Wicked Wisconsin, Splendid Michigan, Lush Pennsylvania and Funky New Jersey

WICKED WISCONSIN, SPLENDID MICHIGAN 

AND LUSH PENNSYLVANIA

We left Chicago all teary as we had so much fun with ‘aunty’ Cheryl. She recommended that we stop along the way at a Baha’i Temple to see what a magnificent building it is.

One of only seven of these temples in the world, it has been built as a symbol of ‘one-ness’ of humanity and unity of all religions.

As a temple, it is a sight to behold.  It is breathtaking and majestic and beautiful.  It is an amazing building, and a fascinating religion, which invites all to pray to God in any way they chose as they believe that all religions essentially aspire to do the same thing: worship our Creator. Mummy said she had never heard of this religion before but she liked the idea of all humans to finally come together. We kind of liked that too. We like everybody!     

The attention to detail is incredible and the religious signs placed together make it more inviting to anybody, from all walks of life. What a wonderful temple!

Lake Geneva -Wisconsin

As soon as we crossed the border to Wisconsin we came across this wonderful town called Lake Geneva with a spectacular lake in the middle called....... yes you guessed it - GENEVA Lake

Here all the ‘rich and famous’ from Chicago come and ‘camp’ on the weekend

Well, not exactly ‘camp', they spent their time in some of the nicest holiday homes we have seen thus far in this country. Like the one below, which Bella announced will replicated by her and add to her fleet of holiday homes when she grows up. Good one Bella!

We were pretty lucky to arrive in this town that day as they had an art festival going on and lots of artists gathered together to show off their art. We even got involved hands-on and built some artwork ourselves. 

Check out the puppet I made! It probably will not pay for one of those nice homes, but hey - I had fun!

The town left us with a wonderful quote, which has stuck in our memories and that is to always:

House on the Rock - Wisconsin

As we were travelling North in Wisconsin, past lots of beautiful green pastures

With beautiful barns

And beautiful towns full of lakes and ponds

We suddenly came across a sign that said ‘House on the Rock’. Mummy immediately remembered someone telling us that if we ever get to Wisconsin, if there is only one thing we do - it has to be a visit to the house on the rock. And so with no knowledge of what to expect, we took the turn off the main highway and drove toward the most unusual discovery of our trip.

As any naive tourist, we were expecting to see a HOUSE built on top of a ROCK. We have seen some unusual architecture before, some dating back to the Anasazi Indians but we certainly got more that we bargained for this time..

We arrived there in the late afternoon (around 2:30 pm) and after driving up a beautiful driveway with promising sculptures placed around, we came up to the front cashier who told us that we can only see part of the house as we will not have enough time to see it all. 

Then she told us to skip the introduction (i.e. explanation of what we are going to see and who it belongs to) and she proceeded to charge us $85 entry fee. Dad almost fainted – ‘this better be good looking house,’ he said under his nose.

We first walked through the beautiful Japanese gardens and followed signs to the house

But what we found beyond the gardens was the most bizarre and vast collection of stuff - everything from scrimshaw and medieval armor to carousel horses and mechanical music machines – just ..incredible(?)

The original house was a bit claustrophobic, as we found our way through the maze of darkened dens and hallways lit by Tiffany lamps. An automated band played Bolero, the first of some thirty-five music machines on display throughout the house. There was oriental art, low, low ceilings, tight corners, big fireplaces, and carpeting on everything. A very strange place indeed. 

We didn’t mind that ceilings were low - they were good enough for us (cubby house dream?) but daddy had to watch his head all the time as he almost hit the ceilings a few times. What was even stranger was the fact that we later found out that the original owner and creator, Alex Jordan, was over 6ft tall! Go figure!

Here is one room we quite liked. It was called the ‘Infinity Room’. If you don’t like the heights this probably will not be for you as it is suspended up high in the air....

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Outside of the house there were other buildings where we discovered Alex Jordan’s amazing collection of anything and everything! He was an incredible collector; if there was anything to be collected - he would have the biggest collection of it - in the world. Being an artist also, if he couldn’t buy the original, he would create an exact replica. Walking through his galleries and rooms, you either MARVEL at the beauty of his collections or get goose bumps as you feel you have just entered a Twilight Zone. 

