Jeff's Journeys: April - May, 2001
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ APRIL
4/1 Jacksonville, FL
Today we went to a beach with sand blowing everywhere, but the castles were gigantic! We went back to the hotel to rest, and we set off to find Mama's old house where she lived when she was little. When we finally found it . . . we found out that the lady at the house was married to the boy that used to live next door to Mama!
4/3 Jekyll Island, GA
Today we rode many miles in the car, and did our lessons along the way. We found our campsite, and the sandflies were everywhere! We went to a mall and ate dinner to avoid them, before returning to the tents to sleep.
4/4 - 4/5 Charleston, SC
At our improved campsite, we made a fort out of bark and pine needles! I also built two fires!
4/6 - 4/11 Columbia - Greenville, SC
At the Congaree Swamp, we went to a giant boardwalk that was four miles long! I walked it without sitting down! And we saw a brown water snake slither silently past us! On the way there, you have to hike through the Sumpter National Forest.
In Columbia, we spent the night, before moving on to Greenville. There were lots of flowering trees, beautiful flowers, and green grass, and it was agreed it would be a fantastic place to live!
At Paris Mountain State Park, we hiked up a foothill, but it seemed like a mountain! From Caesar's Head, the view of Table Rock was unbelievable! We then went to Mill's River National Park, just south of Asheville.
4/14 Asheville, NC
. . . drove up Mt. Mitchell and the Blueridge Parkway! At around 7,000 ft., at the top of Mt. Mitchell, there were small patches of snow! It was freezing! On the Parkway, there were picture spots that were stunningly beautiful! At the hotel, I biked 1 mile, walked 1 mile, and climbed 320 stories -exercise machines!
4/15 - 4/17 Johnson City, TN - Franklin, NC
Johnson City was a pretty nice place. The Good Friday Mass at St. Joan of Arc, was neat! Inside, we did Stations of the Cross.
We camped at Mill's River State Park and it had a cool playground and basketball court! We also hiked two and one half miles on a hiking trail with switchbacks. We were hiking on a trail with a drop off to the river on the left, and a big hill on the right! We also walked through a river with small stepping stones! At St. Mary's, we had a really cool Easter Mass. By the time it had ended, it was raining! We had our egg hunt at Powhatan Lake State Park, Cherokee, NC, and I got tons of chocolate, a cool Hot Wheels car, and pickup sticks!
4/18 Kennesaw, GA
. . . currently visiting Aunt Holly, Uncle Les, Matthew, Ashley, and Tyler. I have played ping pong, ridden on the scooter, played with the watergun, and played on a few car racing games.
4/19 Kennesaw, GA
. . . it was 12:00, and Tyler was coming home in 30 minutes (half day)! We spent the afternoon in the yard riding the bicycle and throwing the football. Once we were inside, we played on the computer and watched Animal Planet and Robotica! We last watched some earth movers and the biggest one ever could fit an entire marching band in its shovel!
4/20 Kennesaw, GA
. . . we were off to the General Museum, dedicated to a train called "The General," and it was ridden in "The Great Locomotive Chase," 'followed,' or better said, 'chased,' by the Texas. Anyway, five men got the new Medal of Honor just for riding on a train! We got home and played with our cousins before bed.
4/21 - 4/24 Kennesaw - Warner Robins - Atlanta, GA
. . . I went to Tyler’s birthday sleepover, a few of Ashley’s softball games, and to Stone Mountain, 1,653 feet above sea level. On Sunday, we went to Mass with them, and afterwards we all went to Cici’s Pizza. The next morning, we said goodbye, and off we went to find a campsite. Our campsite was right next to the playground!
4/25 Knoxville, TN
Today, as we were going up Lookout Mountain, we saw the Incline Railway, and it went up the face of the mountain! We also saw a view of seven states! The view was spectacular! We then drove on a very pretty scenic route to Knoxville.
4/26 Lexington, KY
. . . we saw a man nearly drive into a pond! Also, we went on a scenic route, and saw an enormous natural bridge! We ran into a big horse event, so we just drove through Kentucky until we came to the border.
