Hogwarts....

After Charleston we continued south to Daytona to visit with our good friend Nancy.  She lives on the estuary between Daytona and Daytona Beach.

The view from her terrace is lovely, and we spent time watching the tides, the boats and the dolphins.  It's a five minute walk to Oceanside, and we had a clear view of the fireworks over the Daytona Speedway.  This was the only part of our vacation where we experienced any bad weather.  It rained a lot while we were there.  Babygirl wasn't feeling well, so we stayed an extra day, enjoyed the company and the view, and had a peaceful time.

We had planned to spend two days at Universal Studios. I'm a Disney kind of girl, but Hubby has been to Universal with his brother and really felt we were missing out by not seeing it ourselves so we decided to go for it.  But because of our delay, we had only one day.  So while we were waiting in line to buy tickets, we did some math.   Two day passes plus the cost of a night in between versus one day passes plus the extra fee to skip all the lines?  It was 95 degrees, 98% humidity, Babygirl was recovering (slowly) from a doozy of a headache and we had to keep her hydrated. 

Tickets to Universal are ungodly in price.  One day at Disney is $99.  At Universal it's $136.  The skip-the-line passes are nearly another $100.  Each.  Buying them makes one day cost as much a two, and you can't skip the Harry Potter ride lines with them.  We looked around.  There was a CROWD. 

There are things you can do when you have an only child that you cannot do when you have four of them.  And there are things you will do for a chronically ill child that you would NEVER do for any other child, or even for yourself. 

We bought the passes.  It felt like flat-out illegal bribery.

It was a good decision.  Babygirl was still reeling from the headache.  Keeping her out of the heat early in the day by bypassing lines to air conditioned shows and 3D movies gave her time to collect herself and feel well enough to move on to the simulator rides and things of that sort.  We never did do any coasters, but frankly we can do that sort of thing anywhere.  Spiderman and The Simpsons were unique.  And since Hubby is a big guy and can't ride a lot of the coaster type rides, it worked out well for all of us.

We got to explore Diagon Alley to our hearts' content.  We drank frozen Butterbeer (O. M. G.). We rode the Hogwarts Express (worth the wait and as close to Disney as Universal managed to come).

 

The ride inside Hogwarts, sadly, would not seat Hubby.  He steeled himself for a long, lonely time, as the sign at the entrance warned of a 90 minute wait, and our passes didn't bypass that line.  But as Babygirl and I were going in I spotted a "single rider" line.  I asked her if she cared if we sat next to each other or not.  She didn't.  We got into that line, which effectively bypassed 300 people and took us straight to the front, where they immediately needed two people from our line to fill a row in the ride.  (The ride is awesome, by the way - Hermione enchants a bench full of muggles so we can go and play some Quidditch, which is fine until Hagrid loses track of his dragon.  And his spider.)  We finished and popped out so quickly that Hubby did a double take.  So we rode it again.

 

It was a good day.  We opened and closed the park. We did in one day what we would barely have managed to do in two if it hadn't been for the skip-the-lines passes.  But for the money we could have done three days in Disney. But to give credit where possible:  Universal's "affordable" food was better than Disney's.

 

DeeDee

 



Three Month Check Up....

We interrupt our vacation blog for the following update:

Babygirl spent all of Monday seeing doctors. 

We began with Nephrology.  The kidney is doing well.  We discussed medications that Neurology wants to try for the headaches.  Lisinopril -as much as they want.  Zonegran - nope, not at all.  Depakote would be much better, thanks, I should tell them to try that.  Carry on, blood work at home in six weeks, see you in three months.  (This was after we'd located them.  They'd moved, and we knew they'd moved, but apparently no one at any CHOP information desk knew that they had moved or where.  We got a lot of exercise looking for them.  Turns out they are on the same floor of the same building as neurology now.)

