An Aerial Tribute to East Coast Road Trip 2008 (and other various highlights).

Part of this summer's adventure was to take a road trip up the East Coast with Alexis and the boys. The itinerary included Philadelphia, Connecticut, a couple days in NYC, a day in Boston, a passing-through of D.C., and various small town excursions along the way. I decided early on that since I was just a smidge away from paying $50 for a suitcase overweight by 5 lbs (I don't do math, but I'm pretty sure that's a pretty ridiculous rate per pound. Oh, that's embarrassingly easy math....10 DOLLARS per POUND! OUTRAGEOUS!!. They actually told me I'd have to pay, and then I put on this really pouty face, unzipped my suitcase, and put my hands out like I just had no idea how I would solve this overweight problem, and then they took pity on me and just put it on the cart. Three cheers for pouty face.) that buying souvenirs would be a really bad idea. You can't overuse pouty faces, or, like many medicines, they lose their effectiveness, so I didn't want to take the risk of adding more weight to the baggage. Point being, I decided that the only souvenirs I needed were jumping pictures. You'll find them lovingly scattered throughout the following summary of our tour:

PHILADELPHIA

After 8 hours or so in a minivan (I now have hours of experience driving a minivan. If you're looking for one, the Honda Odyssey comes highly recommended.) with antsy (and your classic: "Are we there yet?" Nope, still got...7 hours.) but still really cute children, we rolled into Philadelphia Monday night, the week of the 4th. I took a day off on Tuesday and toured myself around all the historical sites. Can I just say that I'm increasingly of the opinion that the best way to spend one day in a city is by yourself?

This is me and the Liberty Bell. Far more symbolic than it is useful, but it still deserved a little picture.

This is me in Independence Hall, folks, in the very room where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and signed, and the Constitution drafted!

And the crème de la crème of all jumping pictures...I bring you, ME on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art i.e. the Rocky steps!!!!

You might be thinking, wow, she's really bold and rude for making a stranger suffer through multiple takes in order to get the perfect jumping shot, but really I just made Burke drive downtown, park his car, walk around to the front of the museum, and then suffer through multiple takes to get the perfect jumping shot. Worth it.

One other Philly highlight: eating lunch at City Tavern (where some of the Founding Fathers drank their colonial brew and first voiced their grievances) and being offered a free dessert. I'm not sure why, but it had something to do with them thinking I was upset about something. I wasn't.

Oh, and if you have the chance, go sit in George Washington's pew (you know, the one right next to Betsy Ross's) in Christ Church. Very cool experience that leads to some fortifying thoughts on the spirituality of our Founding Fathers. These are some people that I hung out with in said pew:

CONNECTICUT

After a couple days hanging out in Philadelphia with Burke (yay, Burke!) and Alexis' sister, we drove to New Canaan, Connecticut, to stay with their mom, Kathy. The day after we got there, we drove to Norwalk, CT to visit Stew Leonard's. No, this is not my great uncle, it's the world's largest dairy farm, as featured on Ripley's Believe it or Not! Believe it, folks, it's the most Mackenzie-friendly grocery store you'll ever see. Free samples combined with dancing bananas equals fun, fun, and more fun. We celebrated the Fourth of July in New Canaan. Guys, this is the way the Fourth should be done. Quintessential Americana: the entire town gathers in the city park for fireworks. While people are picnicking and playing various games on the grass, the city band is playing patriotic favorites. The conductor is even wearing a red vest and one of those....hats that I don't know the name of. NEW YORK CITY

We drove into NYC the day after the Fourth. In the morning we went to Central Park Zoo to entertain the children, but Scott, Burke, and I were far more moved by the polar bears than any 5 year-old there. Tell me if this is not one of the cooler things you've seen in a zoo:
A polar bear bum! Adorable!
My lovely friend Ashley met us later in the day for lunch, some random wandering and looking at sights, and dinner. In honor of the Berkeleyites' reunion, a really great jumping pic was taken in front of the fountain of the Plaza Hotel (by the way, Home Alone 2 is my favorite Christmas movie, and much of the movie takes place in said hotel. Every time I hear "Plaza Hotel," I hear it in the voice of that really obnoxious, nasal, weirdly-accented concierge):

And, the highlight of the NYC trip, a visit to the Middleton Doll Newborn Nursery, home of the infamous Baby Nubbins (see Act III: Babies Buying Babies - I'm telling you, people, this is EXTREMELY WORTHY OF YOUR TIME.)

That night, Scott and I went on a little sibling outing to Wicked. I like Broadway, and witches, and Scott, so it truly was a great night.

On Monday, I took the train into the city and met my history buddy Mitzi at Ellis Island. I really, really, really love history. Like, REALLY love history. I think I could look at historical photographs for hours and hours, or at least until my eyes started bleeding. Fortunately, we didn't have that much time.

That's Lady Liberty behind me, if you can tell.
Then I took the subway up to the east side to meet Ashley for a New York slice (did you know that you can get chicken pizza where the slices of chicken are actually breaded and fried? I became aware of this after I ordered.), and then I took the train to Queens to meet my old freshman year roommate/really amazing friend Kelli, whose greatest moment was remembering her ice cream.

We took a walk around the block, and I discovered these really great fallout shelter signs that are all over the buildings. Kelli said it looked like I was falling out of a fall out shelter here:

Favorite Queens Moment: Crossing a street and passing this guy who said, "When I saw you I fell in love with you you're so beautiful!" all in one big breath. Um, thanks!!

Then we spent the next few days in Connecticut, during which time we:

1. Went to Super Duper Weenie. Really great dogs, really great milkshakes, but they don't have regular, yellow mustard anywhere on the premises. Just that brown spicy stuff. Explain this to me.
2. Hung out at the beach, where we spotted a Canadian geese parade and taught Nate the art of jumping pics,

3. And made weird faces.

(Do I get something for actually bringing this photograph of myself into the public eye?)

WASHINGTON, D.C.

We passed through D.C. for a night and a morning. We went to the National Air and Space Museum,

and then commenced on The Longest Road Trip Ever. It went something like this:

4:30 pm - 62 miles from Richmond

5:30 pm - 45 miles from Richmond

6:30 pm - 26 miles from Richmond

and so on. After we finally got to Richmond we still had almost 4 hours left.

We finally arrived home at good ol' Clemmons, NC, where I ate a piece of toast and went to bed.