4/28 - 4/30 Ohio, Indiana, Michigan
We have driven through Indiana, and camped at Chain-o-lakes State Park. At night we heard a barred owl! We later crossed the border into Michigan (Detroit - Car Production Capital of the World!) Ohio and Indiana were covered in endless farms! My favorite part of going to Ohio, was driving through the farmland, looking at the countryside. Why? Because that hill over there just might be the place where we’ll live! I liked looking at all the Ohio license plates. There were around eight different varieties! My personal favorite part of Indiana was driving through the countryside looking at property. The best memory of Indiana was “Copper” and “Chestnut” horses running alongside the fence, like they were racing our car! I liked looking at the countryside and all of the pretty horses. My favorite part about Michigan was playing on the beaches of Lake Michigan, because it was just like the ocean!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MAY
5/1 - 5/2 Traverse City, MI
At a rest stop that looked over Bear Lake, I climbed about 40 feet in a giant maple tree! We also went down a pitch-black slide at Burger King! When we finally arrived in Traverse City, we became AAA members. We later swam in the heated hotel pool.
We are headed to Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island.
5/3 - 5/4 Mackinaw City, MI
The Mackinac Bridge is right by our hote., and hopefully we’ll cross it tomorrow. We went to a plaza and saw a video on building the bridge, and five men died building this third longest suspension bridge in the world. They were three iron workers, one diver, and one laborer. We also sampled a pastie (a meat-filled pastry made for miners), some local taffy, white fish and fried, fudge, and later ate pizza for dinner!
5/5 MI - Ontario, Canada
This day is unbelievable! We crossed over the Mackinak Bridge, and it was supposed to be five miles long, but it seemed like two! We also went to the Soo Locks, and watched the Edgar B. Speer go through! We went shopping for mocassins for Megan, and played freeze tag under huge evergreen trees at the locks. When we went over the International Bridge, we were also going into Canada! As we were getting our passports checked, a man checked our baggage for children, drugs, guns, or anything illegal. We played on a small playground at the visitors center. We stayed at the Watertower Inn. Its pools were neat, and one even had a waterfall! We ate at the Texas Café, it had great Mexican food!
5/6 Ontario, Canada
We opened the day with swimming in the pool. We then at doughnuts for breakfast, and went to the Sacred Blood Cathedral (established in 1864) for Mass. It was one of the fist cathedrals we have been to. We traveled the rest of the day. Late afternoon, we found a waterfall to climb, and it was pretty amazingly fun! We then found a campsite on the beach of Lake Superior, and collected driftwood for the fire. Finally, I fell asleep in the car going on a moose hunt, score: 0. Sleeping on sand made it feel like you were on 1,000,000 bean bags!
5/7 Ontario,Canada
It was drizzly and rainy most of the day, but the morning was fine. We packed up and left the shores of Gitchee Gumi and later stopped at a hiking trail, and hiked around 1.5 - 2 miles. We saw 2 waterfalls and several rapids on that hike! We later saw a giant waterfall, but it was too misty to go any farther. We also saw 5 moose!
5/8 - 5/9 Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
We did our lessons in the car, and when we reached the Thunder Bay Visitor Center, there was a bronze monument to Terry Fox. He had one leg amputated because of cancer, and he was running across Canada to raise money for cancer research! He stopped in about that place, as the cancer was spreading all over his body. We found out our hotel had the biggest pool in Thunder Bay, but it also had an indoor, 3-story waterslide; we took a 5-hr swim!
5/10 Thunder Bay
We decided to stay another day in Thunder Bay. We did our lessons in the morning, then we went to a park where we played tag, and I was last ‘it!’ After that, we went to a mall and later swam and ate pizza for dinner.
5/11 MN
. . . we got to the amazing Lake Breeze Resort, and played bumper pool and foosball in the lodge for the rest of the afternoon. We got to eat cookies, popcorn and drink hot chocolate, in our cabin.
5/12 - 5/14 Ironwood, MN - Chassell, MI - Madison, Wisconsin
We sadly left the Lake Breeze Resort, and hit the road doing our lessons, and finally arrived in Ironwood. After finding our hotel, we swam in its indoor heated pool.
We got to see Lukas Nelson in Chassell Bay, MI, and his historical house that was 100 years old! We walked (and chased) their dog, Freckles about maybe 1,000,000 times! We ate a really neat outdoor picnic! That night, we slept out in the tents in their yard (a week before, bears were in that same spot!), and played Gameboy that night. We played on the computer the next day, and I played football with Lukas, Ross, Daddy, and Mr. Nelson. We were in the middle of the game when we were called in to change and go to the beach! The water was cold so when you got squirted with a squirt gun, it made it feel extra bad! After the beach, Lukas, Ross, and I played tackle football, and got really muddy! We took pictures with everybody, and Freckles, too, of course. We said goodbye, and after our drive got a hotel with a jaccuzi in the room.
