Oddities

There are always things that we do and see on every vacation that strike us as odd.  They don't come up in conversations often, but we do notice them.  One of these things is our new understanding of the "golf cart" camper.  This is the camper that generally drives a gigantic RV with a toy hauler pulled behind it in which they have their precious golf cart, which saves them the need of actually walking anywhere.  While this idea is energy saving for some, we have decided that we are not going to become golf cart people.  I actually enjoy walking with my kids and taking the time to stop and notice the little wildflowers growing or the butterflies!  In Kentucky we witnessed the aftermath of a golf cart collision - and though that almost sounds funny, it certainly wasn't after the fire truck and ambulance came to haul off the teenager who got hurt.  That pretty much cemented our decision!

Here are some other odd things we saw and did!

The cutest doughnuts I have ever seen we found at a Walmart in West Virginia.  Aren't these just adorable!  (Way too much frosting to actually eat on the doughnut though)

Lightning Bug/Firefly hunts are mandatory on vacation, aren't they?  What they were called depended on the part of the country we were in - and we hunted for them all over the country. Everyone successfully caught one and then they became little temporary friends.  Never thought I would see my girls playing with bugs.

A sunset rainbow during a thunderstorm in New Jersey - looks like I photo shopped it, doesn't it!  It was a amazing sky.







Sophie after her horrible incident with the hornets' nest - she was totally drugged with Benadryl and we about had to carry her around.  Its the most I've ever seen her hold still.

A blue crab from down in South Carolina - I never realized that they were really that blue!



 When we were in DC at the Museum of Natural History Gabi insisted that I take pictures of all the National Geographic photograph winners.  So this is one of the couple dozen pictures of pictures I had to take.  I felt like an idiot. 

But they are SO CUTE.

We went to the DiVinci Science Center in Pennsylvania and they had the Grossology exhibit there.  My kids learned about things that I had no desire to talk about - and then after learning them they insisted on discussing them.  Oh goody......

Is it possible for children to have too much information?

 This is a climbing wall modeled off a magnification of human skin.  Pimples, warts, lacerations, bruises, etc.  The kids loved it. 

 The untold story of Michael's poor feet... The day we had the bike hitch problem (see June's Louisiana post) he was standing in tall grass for about 5-7 minutes while we got the bikes into the RV.  Then next day when we woke up we discovered these bite marks all over his feet. 

These pictures were taken about 4 days later and look at how bad they still are.  A ranger in South Carolina told him that the bites were likely from No-See-Ums - which neither of us had ever heard of, but when I looked on our bug spray, they were listed.  We certainly didn't see them, so they are aptly named.  The ranger described them as a gnat (they are less than 1/8 of an inch long) with big teeth.  I have no idea if that is accurate, but Michael was miserable.

And then there was this in New Orleans.  The kids giggled so much over this nude statue I had to put it in somewhere.  Isa and Gabi were positively scandalized and doubled over in laughter.  Now I love art, and I even like nude sculpture, but this one isn't a favorite of mine - no offense intended to the sculptor or the lovely city of New Orleans - but it just doesn't do it for me.....


I may add to this post as I go through the 5000 + pictures I took on this vacation!  We saw some strange things.....