Dad's done with work, on to Washington DC! Keels go to Canada day 5

 Thankfully dad only worked a half day today so we could get on the road, DC was going to be our next stop and that is quite a ways from Greenville SC.

We saw a giant peach in South Carolina, which we thought was a little odd since Georgia is the peach place but the kids liked it.

We also had to turn around after getting in North Carolina just to go to the South Carolina visitors center to take a picture.

 Chloe loved going in places she could see things, this visitors center had a few neat things on display.

It wasn't long, literally only a few minutes up the road, when we stopped at the North Carolina visitors center. Dad took a selfie of us. Because he has long arms but not long enough arms it appears we were in orth Carolina, but I promise, it was North.

 We ate lunch in the car, mostly finishing up any snacks we still had and needed to clean out. It is important in any road trip with kids that mom has some sort of sweet snack that the kids do not know about. This was my snack that I secretly ate from the front seat, only having to share with dad... and that was only because he saw me eating them.

 While looking up restaurants near our hotel in DC I came across the US Department of Education Cafeteria... I thought about the school lunches I've had in my life as a teacher and decided that was a big NO. Can you even imagine??

 

We made it to the Virginia Visitors center, which had super cool photo ops! We are aware that Abby looks sort of like a stalker, but I assure you, she was just being a little spicy that day. 

 Can't have a LOVE picture without mommy and daddy getting a picture! Yes, there was a kissing one but I didn't post that, this time.

 Chloe's favorite part of this visitors center was the play ground. This made her day! All visitors centers should take after this one, it was SO NEEDED. Now, one of my children did decide to pour their drink down the slide. My best guess is they wanted it to be a water slide but with Root Beer. We cleaned it up and headed out after that.
  

 We arrived in DC at night and it was so beautiful! If you ever have the opportunity to see it at night do it! If we had not had the kids with us and been so tired we would have walked around the memorials.

There were lots of people walking around the National Mall area, we drove around it. Apparently this is one of the safest places to walk around at night since there is so much security around it. With a big day of exploring DC ahead of us, we headed to the hotel and checked in just after 10pm, right after the pool closed. We were disappointed in that since the pool was on the roof and only a couple of blocks over from the Capital. We weren't going to swim, just look at take pictures but we couldn't.

Paris Mountain and Greenville SC - Keels go to Canada day 4

The morning started out saying by to daddy as he left for work. Once again a yummy breakfast with waffles at the hotel, we may have gone a little heavy on the carbs.

We decided that we would go to a Paris Mountain State Park and check out their Jr Ranger program for the South Carolina State Parks. This is Lake Placid, the lake with swimming area just down from the visitors center at the park. It was a beautiful lake!

Chloe's favorite part of the park was the playground. If you don't know this, she calls all playgrounds a "Whee!" because when you slide down the slide, what do you say? Yep. She's a funny kid.

Unfortunately for Chloe she did end up falling and scraping her face (as you will see a nice scab in the pictures after the park). She was excited and ran on the sidewalk, which had pine needles on it that slid out from under her. This did not slow her down much, as soon as I applied some Lavender oil on her, she was back to the playground.

The kids played for quite a while on the playground, had a snack and then we went to complete our Junior Ranger activities. To complete this task we had to identify some plants and animals, pick up trash, and interview a park ranger. The filled up a whole bag with garbage they found along the trail that goes around Lake Placid. We found bottle caps, bottles and the worst was the plastic bags of dog poop. Don't people realize that the plastic bag the poop is in that is left in the woods is worse than just letting the dog poop in the woods?

Abigail was not happy about the trash that they found stuck in the tree stump, "Someone was being very mean to this tree!"

Of course, a lovely picture of the girls and PR has to act like his daddy and photo bomb it. It was a lovely trail and the girls were so cute sitting there. This was along the bottom of the dam, which when we saw it PR said "Daddy sure is missing it today!". We did miss daddy, too bad he had to work.