Every nook and cranny was stuffed with books, Asian art, stained glass, antique firearms, Renaissance armor, mounted butterflies, Christmas plates, tea sets, lighters, porcelain face mugs, vintage cameras, elaborate mechanical clocks, antique cash registers, early 20th-century produce company advertisements, railroad stock certificates, whisky casks, and an apparently complete replica set of the British crown jewels.  And more, more, more, more, more.  There are dozens of cases of model ships and nautical memorabilia in the Heritage of the Sea room, and room upon room containing hundreds of dolls and dozens of doll houses--not to mention a doll carousel! A three story one of course!!!!!

 

Here is a Carousel that has 20,000 lights (182 chandeliers) which is constantly moving at a steady speed, while creepy, obnoxiously-played music plays for variety of farm animals/fairy tale creatures in botox-looking poses. There are 269 animals/creatures on it (no horses on this one) and the Carousel weights in at.... 36 tons!!!

 This is the largest carousel in the world!  It was quite incredible, but freaky with the loud and creepy music playing in the background.

Anyway, the lady at the front desk was right - we did run out of time to see it all. The collections were just INCREDIBLE and we ended up wishing we had more time to see it all. 

Our parents were so intrigued by the man who created it all that they ended up buying Alex Jordan’s biography and mummy read it aloud while daddy was driving. It certainly was a fascinating story of a man who never grew up and who left behind such an incredible legacy. Love it or hate it, it certainly cannot be ignored. We all left with our thumbs up (even daddy got over the $85 admission fee).  During the next few hours we tried to negotiate the possibility that we too could start collecting -you know- everything... We told our parents we would turn our house into a famous house just like Alex Jordan but somehow they weren’t convinced. 



We drove for another few hours, right to the  ‘thumb’ of Wisconsin

just so that we could find this road mummy saw on internet. 

squiggly little road which zig-zaged all the way to water’s edge. 

There were also al lot of beautiful houses

and barns

and of course some wicked little gardens

MICHIGAN

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior, North Michigan (U.P.)

And so we finally made it to Michigan. We have been hearing so much about it from people we met along the way. We have had a few wonderful guides sending us list of ‘must see places’, which made our trip through Michigan so much more fun. Those people include JoAnne from Dallas who we briefly met in Oklahoma on an ice cream factory tour; ‘Uncle Bob’, who we met in Costa Rica and Kazik (K.C.) (who we have NEVER met but he is our grandma’s friend from school). We would love to thank those people for being our private virtual ‘tour guides’!

Getting back to the trip itself, we started with the North Corner of the Upper Peninsula - the Pictured Rocks. So many people told us that North Michigan was spectacular but we really had no idea how nice it would be until we boarded a boat on Lake Superior to check out the 40 mile stretch of Lake Shore.

Wow! You can see why people wanted to preserve this beauty and turn it into a National Park! Check out the colour on these rocks!

   

The boat trip was just SPECTACULAR!

  

We never knew it, but the Lake Superior itself is the same size as the state of Maine (half of Tasmania for our Australian friends). It is just HUGE!!! And also extremely deep - in fact, if you were to take out all the water and throw it into a 5 ft deep swimming pool, the pool would have to be the same size as the United States! (The whole Australian continent!)

Did we mention it’s BIG? It has it’s own island, called The Grand Island, which is about the size of Manhattan Island (less the high rises). The island was and still is the playground for the high executives.

Our tour guide was very funny and told us a lot of anecdotes during our tour. One of them was about the smart high executives who have their holiday homes on the island. 

One year they decided to bring a lot of animals across so they can go hunting. Seems like a great idea…. until the lake froze in winter …as in 3ft thick solid ice! Of course, the animals just scooted across back to the main land and spared themselves from becoming someone’s trophy on the wall. 

Our guide said it was a proof that the animals are smarter than some high executives. Very funny!!!

After our boat trip we went to check out a nearby Lighthouse. 