Then Neurology.  Really, she is still having headaches?  You called?  We are having some problems with communication. (Oh, really?? No kidding there.)  Anyway, they listened to what nephrology suggested, smiled smugly at their ignorance ("Depakote for an adolescent girl?  With weight gain as its major side effect?" Dude, it isn't that we don't know what can happen, but the kid can't go to school for the headaches for the good Lord's sake, we have to do SOMETHING!) and worked out a convoluted plan involving increasing the medications that aren't working.  Again. 

Then Gyn, where we discovered that our appointment is actually Tuesday (my bad, I guess) but the (oh God bless her) doctor squeezed us in, and made a plan for ongoing care an follow up that made sense to Babygirl.  Works for me.  Irregular periods weren't high on my worry list anyway.

The big news, to me anyway, is that there was a radical shift in Babygirl herself.  She took the lead in telling her story, answering questions and filling the docs in on how she feels about the whole thing.  Of course, the flip side of THAT is that they pushed her to be more responsible about keeping track of things - the number of headaches, the days she is bleeding, the amount she drinks.....

Becoming more mature has its price.

DeeDee

Crossing One Off the Bucket List....

I have always wanted to go to Charleston.  I really don't know why. Maybe it was reading Gone With the Wind.  Perhaps it was some other historical reference that got stuck in my brain - but I've wanted to go to Charleston the way Babygirl wanted to go to Paris. 

When Hurricane Arthur put us a day behind on our travel plans we contemplated skipping Charleston.  We discussed skipping Savannah.  Turns out Hubby had a thing about Savannah like I had a thing about Charleston.  Go figure.

But Hubby is a sensible man. "Happy wife, happy life!"  Right?  So we went to Charleston.

As we were approaching Charleston on the strength of our road atlas (since GPS will only help you if you know exactly where you want to go), I said to Hubby, "We don't want to cross any big water."  Next thing I know we are on a huge bridge hundreds of feet above Charleston harbor.  Oops. 

I am nothing if not flexible.  We were now on the same side of the harbor as the USS Yorktown.  Hubby was more than glad to add that to our list of things to do, and Babygirl is always up for an adventure, so we paid the $10 parking fee and got on the boat. 

I have to say that it was an amazing side trip. Did you know that you can take your youth group/scout troop and spend the night on the Yorktown?  It has got to be the most awesome sleepover ever - they use the sailor's bunks and everything.  We toured the ship, the planes, the Medal of Honor museum, a submarine and a Vietnam-era MASH unit.  We then took a water taxi to Charleston proper. 

Historic Charleston is absolutely beautiful.  The waterfront, the market, the fountains, the historic homes, the churches....sigh.  We signed up for a horse-drawn carriage ride.  I was disappointed to be told that the horses 'won' their routes by lottery, and we had rather poor odds of going past the famous waterfront homes and Rainbow Row on the horse tour since the lottery rarely fell to that route.  I figured we'd get a local map and walk it if need be, and we spent the hour waiting for our tour in the market.  We watched people weave sweet grass baskets.

  We saw spices and sauces for sale.

Babygirl bought a lovely dress after deciding against an umbrella.  Yes, it's an UMBRELLA.

We clambered aboard our carriage and were lucky enough to get front row seats. Our carriage horse was a retired Amish plow horse, and the horseshoes had a layer of rubber tire between his hooves and the metal shoes for extra comfort.  As we pulled up the the bingo-ball machine that would assign our route, our driver asked everyone to pick a color:  Red, yellow or blue?  I was the only one who picked yellow.  And yellow was what we got - the Rainbow Row route!

I spent a blissful hour admiring things I had only read about.  Twice the horse had to pull us up to the highest point in Charleston - 12 feet above sea level! 

We caught our water taxi back to the Yorktown (and unexpectedly had to walk an extra mile around it to get to the truck - July 4th festivities!).   I was sad to leave, and would gladly go back and spend more than a day, but it was nice to check it off my list!

DeeDee

New Bern (Fleeing, Part Two).....

