Day Ten: Cannonball Run Across Florida

Yesterday was Day Ten of the Epic Road Trip. It started with yours truly awakening an a bed all by herself for the first time in ten days, in a room looking directly out onto the ocean. I felt as though I had woken up in the middle of an Oprah Book Club book, in which an extremely well-to-do woman takes the radical step of moving into her luxurious beachside home for a year in order to achieve self-actualization and pen her inspirational memoirs. I mean this in a good way. We spent the morning with the fabulous Lauren and her adorable son on Crescent Beach, my kids boogie-boarding and Beck doing toddler-type things in the tidepools. You can see from the photos above that the beach was stunning and practically deserted, like an eerie paradisical dream sequence. However, there were many awesome animal encounters to be had. One large hermit crab, a school of small fish being pursued by a large fish in a tidepool, a gopher tortoise who had strayed from his neighborhood (pictured above) and many subterranean clams.

A few words on the subject of Beckett: not only is he adorable, as you might expect a two-year-old would be, cuteness being a standard factory-installed feature of toddlers, but he is also the successful result of a controlled experiment in which a child is shown to thrive when every bite of food that crosses his lips and every cultural product that enters his brain is of high quality and unimpeachable wholesomeness. I will never forget seeing him, on an earlier visit, scarfing down pieces of raw red pepper as if they were candy. Lauren and her husband Clay have WAY better willpower than I have in resisting the urge to give their kid a Snickers bar or let them watch Ren and Stimpy just to blow his freakin' mind. The result of this is, of course, a kid who does nothing but pester you for candy and cartoons. Like mine. Beck inhabits a Shangri-La in which these things simply do not exist, and he - and the world, probably, when he grows up to cure cancer or suchlike - is the better for it. It makes me feel a bit, by comparison, to those parents you see in the aisles of Walmart smacking their kids and letting them drink Hawaiian Punch. (Angry cease and desist emails from both of these companies will no doubt be winging their way to me shortly)
After our beachside idyll, we drove across the state of Florida as fast as we can. The boys did not notice us driving right past Disneyworld, absorbed as they were in the Nintendo DS (see what I mean about my parenting?). We stopped in Sarasota to buy what I suspect was the only issue of the Sunday NYT in the entire Gulf Coast region (they kept it behind the counter at Borders, like pornography), and made it to my mom's at about dinnertime. Above you see a picture of Ike in grandma's pool, the real "Happiest Place In The World." Cousin Eileen is here visiting as well, so the boys have some welcome older-kid company. We'll be seeing Beck and his kick-ass parents again on the swing back Northwards through Florida.

ps if these pictures seem depopulated, it's because (a) the beach was quite empty, and (b) I'm trying not to plaster pictures of my many gracious hosts all over the internet unless they expressly request it without my even asking.

Day Nine Redux: Ye Olde St Augustine

I didn't update this blog yesterday because I was having such a splendid time visiting and catching up with Lauren The Estimable Novelist and Her Adorable Brobdignagian Toddler, Beck that I did not have time. So here is the belated update. We stayed in a beach house owned by Lauren's in-laws, who kindly let us crash there for one night. The house has a name - Solstice - which means either (1) that Lauren's in-laws are tree-worshipping pagans, or (2) maybe it's a reference to some sort of astrological phenomenon that has to do with the longest day of the year, which takes place in the summer, and - yeah, it's probably (2). It was GORGEOUS. House on stilts, vast expanses of glass overlooking a picturesque beach that made Myrtle Beach look like the ugly stepsister of beaches. The sand was like talcum powder. A sweet wooden walkway led from the house over the dunes - DUNES! - to the shore. We took the boys down to the water, which they promptly jumpt into in their clothing.

Afterwards, we rode in Lauren's car into St. Augustine, the oldest continuously-inhabited city in These United States. There was clearly a surfeit of historical interest, which on a geekier and less child-encumbered road trip I would have eaten up like so much educational soft-serve ice cream. The boys were less interested, although you seen them above posing for a rare family photo in front of Ye Olde Wooden Schoolhouse. St Augustine was touristy, but in a somewhat classier way than Myrtle Beach. An analogy: Myrtle Beach:tattoo parlors as St. Augustine: Thomas Kinkade galleries. We ate at a restaurant that had the word "Cracker" in its name. Ike ordered gator tail, which he is pretending to relish above but was in fact too spicy for him. I ate most of it (yum. gator tail). Subsequently, Lauren's son and mine had a race to see who could melt down first.