My favorite part about Wisconsin was seeing a giant bobcat chase a good-sized jackrabbit, and driving through all of the birch and pine trees! I also liked tasting all the different cheeses.
We saw a giant penny that was a memorial to the “Million Penny Parade,” that was a fund raiser for a hospital that badly needed to be built. We got pictures, and it was twice as high as Daddy, and was three feet thick! But, we were disappointed that it wasn’t real copper. We did a little more traveling that day, before stopping at a very interesting cheese factory. I liked the cheese curds too (even though they tasted like rubber), and we got to see how they were made - or mixed!
5/15 Chicago, IL
We went to the Field Museum, and saw the giant T-rex, “Sue!” The museum had different exhibits from “Where Animals Came From,” to ”Ancient Egypt!” My favorite part was seeing Sue’s head that close up! I also liked hearing a Tomb Raider’s confession. Also appealing to me, was riding the subway and buses, just like in New York, but the subway wasn’t all submerged. Our hotel is really nice; we’re on the eighth floor.
5/16 Chicago, IL
Today, my favorite part was taking a ride in the Adler Planetarium, in a movie called Black Holes, and sometimes you go to control a spaceship, an astronaut, or even a beam of light! In a special sphere, you could see what constellations you could see in the Chicago night sky in 1913! There were also feeze-dried fries and chips. I though they’d have feeze-dried ribs!
We also did the Shedd Aquarium. It just happened to be the largest indoor aquarium in the world! I liked seeing the beluga whales the best, because there was a mother with twins that kept trying to hit us with the air from their blowholes! I also liked the penguins who hold their arms out to keep cool, and the dolphins came really close to the windows and swam upside down.
5/17 Chicago, IL
We went to the Art Institute of Chicago, and there we saw the original paintings of Van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, and several other famous artists. My favorite painting was one of Picasso’s during his “blue period.” We also went to a feeling section for the blind, and I made a castle!
Next, we went to my favorite part of all of Chicago, the Sears Tower! On the way up. the computer told us that from the lobby up to the sky deck, if you called , it could be considered long distance! The elevator only took 17 seconds! At the top there was information from how the tower was built, to the future of Chicago! One last thing . . . robots cleaned the windows because it was too dangerous for humans to!
5/18 - 5/21 Iowa - Nebraska - Kansas
What I liked best about Nebraska was looking at all of the countryside and cities.
5/22 Kansas City, MO
. . . we arrived in Kansas City, had tons of fun playing in the grass, and making up “mummy” jokes. What I liked best about Kansas was going to the International Market, and the museum dedicated to the most famous steamboat sinking ever - the sinking of the Arabia, which was supposedly the most famous steamboat to ever travel the waters of the Missouri River. It sank, and all the cargo was lost, but the passengers were all safe, save one donkey. The ship was sunk by the submerged roots of an old walnut tree that ripped into the hull, causing water to flood the decks, and therefore, sink. At the hotel, I helped with the laundry before watching Anne Frank. The Spurs lost again to the Lakers.
5/23 St. Louis, MO
Today, by far, the St. Louis Arch, one of my favorite buildings in the world, amazed me most! When you looked out, you took it for granted, but when you looked at the two supports, you got really scared. The elevator tipped so you would be going up on your side. The people looked like ants! It was a memorial to the people that traveled for hundreds of miles westward. We also saw the inside of a Basilica.
5/24 AK - Memphis, TN
We went to Arkansas, and then crossed over the big Mississippi River into Tennessee. When we got to Memphis . . . we saw Uncle Michael and Aunt Sue. They had a 17-year-old dog named Ollie, and she licked my face 20 times! Uncle Michael gave us each a candy bar and soda. We also saw Aunt Trish and Chuck!
5/26 - 5/28 Meridian - Hattiesburg, MS
We left Memphis, and were on the road to Meridian, MS. We stopped in Oxford, MS to see where Mama and Daddy stayed while they were in college . . . we did lessons, listened to “Ivanhoe,” and drove to Meridian. . .up the Ridge driveway to Nana’s. When we got out of the car, we exploded in talking and laughter. We spent the night, then joined Great-Grandmother for lunch. We also saw Miranda and Bradley, and Emily and Amanda spent the night with them. After saying goodbye to all, we drove till we reached Dr. Bruckmeier’s, in Hattiesburg. He went to high school with Daddy. We played soccer, frisbee, and chess after a barbeque. Megan turned calm today - 12-years old!
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