When we were planning our vacation we pulled out an atlas (a real map made of paper, for those too young to know) and planned our stops.  Some things we knew we really, really wanted to do (Williamsburg, The Outer Banks, Charleston).  Some of those things were so far apart that we needed spots in between to make the journey more bearable.  New Bern was one of those spots.

New Bern is in North Carolina, at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent rivers, which empty into the Pamlico sound.  The second oldest colonial city in NC, (and the home of Pepsi) it is full of well-maintained historical homes and museums. We arrived about 5:30 PM, earlier than planned because of the earlier ferry ride.  We drove straight downtown, discovering that most the things we wanted to see were closed for the day, but willing to hunt down dinner.  Across from a Tryon Palace we spotted a small seafood restaurant, and with the what-the-heck spirit that comes at the end of a long day of travel, we took a chance.

It was a good call.  That bucket of crabs was $12.  And all the food was fabulous.

The next day we toured a museum, some old homes and Tryon Palace (the colonial governors mansion).  No photos were allowed inside the mansion, but to give you some idea of the level of luxury, here's the stable:

The mansion (note the sky):

The privy was a six-seater-in-the-round.

Each seat faces a wall, with a divider of sorts between. 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't ask why I care.  Odd bathrooms fascinate me, obviously. 

 

As we were touring, the docents were subtly moving antiquities away from the windows, and demonstrating that the old built-in shutters still work!  I overheard someone asking, "Are you going to set your alarm for 1:30 AM so you can experience the eye of the hurricane?"  About this time our phones started pinging with updates on severe storm alerts and all sorts of impending doom.  Apparently New Bern was the new Ground Zero for Hurricane Arthur.  Since our next planned stop was Myrtle Beach, which would have sent us down the Atlantic coast (at 5 feet above sea level on average) directly down the throat of the beast, we decided to swing inland, catch 95 south and maybe skirt the worst of it. 

 

Here's what we drove toward:

 

 

The worst of it was the idiocy of the tourists fleeing the storm.  We saw accidents that required helicopters to get people out.  We resisted the temptation to stop at this attraction (not sure how - I mean, America's Biggest Pork Display? How will we forgive ourselves?):

 

 

We skipped all of our beach destinations, and arrived someplace? outside of Charleston? by dinnertime.  The sun was shining as we put up the tent.

 

We got rained on for a total of about 20 minutes.  Seriously.  Hurricanes fear us.

 

DeeDee

Fleeing the Hurricane......

The Outer Banks are lovely, but they are prime territory for hurricane damage.  Our campground had had to fully rebuild after hurricane Irene took out almost the entire place.  The updated bathrooms had a "Hurricane Irene Flood mark" on the wall.  I assure you, it was higher up than the roof of our cabin across the street from it. 

The weather during our brief stay was absolutely beautiful, but we began hearing people murmuring about an approaching storm while we were touring Kitty Hawk.  We were pretty disconnected from news and such, so we just kept on swimming and stargazing.  Having driven several hours on a narrow two-lane road onto a sandbar that is 17 miles by boat from the nearest shore, I did contemplate just how insane the word "evacuation" might make things, but, hey, no worries!  We're on vacation, right?  Despite our ongoing propensity for beaches we've managed to never run into a hurricane.  So far, anyway.

On our last morning on the OBX, I caught a glimpse of the Weather Channel on TV as we were checking out. It looked.....interesting.  I watched long enough to figure that we might want to consider upgrading to a cabin at our NEXT site, but since that one was a bit more inland, it looked like we were headed toward safer ground. 

Since we were continuing south on the OBX, we were heading toward the storm.  The only way off of the southern end at Cape Hatteras is to take a free ferry (45 minutes) to Okracoke Island, drive down the island and catch a second  ($15, 3 hour) ferry to the mainland.  Our plan was to dawdle down the sandbar, see the lighthouse at the cape, find a good seafood restaurant for lunch and enjoy our boat rides.

