Vacations

Since I wrote about our trip to Monticello I have been thinking about other vacations I've taken both with my parents and with my husband and kids.

I think my favorite vacation spot ever is Jekyll Island Georgia. It's a small island just about an hour north of Jacksonville FL and was originally a private hunting club for the extremely wealthy of our country (Rockefeller's, JP Morgan etc..) they built "cottages" and a Jekyll Island club on the island and today the club has been renovated and is run as a hotel. I've never stayed at the hotel we usually stay at one of the cheaper chain hotels on the other side of the island. The whole island is owned by the Jekyll Island something or other and so if you have a house on the island you own the house, the land it sits on is on a 99 year lease. There's no fast food restaurants, there is a Denny's and a pizza place in 2 of the hotels. There's a small water park on the island and one or two golf courses. It's the perfect place to go if you just want peace and quiet and and ocean view.

My second favorite place is Charleston South Carolina. I can not say enough about this city, it's history or the places of interested around Charleston that are so neat. One place we went to was Boone Hall which was Mount Royal in the old mini series North and South. Loved, Loved Loved that vacation! Especially walking at night with my mom and looking in the windows of some of the houses along the battery. When you're in Charleston you can also swing down to Savannah Georgia.

Washington D.C. is very interesting and there can't be a whole lot of other cities with so much to do. Of course I went in a VERY different time! There was high security then, I can only imagine what it is like now. We visited the FBI, Ford Theater, US Treasury or mint (same thing?) any way we saw money being made. The capitol building where we saw Barry Goldwater (that's how long ago it was). The Smithsonian air and space museum and the natural history museum along with at least one more but I can't think what that one was! I just know I saw Dorothy's shoes from the wizard of Oz and Archie Bunker's chair. I don't think those would be in the natural history museum but I may be wrong. We visited the national zoo and saw the pandas which were a new thing then.

On our way to Washington we stopped at Gettysburg, snore..... I know it's changed a lot since we went and is way more touristy but it was seriously like visiting a cemetery and an open field. I mean that's exactly what it was. An open field with a marker stating what that battlefield was called. Not too thrilling for a child. We did go to the Cabbage Patch museum (again showing how long ago that was!) and saw an Abe Lincoln impersonator that was great.

Outside of Gettysburg we toured Eisenhower's home, that's one of a couple president's homes I've visited. I've also been to Washington's Mount Vernon, Jefferson and Monroe's of course in Charlottesville. McKinley's (duh he's from Ohio) and Jimmy Carter's home town of Plains Georgia where I met his brother Billy and saw the house that Jimmy and Rosalin still live in which is very practical, nothing fancy, just an average ranch style home anyone might have.

I'm pulling for a weekend trip to Kentucky or Illinois to visit Lincoln sites. It's all so close I don't know why we haven't gone already!

My mom and I visited Edison's home in Ft. Myers Florida once and that was neat because Thomas Edison was actually born in Milan Ohio and I've visited his birthplace. When you hear all the things he invented it really blows your mind. He invented wax paper !

One thing that was kind of neat about our trip to Charlottesville is there's so much about Lewis and Clark there also and while visiting my father in law in Washington state we drove out to the coast and followed their route some what and visited a museum about them.

I must say, if you're used to the Atlantic beaches of Virginia, the Carolina's, Georgia on down to Florida, a trip to the coast of Washington state is a bit of a shock. The water was so cold and even though 50 miles away at my in laws it was in the 80's it was not over 50 at the beach! I didn't enjoy it! At least not in the same way I enjoy the south east coast.

A favorite place of Bill's is Pigeon Forge Tennessee. I love it too. We get a cabin, I don't know if I'd like it if I had to stay down on the main road. When I first went to Pigeon Forge it was in the 80's I think and there was a tiny little two lane road and maybe a couple tourist stores. Now there is a 6 or 8 lane road that runs past all the mess it's become. Outlet malls, arcades, go cart tracks, water parks, Dixie Stampede and on and on. We sometimes start out in North Carolina and go through Asheville (a beyond lovely city) and into Cherokee, the Indian reservation, across the Smoky mountains into Gatlinburg (very touristy also) then into Pigeon Forge. If you've never been there, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville almost run right together. I was actually married in Sevierville. Right across the street from the court house and the Dolly Parton statue! I love the mountains! We visited Cade's Cove one year and that was neat. If you like to hike the Smokey Mountains have lots of trails. I can't get Bill out of the car, but I'm sure they're all nice. (He was raised in the mountains and could care less about hiking).

Well, I better leave this now. I may think of other places I'd like to talk about but that's it for now.