And then, also located in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, we went to see the Sable Point Locks, apparently the   Largest Waterway Traffic System on Earth. It sure looked big to us! 

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All of the boat traffic that flows into or out of Lake Superior must move through the Locks of the St. Mary's River, at Sault Ste. Marie. In the olden days there used to be huge rapids there and the connection between Lake Superior and the other Great Lakes would drop some 21 feet! The big boats would tumble down and lose all their precious cargo! And so this lock was developed. Similar to what we went on in Chicago: a ship comes in, they close the gates, drain some water out, and then let the ship go onto the great lakes of Michigan.

Have a look at the two pictures below and you will see how this massive ship just ‘sinks down’ in the Locks. 

UP:

DOWN:

It certainly was an interesting process!

As we drove into the night, we went across the beautiful 850 feet (over 1/2 km) bridge, which links Upper Peninsula with the rest of Michigan. It looked quite spectacular at night.

As we drove across, it was quite late already. We settled in for the night at a ferry terminal car park as we were getting ready for our next discovery - The Mackinac Island! Lucky we have our ‘home' with us, sometimes we can pull up in some weird places (like the car parks) and stay overnight without a problem. 

The next morning we hoped on one of the first ferries (8am one) and we got across to one of the most beautiful islands we have been to. For our Australian friends think: Hamilton Island, for our US friends who haven’t been there - save up and go - it is ‘to die for’.

As we arrived pretty early, we got to see the island BEFORE the crowds swamped the island. It was spectacular! From the architecture, to the gardens to the car-less society - it was like a fairy tale land!

Upon arrival we promptly rented some bicycles (the whole island moves on foot, by bike or via a horse drawn cart). 

We decided to see the island by cycling it around. Daddy and Bella got a ‘connector bike’, i.e. big bike with a small attachment for Bella.

 I got a boy’s bike, of course!

And mummy though she’d be smart and rent a....... tricycle. She had a huge backpack for her camera lenses and a big bag of snacks and this was the only bike, which had big enough basket to fit it all. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I personally think mummy just wanted to remember what it was like to be 3 year old again and ride a trike.

And so we went for a wonderful adventure around the island. We rode past beautiful homes

And beautiful gardens

 

And then we went past the beach. Looking out into the water it is so easy to forget that this is all on a lake and not on the ocean!

As we were peddling along we saw this massive structure made by some bored by-passer. 

Daddy just had one look at it and said in his perfect Australian slang ‘that’s not big, this is BIG’. And proceeded to construct an even bigger and better structure (which even included a sky deck). Needles to say he had a lot of great comments from all the bikers going pass. Only mummy was laughing and saying ‘ what is it about a man and his bigger structures?’

After the construction completion and adequate applause from the audience, off we went pedaling again. 

Along the way someone told us to go to the Mackinac Fort. Having recognised the name from one of the ‘must do’ destinations we had been given by our ‘virtual guides’, we followed the path to the fort. 

It took us almost an hour to reach the destination. The ride lovely as it was, it was mainly up the hill. I swapped with Bella and hopped on Daddy’s little attachment so that he could do most of the work, while Bella was brave enough to ride my bike up the hill. Mummy however was totally hilarious. She was riding her trike at neck breaking speed. Backwards, down the hill that is! Her bags were so heavy that they eventually weighed her down and the bike rolled down the hill. As she couldn’t hop off and walk the bike (the back wheels were too big to walk next to the bike), she made three attempts before she finally made it to the top - sweat pouring and all.  I don’t think she will ride a trike ever again, LOL

At the top of the hill, just outside of the Fort we met a lovely lady. We went up to her and in our best English accent, we asked her ‘Are you Mary Poppins?’ She wasn’t Mary but she was just as lovely.

As we only had only 1/2 left on our bike hire we didn’t go through the Fort but we pedaled down the hill back to the town, admiring the beautiful hotels and gracefully avoiding the horse carriages. 

After we dropped off our bicycles, we had some lunch and then we went on the island walkabout. By now the whole place was packed with tourists. 