The big success of our evening was Oscar and Ike's purchase of the badass-looking shark-tooth necklaces they are modeling above along with their best intense tough-customer expressions. They would like to never, ever remove these necklaces again. I can think of no good reason not to grant this wish.

Day Nine: Driving, Not Blogging

Yesterday we drove seven + hours from Myrtle Beach to Crescent Beach, FL. The boys Nintendoed almost the entire way. I was up late visiting and chatting with my friend Lauren, in whose in-laws' beach house we crashed for the night, so no time to indulge in cyber-navel-gazing last night. I have many photos and will update soon, but in the meantime my many, many readers (including, apparently, one in China!) will have to content themselves with this photo of Ike, staring meaningfully at you with his limpid gray eyes and looking into the depths of your soul(s).

Day Eight: The Warmth of the Sun, b/w Stormy Weather

Today was a solid day at the beach from start to finish. I built this day into the itinerary with the intention of (a) breaking up the long drive from DC to Florida, and (b) seeing a bit of the Atlantic coast. My original plan was to stop at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, but when I crunched the numbers, it turned out that South Carolina was closer to the midway point. I chose our hotel out of a Frommer's, Myrtle Beach because one has heard of it (I think it was one of those places Bugs Bunny used to mention when he'd pop out of the ground after tunnelling aimlessly around underground and then, after looking around, say, "Eh, this don't look like Myrtle (or Pismo, or whatever) beach!"

So this morning we slept in. The boys were up late watching the Cartoon Network (or as Oscar refers to it, "the sacred channel." Breakfast was cereal and yogurt in our room. Our mini-fridge runs VERY cold so our milk was slushy and my yogurt was a fro-yo. Not a problem; temps down here have been in the 95 range the past two days, so we take the refreshment where we can get it. My biggest concern today has been the avoidance of sunburn. The sun down here is fierce, and my cheap Target beach umbrella was shredded to flinders within five minutes of being erected yesterday. We managed to avoid lobsterdom through the liberal and frequent re-application of sunblock and, for me, the draping of numerous towels while sitting in the sun. I spent a LOVELY day alternating between warm sun and cool ocean, reading "The Passage" in between frolics with my boys, whose bodyboards were perhaps the best $20 ever spent.

Big events of the day: having to temporarily exit the water because of a school of fish (which, the lifeguards claimed, meant that "bigger fish" would be nearby. SHARK! SHARK!); finding the first usage error in "The Passage" on page 399, just as I was starting to appreciate how meticulously proofread it was ("gate" instead of "gait"); and finally, a crazy crazy thunderstorm that kicked up at about 4:30 and sent us fleeing for our hotel room with the wind dramatically whipping the palm trees. This just ten minutes after Oscar pointed out the encroaching storm clouds and I passed them off as "haze." It was in fact a short, vigorous thunderbuster, which Osk spent wrapped in his quilt with his ear-protectors on. He did not even want to leave the hotel to get dinner, so we ordered a pizza in. Imagine my shock when, later in the evening, both boys elected to go out bodysurfing again. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I got some nice pictures which I'll post tomorrow.

I don't have much snarky or clever to say on the subject of Myrtle Beach aside from the general loveliness of our stay. There is certainly a profusion of the tacky and ridiculous around here - a Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, mini golf with volcanoes spewing dry ice, enough piercing and tattoo parlors to seriously comparison-shop - but we steered clear of all of that in favor of the beach itself. Dynamic but not dangerous surf, warm water, populous but not crowded - an all-around grand vacation spot. We never felt like we were competing with the masses for limited resources, and did not see a single incident of unfriendly or boorish behavior. Right on, Myrtle Beach.