After the park we came back to the hotel for a swim. Once again, the only people using the pool. This was toward the end, they were sunbathing penguins, or something like that.

 

We got ready for dinner and had fun in the waiting area at the hotel, which apparently the kids thought looked like a news station. We had dinner in downtown Greenville at Sticky Fingers, like the BBQ sauce Sticky Fingers. It was really good. We walked around a little but not enough to really see Greenville, we will save that for next time. 

On to South Carolina! - Keels go to Canada day 3

The next day we would be heading out to South Carolina for another part of dads business trip. We had breakfast at the hotel, which was a Marriott. They do have a great free breakfast. The kids LOVE their waffle machine. We had our fill for breakfast and went back to our room until it was closer to time for dad to leave work.

I didn't mention that the night before I rolled my ankle while walking to the restaurant for dinner. It hurt so bad it made me nauseous. We went and bought an ankle brace and I put some pain oils on it, but it still hurt really bad. The next day it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had expected it to, pleasant surprise.
Anyway, when it was time for us to check out of the hotel we still had a little bit of time before dad would be ready so we made a pit stop at the Krispy Kreme for some donuts. We were able to watch them make donuts through the window, which was really neat. So this was almost like a field trip, a yummy weight gaining field trip...

After picking up dad when he was done at work we headed to South Carolina for his next work assignment. We couldn't go that close to Dillard Ga. without stopping for some Dillard House Inn food though. My it was delicious as always. The fried smothered pork chops were amazing, as was the fried zucchini! It was not a cholesterol friendly meal by any means.

After our meal we sat outside and rocked on the porch for a bit to enjoy the amazing cool air. I also may have texted pictures of the food and the weather to my brother to make him jealous.

The trip to South Carolina wasn't a long one but we still had to stop for the bathroom once. We stopped at a really nice rest area with this beautiful lake, the kids once again found many pebbles and sticks that they felt needed to go home with

Our hotel was nice, the people at the desk were very friendly and helpful. I knew I would be doing laundry here and they were very nice and answered my questions about their laundry facilities and even offered me some complementary laundry detergent... which I took because doing laundry at a hotel isn't cheap. 

Our night was not uneventful, we went swimming in the really nice pool that no one else was using, and when we got back in our room Chloe decided to pick up the phone and push random numbers, which happened to be 911.... We started unplugging the phones when we get in the rooms after that.

As we all settled down to go to sleep for the night, we heard the microwave come on. No, no one was making popcorn... Chloe was standing up in her playpen and decided she was still in the mood to push buttons.

Marietta Ga and Kennesaw National Battlefield - Keels go to Canada day 2

 We got up that morning to 67*, it was glorious. We ate breakfast at the hotel (a huge money saver for us since there are 6 of us, free breakfast goes a long way) then headed out for Marietta were dad would be for work for the rest of the day and part of the next day. As you can see, the temps in Marietta look just as glorious as can be for this Florida family.

Arriving in Marietta a little early, we stopped at a mall to kill some time and let the kids move around a bit. We walked in the food court area and the kids immediately said  "Look! A Chick Fil A!" I know, you are not surprised by this, we weren't either.
 
I took the girls to the Family Bathroom, which had a small sink for the littles and a rocking chair. Now, I know that my kids seem to take forever in the bathroom but I'm not sure a rocking chair is really necessary. On second thought, maybe it is.

We ended up eating lunch at the Marietta Diner with some of Pauls co workers. After lunch dad went to work and mom and the kids set out for Kennesaw Battlefield. On our way we saw the big KFC chicken with a moving beak.

We arrived at Kennesaw with no problem. We were not able to see anywhere near all of the park, it is huge. We did walk through the museum and the interactive trail for the kids. Throughout this trail the kids picked up sticks and hid behind trees pretending to be soldiers in the war, lots of pretend shots were fired. About halfway through this one mile loop. 3 out of 4 kids needed to go to the bathroom - one at least was in a diaper already. Seems that after traveling, walking trails seems to... move... things along in your digestive system. The last half mile was more making sure we didn't go to the bathroom on ourselves than pretending to be fighting in the war.