JoAnne from Dallas told us the island would be hosting a music festival that day so we went to search for some musicians. Most of the hotels were hosting bands in their beer gardens and we got to watch an Army Band (Air Force) sing and play.

It didn’t take us long to join the party and boogie to the awesome rhythm

After the group finished singing, it took us over 20 minutes to gather them together for this shot. Everybody wanted to talk to them but hey, we ARE very persistent, LOL. 

Here is the Air Force Band

After that, we just walked and walked and admired the views. Mummy couldn’t help herself snapping photo after photo after photo.....

By the time we finished, mummy and daddy were ready to buy a holiday home there. If it wasn’t for the ‘the other side of the globe’ obstacle, who knows - we might have ended up owning a horse and a cart as well....

During our walkabout we learned how one makes Fudge. The whole island seems to be the Fudge capital of the world. This man below was tossing and turning the hot goo until it finally went hard. Now, that’s the job we would love. Although, as daddy pointed out – and rightfully so, we would probably consume all the profits. 

We walked through all the shops, the butterfly house and we even made some friends at the horse riding school on the island. The lady told us that if we come back the next day she would give us free rides -just because she liked our manners. Too bad we were leaving the island that evening...

We certainly left with tremendous memories from Mackinac Island, a place that would easily creep up to top ten favorite places in the USA.

Sleeping Bear National Park - Michigan August 2012

We ended up spending a couple of nights at the Sleeping Bear National Park. It’s a place where the massive sand dunes meet the ocean (ooops - a lake). Lake Michigan stretches out so far that you could swear you were staring at an ocean. It is absolutely stunning! 

We stopped along the way to have a look at this wonderful overlook. You could see some brave people climbing up from the lake. They looked like if they were little ants, it was so far away.

Both Bella I decided to just get down a little bit. Then a little bit more. Then we did a few jumps, hops and skips and before you knew it we were down at the bottom splashing in the refreshing water. We had so much fun, we forgot to tell mummy we were going all the way down. I think she figured it out after we were gone for over an hour (daddy followed us, mummy couldn’t as her massive camera and sand don’t seem to mix very well).

It took us over 45 minutes to climb back up. We felt like we were taking two steps forward and one back on a slide. Knee deep sand and extreme heat was not helping either. But finally after a massive climb, we made it to the top!

Bella of course was the first one to appear. She then went back half way down to help me up and still beat daddy to the top.

And if that was not enough exercise for us, we drove up to the Coast Guard Rescue Centre, where we got to re-enact a rescue mission. Of course Bella was chosen to be the ‘Lyle Gun’ as she runs at a speed of a bullet. 

We got to deliver a rope to the stranded boat and managed to rescue these two below.

The Ranger then taught us how to place the rope back in using the 'faking box'. This way the rope never gets tangled. You just put the box upside down and fire the Lyle Gun towards the boat.

At the Marine Museum we also got to learn how to spell words with different flags. From the distance it might be hard to communicate so the ships sometimes use flags. Here I spelled my name, Jordan.

 And this is how you spell Bela – no, it is not our spelling error – they only had one “L”! Lucky there was no emergency that required another “L”!

On the way out of the museum, we noticed an unusual stick. Well, a real lively one, literally. It was in fact a stick insect, which we named ‘Sticky’. 

Down the road from the rescue center we found an old blacksmith shop. A man taught us how to sharpen an axe. You never know when such skill might come in handy...

Daddy swapped ‘recipes’ with a younger blacksmith. After all he loves his welding now – with his Santa Fe classes and all.

On the way back to the campground we thought we’d give some more 'up the sand dune running' a go. Just to make sure we had enough exercise, you know.

The campground at the Sleeping Bear was also fun. There were a lot of people camping and we were lucky to even get a spot. And what a spot we got! Somebody cancelled last minute and we ended up with a waterfront ‘real estate’ right next to a playground. Sweet!

 

We met our next to neighbors and then some more people and we spent our last night by the fire chatting and having fun until we got told off by the grumpy security man who instructed us to go to sleep. Ouch!

And this is what happens when you think that all the possible wonderful people out there - you have already met….

