Sunday, June 28, 2009

1st Hanna Family Road Trip

Elise, Sam and I just returned from the first of what we hope will many many memorable road trips. We drove from Jupiter up to Columbia, South Carolina to visit Elise's dad, grandmother and aunt and uncle before travelling on to Washington, DC to visit her other aunt and uncle at their beautiful home on the Chesapeake Bay.

I'm sure Elise will follow with photos of our journey. We pulled out of Somerset at 4:00 a.m. Friday morning. We both concluded that the only way to drive 8 hours with Sam is if he slept half the way. Of the 4 days we drove, we only left after 4 a.m. once and it was far and away the longest day of travel. Other than that day, Sam was a champ in the car. Definitely a Turbeville! :)

Elise and I made two special trips to Target to buy Sam novel toys and books specifically for this trip. We did it again in Annapolis for the return journey and the purchases were worth every penny. He quadrupled his stash of toys in the span of a week!

In Columbia, we ate lots of BBQ and fried chicken (and was introduced to the concept of fried corn on the cob. Though I didn't try any, I was thoroughly intrigued!) and played with a beautiful and spunky weimaraner. Despite the 100 degree + heat we spent one morning at the Columbia zoo. Three days prior to our visit, the gorilla had escaped while the zoo was open. Thankfully, he was behind bars the day we went, because--let me tell you--that was one BIG gorilla. We spied him in the concrete portion of his domicile, arms crossed, back to the visitors, bottom lip puffed out, thoroughly pouting and protesting his confinement. Sam saw elephants and fed a giraffe and a goat. We also went to the Schoolhouse for Father's Day, the best BBQ place in all of SC if not the entire South.

In Maryland, we stayed with Elise's very accommodating Aunt Joyce and Uncle Robert who Sam knew as "Bobotz" (or something like that :) who have a place right on the bay where you can watch giant freighters float by into and out of the port in Baltimore. Our first full day there, Elise was treated to a mini-spa day and shopping excursion while Sam played at the park and I enjoyed a few treasured minutes of quiet to read in the sun room looking out onto the bay.

The following day, we drove into DC. We were cut off by an official caravan on Constitution Ave. The limo sported Texan flags and we hypothesized it was W in for the day. Sam pointed at every tourist double-decker we passed and tried out his new word, "bus". We met up with Elise's cousin, Nick, and his new bride, Sara, for a Vietnamese luncheon. They left today for Manilla, Nick also in the Foreign Service and beginning his first tour. It gave me the opportunity to ask him a few questions about the orals (the next step in the Foreign Service recruitment process, if I am lucky to make it that far) and gave both Elise and I the opportunity to see where Nick and Sara lived while he was training.

To me, that was one of the most interesting aspects of our trip, because it gave us a sense of what life was like for those in training and awaiting deployment. There was a pool at the apartment complex Sam and I swam in, and we got to meet and talk to some of Nick and Sara's friends who were also in the Foreign Service. It was both refreshing and a relief to know that they, too, came from all walks of life, were all at different points in their lives (married, single, had kids and were about to have kids) and also shared a nervous apprehension and excitement.

Our last full day in Maryland was spent in DC. Elise, Sam and I took the Metro into town and visited the Air & Space Museum, the Canadian Embassy (where we witnessed the ACLU still protesting Bush....they must not have gotten the memo....) and the Museum of Natural History. Sam saw planes and rockets hanging from the rafters and the blue whale and elephant at the Natural History Museum. He was so zonked at the end of it all, he actually fell asleep in the back pack on the Metro.

We shared a lot of great moments, not the least of which was sipping a tall boy of Fat Tire in the hotel room in Santee, SC as Elise read from Richard Scarry's "Cars & Trucks".

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