that provided a little adventure, but at least it wasn’t the hours of “off the beaten path” we did a few days prior.

You can see the cave off in the distance, and we thought, “hey, that doesn’t look too far!” Turns out it would be harder than we thought!

We parked near the main road, unsure of what our options would be further down, so we left the car and walked down a road until it hit the trail. It started out fine, but it was pretty sandy and there wasn’t much shade, unfortunately. There were bits, but there were long stretches of none, which was pretty draining.

We did see some outcroppings with what looked as if they used to be dwellings, but they weren’t preserved, so there wasn’t a lot to see. Given the heat, and the fact there weren’t really trails heading toward spots like this, we mostly looked and then kept going.

By the time we got to our destination, we saw a relatively steep slick rock face heading up to the cave entrance, and given our potential for heat exhaustion, Brooke and Meg hung back to have some water in a shady spot while I proceeded to get a better look. This image is with the telephoto, so I didn’t get nearly this close, but it was enough to see that it looked pretty cool! There was a lot of vegetation between the slick rock and the cave, though….and it was very hot….so I took a few pictures and went back down. Calvin came part of the way up the hill with me, but by then, we were getting a bit concerned about his condition.

Brooke and Meg walked back and I hung out with Calvin in the shade a bit. He looked like he was overheating, so he cooled off a bit, drank some water, and when he was ready, we kept going. He was taking it a bit slower, but I don’t think it was anything really serious. It was hot and he’s small: simple as that.

That night, we had dinner and stayed up late to watch the sunset outside of town. We were hoping to see the Milky Way, but we probably would have had to wait a lot longer and none of us were really in the mood to stay up. It was nice to experience the stars away from pesky lights in town, though, and it was cool to be in the middle of literally nowhere!

After that, it was time to head home on Friday! We went through southern Colorado this time, so it was a different route through the Rockies. We stopped for lunch up in the mountains (Brooke made sandwiches) next to a river, which is always a lovely experience. We stopped in Garden City, KS for dinner that night at a nice Mexican restaurant, and then drove another hour-ish to Dodge City, KS for the night. Similar to our trip out west in the first place, we put in a lot of hours on that Friday so that we would get home at a reasonable time on Saturday afternoon.

In the end, we drove 3151 miles on this trip, which was a little over half what we did when we drove the Pacific Coast Highway.

We’re in an interesting “spot,” so far as our next vacation goes. Brooke and I have our 20th wedding anniversary next year, so we’ll do a trip by ourselves, but we will still need to do something with the kids (….I mean…I guess we need to??), so it may be “expensive trip” for the two of us and “shorter/cheaper trip” for the four of us. We’ll see!

We had reservations for Mesa Verde National Park on Tuesday of our vacation, so this was kinda the one day we really had “locked in” so far as flexibility with everything else went. Brooke had been there before, but it had been many years. She knew generally what to expect, and she’d been on the main tour, Cliff Palace, previously. She really wanted to go to Square Tower house, as that was the most “exclusive,” difficult to attend, tour. The only way to do it was to secure reservations up to 2 weeks in advance, with 10 slots opening at 9:00 am CDT. Two weeks ahead, I sit at my computer, refresh the page at exactly 9:00 am, and within, no joke, 20 seconds, all 10 reservations were taken. Ug. The next day, I tried again, but this time, I actually got to the CAPTCHA verification. It put me through three rounds of verification (motorcycle, bus, crosswalk….)….and then it still didn’t give me any tickets…. Ug ug.

After that, we gave up and went with Balcony House, which wasn’t the main tour everyone does, but it wasn’t the most exclusive one, either. Alas, it would be fine.

Regardless, we made the drive from Blanding to Mesa Verde (an hour and a half-ish), taking a somewhat scenic route through reservation lands, before hitting their impressive-looking visitor center. We didn’t stay long, as we wanted lunch and we were going to do a driving tour of the area.

I should also note that the drive from the visitor center to where the towers are was kinda long? We had to drive up to the top of Mesa Verde, which wasn’t a trivial drive, taking another 30-45 minutes to complete. It was really pretty, though, and surprisingly lush up there (hence where the “verde” name comes in).

One of the neat things about the site is that there are kivas all over the place, but along the driving tour, they were laid out chronologically, so we got to see an older version of one, then a newer one, then a much more ornate one, giving us a sense of how they evolved over generations. The National Park Service also has them covered to protect them from the elements, while also providing shade for tourists like us.

Here’s the view of Cliff Palace from across the canyon, complete with a tour group checking things out. They are truly remarkable structures to see up close, let alone in the distance. One wonders how the residents of these structures got down and up all the time, as the would be farming on the top of the mesa, then returning down to the dwellings in the rock face.

The Balcony House tour took off from a parking lot above the dwelling and, while it wasn’t a strenuous trip down, it wasn’t necessarily simple, either. It took about 10 minutes to get down there, down a paved path, first, then down some metal stairs to a walkway that went alongside the mesa.

The tour guide said he has had people “freak out” due to heights while being down there, so he told everyone that it’s probably not a good idea to go if you think you’re going to run into issues. He said someone had to be airlifted out because they couldn’t be carried from the site below.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of heights, personally, but I thought this was fine. It was far from the edge and there were plenty of railings. Not a big deal. However, there was a spot later on where, if I were much bigger than I am, I would have struggled to get through.

We climbed a ladder to get up to the cliff dwelling, two-by-two, which again is something some folks have problems with. Not a big deal for any of us, though. Kinda neat to get to a tourist site, though!

Once we were up there (also, after kids and adults asked way too many questions, like, right before climbing the ladder! Seriously, hold up with the questions until we’re up there!), the tour guide started pointing out the various structures and some key aspects of the architecture. For example, wooden beams made differently than one another, suggesting that one structure was built first, and then they made changes before the next one. Another kid noticed that each room was labeled a bit differently. The tour guide noted that archaeologists label sites they have investigated in different ways, so it was probably one person “numbering” rooms, and another person came through and “lettered” them, instead. There were multiple architectural anecdotes like that as we continued on.

And at the end, we still see another enormous kiva, deep into the rock. How they dug into the rock face this far is unclear, though it was probably chipping away at rocks for years. This kiva was relatively deep, and it would have had a thatched roof for people to walk across on top. Couldn’t really beat the view from up there, either!

The return trip to leave went through a small tunnel. The tunnel was 18 in wide by 27 in tall, so yeah: small. And it was about 12 ft long. I had my backpack on, so it would have been easier on me if I didn’t… The kids and Brooke didn’t have any issues, but I suspect folks like my father-in-law wouldn’t be all that comfortable trying to climb through.

After that, we headed back to Blanding! Mesa Verde was pretty cool! In some ways, it was kind of like Shenandoah National Park, which we visited last year, where a lot of the trip was driving to and from the park, and driving within the park. Unlike Shenandoah, though, we got to take much longer breaks to see things like Balcony House, or the other kivas along the driving tour.

The following day was spent in Blanding, doing nothing! We had spent a lot of time driving and sightseeing, so we built in a day midweek where nothing was really planned. We watched some “Psych,” we played some cards, we read books – it was a good time to get some relaxing in before our last day before heading home!