Not only did we have a good time at the campground - we also got invited to Heather and Nate’s home the following day. They left early in the morning and we had to ‘tick of' a few more places off our list.

We went to a wonderful Polish restaurant, which got recommended to us by KC (our grandma’s friend). It was a very famous restaurant, with beautiful gardens, sculptures and of course, yummy Polish food.

We drove for a while through beautiful forest, where our parents had almost three heart attacks watching people come ‘flying’ towards us from opposite direction.

But then the beauty of wonderful sunflower fields soothed us

And while we were driving something amazing had happened……. I lost my front tooth. Boy was I excited! A sure way to score a couple of bucks from the Tooth Fairy!

I even discovered that I could poke my tongue without opening my mouth. Neat, hey?

We ended up spending the night by the side of what we would call back home a ‘Billabong’. Like a little lake but this one was without the crocodiles.

We arrived at Heather and Nate’s B&B (remember we just met them at a campground?) the next morning, on Sunday. Well, it’s not really a B&B but might as well have been – their hospitality was just INCREDIBLE!

First after arriving we, the kids, got to play with Izzy’s chickens. She was nice enough to show us around her fun playground. The grownups meanwhile discussed our activities for the day.

 

 

We were thrilled to discover that we were going to spend the day on Heather and Nate’s party pontoon – yeehaa!!!

So we packed up a picnic (well, Heather did most of the work) and we ventured off on to the Lake White, which connects to the mighty Lake Michigan. The boat was awesome!  It was perfect for us kids to run around on as well as for our parents to kick back, enjoy some beer and wine.

Nate even let Bella and I drive, which was way cool! Mummy nicknamed Nate - Kid Rock because he just bought himself this fancy hat and was driving his boat in Northern Michigan (you know the song… “All summer Long” – he looked just like that). We even put that music on to imprint some nice memories! We stopped the boat on our way back, set the anchor and we all went for a swim, it was ‘ah’ so refreshing!

When we got back to the shore we met Nate’s parents (Lori and Brian) who just came back from a sailing trip. They have a beautiful sailing boat, which they use all the time. Nate told us some wonderful stories about him and his brother growing up with boats and sailing every chance they got with their parents. Sounds like super-fun! Mum, can we get a sail-boat?

After we played for a while at the marina and all the grown ups enjoyed a lovely glass of wine (or two), we ended up going to Nate and Heather’s home for a …party. Woohoo!

All the people who we met the other day at the campground came over to enjoy Master Chef Kid Rocks’ cook up. It was fabulous!

Mind you, Heather should be also mentioned here, as it is the Wonder Woman who entertained her guests, while holding little Vivian and preparing all the food herself before the party started. Hey we offered to help but the Wonder Woman had it all under control. And what a fabulous job she did!

We, the kids, spent most of the night chasing the chooks.

I also played doctors with the dog.

She is a lovely gentle doggy who we nicknamed Dingo, because she ….well sort of looked like one. 

The grownups chatted all night and had a great time too.

Mummy managed to gather us around at one stage for a photo. Now question for you: how do you get so many kids looking and smiling at the camera at the same time?

Simple, a best smile competition…you bribe us with ice creams! 

Mummy then passed me her monstrous camera and I got to snap a picture too. Here are the grownups from the party.

And to finish it off (as if that was not enough, LOL) we had our own private FIREWORKS and played with sparklers. 

and then watched a Chinese lantern floating up and up into the skies. The dads lit a small candle in the lantern, which then filled the balloon and off it went into space. Wow, what a night that was!

In the morning Nate had to go to work early but Heather (the Wonder Woman) not only cooked us a fabulous breakfast (with a menu matching top resorts, LOL) but she also showed us how to make headbands. 

It was totally fascinating! We got to choose our favorite colors of ribbons and we ended up with some beautiful headbands. Aren’t we just spoilt?

Heather and Nate also gave us some cucumbers to take with us with a special recipe for pickles. Yum, Nate makes pickles to ‘die for’ and now we will be able to carry his tradition….all the way to Australia.
It was very sad to say goodbye to our friends when we were leaving. We decided, after huge family deliberation to name them the 'Kid Rock Head Band’ friends. 

