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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Leonard (Grizzwald) Family Vacation

Let me catch you up on our adventure. Our first stop out of Montgomery was the Ave Maria Grotto. We were planning on seeing the World’s Largest Chair until we realized it was 100 miles out of the way. We then decided to stop at the Grotto. We wish that we would have been able to take Dave’s parents while they were here. It is something that Dave’s mom has really wanted to see for many years. Here are a few pics. It reminds me a lot of Peterson’s Rock Garden in Redmond. Dave at the Chipmunk Crossing.
The Tower of Babel.

I almost forgot about Shiloh. I know it is a Civil War site that Dave has wanted to stop at for several years. We couldn’t leave the South without stopping in there. The chapel was one of the highlights and Dave has posted pictures of that below. We have stamped more cancellations in our National Park Passport too.

Our next stop was Memphis. The first night we walked Beale Street. McKenzie and Miranda joined in on the dancing. We ate at Pig’s BBQ and watched the “Elvis” singer. Pig’s was the only place that was child friendly.
We then headed back to the hotel to crash. Next stop…Graceland. On our way to the mansion, I plugged in the address and we were directed to a warehouse. We all have nicknamed the GPS: Dave’s is “Dr.” (Divorce Remedy) McKenzie has named it “Lu Lu.” I like “Lu Loser.” Miranda calls it “Dumb Dumb.” This trip is a whole lot less stressful than the last time. Dave and I have never done well together navigating. I LOVE having the GPS. It relieves the accusations of insufficient navigation skills (that’s me.) We are all wearing a little thin on patience among ourselves. As seen in the past, it gets better as the trip goes on. It is a great family bonding time. We took the Graceland mansion tour. One of my favorite stops was the gift shop. It cracked me up. It was fun to say that we have seen Elvis’ house, but I don’t really get too excited about seeing “famous” people’s stuff. As my 7th grade teacher always told us, “We all put our pants on one leg at a time.” We then headed to St. Louis. We made it to the Arch and I was thankful that McKenzie got a new camera for the trip. She has quite the eye for photography. These photos were from her. After riding up to the top of the 660 foot arch (taller than the Space Needle, Statue of Liberty, or the Washington Monument) Miranda pointed out the shadow and Dave took this. We watched the film on how the Arch was built and brought us back to the memories of grade school films. It was funny. We also toured the Westward Expansion museum located below the arch. We aren’t quite following the same route, but we will end up in the same spot as Lewis & Clark. It is kind of fun. McKenzie was intrigued with the covered wagon and wanted to know more about my fourth grade wagon train field trip. (I was one of those kids that would have died on the trip) But fun to remember anyway. I wish we were able to give my girls the same experience. Thanks Mrs. Condron for the experience. We don’t have and exciting stops planned today. We’ll see how it goes. Just driving and meeting up with new friends. The highlight so far is McDonald’s for lunch. We have been picnic-ing each lunch and they were delighted with Happy Meals and Kung Fu Panda toys. More to come…..Mt. Rushmore soon! Here we are with our new Holt friends. We were able to meet D&S and little M. He was so charming...not so excited about new friends/strangers, but cute none the less.


1 comments:

asian~treasures said...

We had such a fun time last night!! Thanks so much. : )
Of course, today, all Micah can talk about is playing his "drum" with chopsticks at the table last night. And, he wanted to know if he could see "those big girls" again.
Did you get to shuck some corn??

Sheri, David, Micah & Adria--in VietNam (Holt)