Day Seven: The Atlantic Is Not Just A Fine Periodical

This morning, the dudes and I managed to depart DC right on schedule. An early wake-up got the boys and I out of Eileen's apartment bright and early (although my boys managed to disrupt her AM meditation practice with a spirited discussion of ballistics right outside her door) with approximately one ton of various luggage, the toting of which has crushed my stature by at least an inch. The weather was FINE when we went into the station at Gallery Place, but by the time our train emerged to cross the Potomac, the skies had torn open in a cataclysmic downpour of Biblical proportions. We got into the airport and onto the parking shuttle without getting wet, thanks to the covered pickup area. All got slightly drenched traversing the six feet from the shuttle bus to the shelter nearest our car, and I got soaked to the skin bolting to the car on my own. Gear stashed, parking paid, and sopping wet, we departed DC at 8AM on the nose. Which was my plan. Heh heh.

The drive to SC was uneventful except for the astounding traffic jam heading in the opposite direction: commuter traffic heading into DC, backed up for miles upon miles. About two hours from our hotel, our route diverged from the Interstate for the first time in our travels, and we spent the rest of the trip driving on two-lane through rural(ish) NC and SC: tobacco fields, ramshackle barns, and the music from "Deliverance" never far from my mental soundtrack. The first time we passed a picturesque roadside stand selling boiled peanuts with a hand-lettered sign, I said "Look, kids! A local delicacy!" The second time, I said, "Hey, kids! Let's stop and get some boiled peanuts!" I figured I'd have a few more kicks at the cat on the boiled-peanut front to wear them down, but there were NO MORE STANDS. A missed culinary opportunity.

So here we are at the fabulous Driftwood Lodge Hotel, a pick from a guidebook that was spot frickin' ON. Our room is $89 per night. It is directly on the ocean and has a little pool overlooking same. The parking is right outside. Our chambers are very spacious and clean and feature a microwave and generous fridge, which we are going to use to cheapskate the hell out of our meals. The ocean is warm. We spent the afternoon wave-jumping. Oscar has finally come to admit that he is enjoying the road trip more than he would have enjoyed staying home. Provisions have been laid in for the next day or so. Splurge: boogie boards. We have cable and wifi and air conditioning and DID I MENTION WE ARE ON THE BEACH? A worthy idyll on the way down to Florida, stumbled across through sheer dumb luck and the judicious use of a Frommer's from the public library. TOMORROW: We get salt and sand everyplace it is possible to get salt and sand on - and in - the human body.

Day Six: In Which the Boys Are Underwhelmed by the Charters of Freedom

Today I discovered that, while to me we are leaving DC with barely a teenytiny scratch on the surface of the many wonders that are here to behold, the boys have a limit when it comes to awe-inspiring relics and historical artifacts. This morning, we started with the National Archives, a place that makes me geek out like you have no freaking idea. Their slogan should be, "Come for the Constitution, Stay For the Wicked Fascinating Exhibits." It's a bait-and-switch of the best kind. There is always something amazing on display once you've paid your respects to the Charters of Freedom, as they're called. I was for the second time in twelve hours unable to instill in the dudes an appropriate level of wonderment at something of this nature. I could not help but feel a bit worried about the Declaration of Independence, which looks to my unschooled eye to be in rough shape (as one might expect). I now have something else to wake up in the middle of the night concerned about. "Argh! The writing on the Declaration of Independence is getting less legible by the minute!" What the boys really dug was the exhibit that enabled them to edit together their own snippets of D-Day footage into personalized short films. Constitution, Schmonstitution.

My strategy throughout our stay in D.C., souvenir-wise, has been to defer spending money by telling the boys that on our last day here, we would return to the place where the thing they wanted most was located and, within reason, buy it. So despite the fact that the gift shop was the first place they wanted to go in every museum, we managed to spend ZERO DOLLARS on gimcracks until today, when Osk decided we needed to return to Air and Space in order to get a remote-controlled airplane. I managed to haggle him down to a $12 model plane and Ike to a $10 set of toy helicopters and am feeling like I got off cheap in that regard. We bought ice cream treats, pictured above. The red-white-and-blue frozen pop Ike is enjoying is no longer called a "Bomb Pop" as it was in my youth, because post-9/11 we do not refer to frozen desserts as "bombs," especially in our Nation's Capital. It is now a "Patriotic Rocket Pop," which to me is like the "Freedom Fries" of kids' ice cream.