The lighthouse was beautiful.  Breakfast was seafood omelets in a tiny place called The Gingerbread House (we took some gingerbread men to go).  The ferry from Hatteras to Okracoke was peaceful.  The town of Okracoke reminded me of Nantucket minus the hills - tight, twisty streets, ocean views everywhere, pelicans on every pier post.  We figured we'd buy ferry tickets, and then explore the town.

Notice the sky?  Not looking too 'hurricane-y' to the south yet.  The view to the east wasn't too threatening either:

As I was asking for tickets for the three o'clock ferry, a TV tuned to the Weather Channel showed that Arthur had picked up speed, and been upgraded from "Tropical Storm" to "Level I" and then "Level II" hurricane status while we'd been shell hunting on the beaches. The (only!) sales clerk paused to answer the phone while I waited.  After the call was finished, she said, "I can't sell you tickets. The one o'clock ferry is sold out. The later ferries are now free because the state just issued a voluntary evacuation notice.  It will be first-come-first-served.  I suggest you get in line."  Oh.  Dear.  I guess I'm going to get to see first-hand how crazy things get when the e-word gets tossed out there. 

Matt and I did a huddle.  Pros and cons of exploring the town versus being aggressive about staying with the truck to hold a place in line?  Meanwhile, the one o'clock ferry is loading.  I went to check on procedures with the people who were in charge of that process.  "Lady, I got one more spot on this boat if you want to go!" 

Well.....

If God gives you a spot on the sold-out boat, get on the damned boat, right?  And here we are - almost hanging off the back of the ferry.

 

We didn't find our awesome seafood restaurant.  But we had baby carrots, smoked cheddar, mayo, mustard and whole wheat in the cooler.  We got more than one envious look from hurricane refuges reduced to snacking from the machines.

 

DeeDee

 

The Outer Banks....

After enjoying Colonial Williamsburg, we headed out to the ginormous sandbar known as The Outer Banks.  I've been there before, at the northern end.  The tourists flock to that end - it is, after all, the part of The Banks that is actually connected to the mainland by a couple of bridges.  We toured Kitty Hawk, amazed by how NOT far the original flights of Orville and Wilbur were in reality! 

Instead of going north, we went south to Rodanthe.  The houses and shops got fewer and farther between, and mile after mile of sand dunes and sound views rolled by, until we arrived at our campground.  We had rented a one-room cabin, thinking that setting up a tent on a treeless sandbar in  southern state might not be the best of fun for vacation.  Since the cabin had an air conditioner and the temp was well over 90 it turned out to be a good call.  Staying in a place where I could hear the ocean behind me while I washed dishes to the sunset over the Pamlico Sound was amazing. The distance between the ocean beach an the shore of the sound was about 100 yards, and we were 17 miles offshore.  But the most amazing thing was the darkness.

We are so accustomed to background light that we can scarcely imagine not having any.  But at sunset, the only lights were from campfires and a few local homes.  And when the locals go to bed....nothing.

I sat on the beach, bathed in starlight.  Overhead, the milky way glowed, horizon to horizon.  Stars stretched down to touch the water, a million miles away.  Despite the fact that there was no moon, I could clearly see my star shadow, floating at my feet.

Some moments contain eternal magic.  However brief they are in reality, in the heart and memory they are windows into the soul of God, and they never fade.

DeeDee

Recovering From a Good Time.....

Contrary to all appearances here on the blog, we did not perish during our vacation.  The trip was delightful, the truck reliable, the weather (for the most part) cooperative and the hurricane was a non-event for us. 

I discovered soon after we left that I had left my computer charger behind.  After a few moments of mourning, I decided that it was, actually, a gift from God.  Oh, I checked in on Facebook on my iPod once in a while, posting a picture or three along the way, but typing a blog entry from the iPod is enough of a pain that I released myself from the obligation.  It was a nice break, actually.

We successfully met up with the church's mission team in Virginia to serve a week for the Appalachia Service Project (http://asphome.org/) and came home on schedule.  My next few posts will share moments from both our personal trip and the team's adventures. 

I am, however, increasingly amazed by how long it takes to recover from a good time.

DeeDee