Once we finished the trail we sat at the picnic tables and completed the workbooks for our Junior Ranger badge at Kennesaw. This was mommas favorite part. Doing school, outside, under the trees, and beautiful weather to top it off.

The park rangers at Kennesaw gave so much attention to my kids, they were genuinely interested in the kids and the educational value of the trip we were on. The park rangers there really stuck out to us because of the time they spent with us and the quality of the kids Junior Ranger books provided at this site.

I don't really think that all Junior Rangers get as much stuff as what my kids got when they left Kennesaw. We had a squeezeball Bison, extra Junior Ranger books to work on at home (can you say homeschool materials?), pencils, NPS tattoos, stickers and even wooden coins. The swag pictured on the table is just from one kid, each kid had a bag full of this stuff. No other park was this nice to us. Using this as an example to the kids, I encouraged them to spend time talking to the park rangers, ask about what they do and show an interest in learning about their park and helping keep it clean. Sure, the kids want to get more junior ranger stuff and that might be their motivation at this point, but it helps form a habit of talking to people and showing interest in others.

Setting Sail - Keels go to Canada day 1

Today was the first day of our trip. We packed and prepared most things the night before, and were able to be on the road by 10am! The kids were excited about the trip, having LOTS of extra screen time, and eating mommas travel foods. Chloe was excited about eating cheese, she asked for some about every 30 minutes.

We stopped at the Georgia visitors center for a picture, this was probably the only stop for pictures that the kids were excited about. The rest of the times they were not impressed. Also note that Chloe has a will of her own and will not conform to anyone's desires that she looks at the camera with the rest of the family.

Our first National Park stop of the trip was at Andersonville National Cemetery and POW museum. The reason we stopped at this one, even though it was about 45 minutes out of the way, is because the kids have been working on Junior Ranger badges. This program offers high interest educational opportunities for the kids to learn while in National Parks, and rewards them with a badge or patch at the end when they have completed the requirements. We were working on the Civil War Historian badge, which required Andersonville, one other park, and a completed packet of the Underground Railroad. Since we were going to be near Andersonville we stopped.

The museum was hard, not only did it have displays and information about Prisoners of War from the Civil War, but also from other wars. The kids were able to see how prisoners were treated, their living conditions, and the effects that being a POW has on a person. It was a heavy trip.
We also were able to see the many monuments from Union states that were erected in memory of those prisoners who died at Andersonville, which was a POW site for the Civil War.
 

I think that seeing the model of the living conditions was one of the hardest things, the kids stood next to one of the nicer shelters set up. We learned that 45,000 Union prisoners were held there during the Civil War, of them nearly 13,000 died from illnesses related to their living conditions. The stream that would adequately provide water for around 10,000 prisoners was not enough for the nearly 33,000 held in August of 1864. This single stream was not only the drinking water supply, but also the bathing and latrine area.

Prisoners that had been held here looked like skeletons with skin. PR asked if they got to eat three times a day, unfortunately the answer was no. He stated that if he was here and in charge of prisoners he would feed them... too bad that wasn't the case.

We continued our trip, which would land us in Byron Ga for the night. We passed the hotel exit, dad said it was because of moms beauty... he was really just distracted by talking.

Our hotel, a Holiday Inn Express, treated us well, they gave us a box of snacks and our room was just right for the family. Our credit card (that is paid off every month) is one that accumulates points for hotel stays, because of that sometimes we get upgrades or extra perks when we check into hotels.

PR and Sarah took the bunk beds, Abigail made her own bed out of the chair and footstool. They had a TV in their little room and thought this was the best hotel they had ever been in.

Not pictured is the crazy big play ground at Burger King, where we ate that night. This was the first evening of a cool breeze we felt on the trip, so the kids played and we enjoyed the weather.