Thursday, October 2, 2008

There's No Place Like Home

We've been home for almost a week
from our first REAL family vacation in five years,
And I'm just getting around to posting about it!
Friday, September 19th we loaded up and
headed south to
Chincoteague Virginia.
Lovey works for an Architechtural Engineering firm
that designed the Education Center on the
Assateague Island National Wildlife Refuge.
He actually did the fire alarm, security and
power distribtion work,
so we
Oooh'd and Ahhh'd
over all the cool stuff
that was mounted on the walls...
that NO ONE else ever notices...
UNLESS there is an Emergency, of course.
The Education Center is designed with
ALL GREEN TECHNOLOGY,
so it is pretty cool.
The displays were awesome, too.
Very Interactive.
I liked the one where they told us how important
Tidal Areas are both for
Providing Shelfish,
and also cleaning impurities out of the water
by being
FILTERED THROUGH THE SHELLFISH!!!
Not sure if the meant people to notice that little problem.
On the Island:
we saw the "Wild Ponies" of Assateague,
drove on the beach, watched the wild surf,
learned about sea creatures on display...
those that were alive and not so much,
hiked out to the "Pony Viewing Area",
saw special boxes built as "squirrel house" for
the endangered squirrels that live on the island,
and took lots of photos of the birds of the island...
none of which I can access right now : (
We also took a ride up to the beach after dinner
and allowed the children to get out and see
How Many STARS you can see on a clear night
with NO light pollution.
Saturday, we noticed that our hotel had a cute pony
in the "back yard".
Snorkie kept showing Daddy the "Wild Pony"
...He just didn't get it!
(we got it on tape though!)
We hiked to the Light House,
drove back to the beach,
let the girls have a pony ride on ponies
that were"veterans" of the yearly
"Pony Swim"
(I'm bad at linking...but look it up, it's worth it).
We packed up and headed FURTHER SOUTH
to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Wonderful friends of ours have a condo down there,
and they let us "borrow" it for a week!
We "hung out", went to the Ripley's Aquarium,
"Mini Golfed" with Giant Dinosaurs,
Played at the beach for two days...
collecting shells and digging big holes,
Watched movies, played "Clue"
and discovered that Snorkie LOVES to
"draw numbers" for BINGO using the "tumbler".
He even likes to match up the numbers
with the board used to
keep track of the numbers already called!
We also attended:
Dolly Parton's
DIXIE STAMPEDE!!!
It was really silly and really fun and we had
food left over for DAYS
We came home again in one straight shot on
Friday the 26th...getting home around 9:30pm.
WHEW!!!!!
Luckily, there is a washer & dryer in the condo,
so I didn't have to come home with
suitcases filled with dirty clothes!
We had a Grand time,
and I am SO glad to be back in my
OWN BED!!!