On the way back to Eileen's, I dragged the kids through the West Wing of the National Gallery (the old stuff) and into the East Wing, hoping to captivate the boys with some modern art. You can see above that they were utterly nonplussed by Richard Serra. More entertaining was the lunch we had at a downtown McD's, where the street theater was nonstop and CRAZY. The establishment in which we dined required one to BUY A TOKEN to use the bathroom (because of vandalism, according to the signs) and had a strict condiment-handout policy keyed to the size of the meal ordered (one sauce for six McNuggets or fewer, two sauces for ten or more). Do people try to cadge free BBQ sauces and attempt to subsist thereon?

Not pictured: the return trip to retrieve Aunt Eileen's quilt. Pictured: Oscar diligently assembling his model airplane and then engaging in "creative play" with same. Sound effects: "Whoooosshhhhhhhhhhhh pow pow pow Whoooossshshshhhhhh!" etcetera. Dude loves his airplane. Swim. Dinner. Off for gelato (another treat I've been saving until the end). In the morning, we depart for Myrtle Beach, SC where we will engage in Ike's new favorite pastime: chillaxing.

Day Five and a Half: 24-Hour Party People

After our late-day swim and cable-TV session (Eileen has mad cable! And on-demand! There are SO MANY CHANNELS!), I persuaded the boys to sojurn out yet again. You see, in DC there are monuments. They are awesome, in both senses of the word. I have never seen them at night, and it is said that one must. I had been planning to take the boys to be stunned into respectful silence by gigantic Abe Lincoln on this trip, and the sweltering heat reinforced the decision do to it after dark. I nerdtastically looked up the sunset: eight PM. After overcoming Oscar's perfectly reasonable protest - "I think I've done enough today" - we Metro-ed down to the Washington Monument. A word on buying Metro cards: we are operating primarily with a credit card, which is dandy, but the Metro card machines will only let you make two purchases with the same card before it determines that you are running some kind of short con and cuts you off. This makes refilling metrocards problematic when one is travelling in a group of THREE.

So down we schlepped. A long discussion ensued at the Wash Mon on the following two subjects: (1) why, despite the proliferation of eminently skateboardable structures around, would it be disrespectful to grind a wicked ollie at the Washington Monument? (this from younger son, who does not skateboard except in his active imagination, in which he is Tony Hawk 2.0) (2) please do not ever, ever, EVER take me up to the top of the Washington Monument in that elevator (guess who?).

Oscar has been wanting to visit the WW2 memorial for months and months. You can see them dipping their feet in its waters above. We determined that dipping feet was OK, but wading was disrespectful. Strangely enough, this somewhat overblown piece of monumentry came as close as anything to imbuing in the dudes something approaching reverence. Oscar has suggested that we return to "worship" there again. His word, not mine.

August+ reflecting pool=gnats.

So I stopped the boys on the steps of the Linc Mon. I took out my Droid. I tried to show them YouTube video of the "I Have A Dream" speech right there on the steps. I thought this was a wicked cool idea. Not very interested. They did, however, stand in something approaching attentiveness during my dramatic reading of the Gettysburg Address. I managed to get the boys to hike a mile in 90-degree heat to the metro (rather than take one of the cabs that were swarming like, well, gnats) by persuading them that we could only pay with a credit card, which DC cabs tend not to take. I even let Oscar flag down a couple and ask. Whatever works. We made it to the Metro, me piggybacking Ike some of the way and becoming DRENCHED with sweat.

By this time, it was after nine. I was hungry. I wanted to freaking eat at Jaleo, which sits rightacrossthestreet from my aunt's place, taunting me with its tapas and quesos and cured jamon. So in we went. We ate at the bar. Our bartender was from Ohio and refilled the boys' Sprites in perpetuity. I had (in ingles) chicken croquettes, garlicky shrimp and piquillo peppers stuffed with goat cheese. The boys gamely tried all but the latter. Also: the oily sauce in the bottom of the plates, soaked into some bread, was SO. DELICIOUS. Almost better than the tapas themselves. At last to bed at about 10:30. Tomorrow, we are seriously going to relax. And pick up the quilt at the dry-cleaners.