It was sad to go but the good news was that this was not the last day we would see them.

See, Heather happens to be a hairdresser and daddy was in a desperate need for a haircut (mummy was even calling him ‘Kramer’ or ‘Crusty the Clown’ when he attempted to hide his jungle under the hat and it was sticking out sideways). Anyway, we organized to come back in two days as we were detouring somewhere and would be returning through the same town.

So after packing up some pickles we got back on the road. We went back north a bit to a place called Silver Lake. We tried getting a campsite there a night earlier but they were way too busy. It was one of those Yogi Bear Jellistone campgrounds and it looked like super fun!

We returned to Silver Lake mid afternoon and spent the rest of the day at the Yogi campground. There was so much to do there for kids like us. We met our next-door-neighbors and played the rest of the afternoon in the pool and at the playground. We also ended up having a really nice fire that night with our neighbors Amy, Tony and their kids.   Of course we managed to smuggle a S’more (or two ) - sorry mum!

The next day was totally ace. We went to check out why this place (Sliver Lake) is so popular in summer. The massive sand dunes are playground for all sorts of crazy motor sports, right at the base of a wonderful Silver Lake. Wow, what a sight! Initially we only went to the base of the sand dune just ‘to have a look’ but within minutes we decided to ditch our shoes and go crazy climbing the dunes. Mummy and daddy followed us. We went over one, then two then three, then who knows how many more!

 

As we were walking we spotted something yellow lying at distance. It looked like one of those sand toboggans and so we both darted across those dunes to get to it. After climbing this massive dune we finally discovered it was a yellow t-shirt and not a toboggan.

As Bella was closely inspecting what was written on it, somebody from distance yelled at us ‘Put it down. Now!’. Bella quickly dropped the t-shirt and looked around. 10 seconds later whole bunch of half naked people ran right past us! Apparently we were in the middle of some serious boot camp and the t-shirt Bella was holding was a marker of where those people had to turn. Oooops! Lucky we didn’t try to use this marker as a toboggan and slide down that huge hill! They would ALL have to follow us!

Fascinated by the boot camp training we both decided to join the group and run up and down those massive dunes. We were so good at it; we virtually kept up with those almost adult teenagers. It was a blast!

After all this exercise we went for a dip and a splash in the water at Silver Lake. It was incredibly refreshing.


We had to recharge our batteries, as we had to climb this little mountain to get back to our car park. Hey check out the real estate next to the dune. If it was for sale mummy reckons you could advertise it as a ‘temporary vacation home’ - one big wind will make it disappear. Oops!

In the afternoon we spent the rest of the afternoon at the campground - fishing with daddy and our next-door-neighbors.

I was even lucky enough to catch a little beauty!

 Which of course I kissed and released back to the wild

In the evening we drove to the ocean for a sunset. OOOps, A lake that is - it was so easy to mistaken this beautiful body of water for an ocean. Especially when one is playing on the beach watching the sunset, taking photographs of a lighthouse and seeing an OCEANLINER (cargo ship) go past! That is a one massive lake!

We ended up making friends with Kaitlyn, and Collin; kids our age whose parents were also there to photograph the lighthouse. 

While our parents were talking photography, we ran up and down the sand dunes and built some seriously good looking sand castles.

By the time we all parted, it was totally pitch black.

Our next mission: get daddy’s hair mowed down! We drove back to Heather’s salon who graciously fitted daddy into her busy schedule and turned him back into the handsome man he once was.

While daddy was getting his hair cut, we looked through all sorts of magazines. Bella even chose her hairstyle for her wedding day…

 

Before we got to Heather’s salon, she rang us and told us that her parents in law- Lori and Brian (who we met the other day) have invited us for dinner. See every Wednesday their whole family gets together for an afternoon and a dinner. It just happened that it was Wednesday that day and we got invited to share it with them. How special is that?

Of course we said yes and straight after daddy’s hair was back in order, we went over to Lori and Brian’s place, which just happen to be the nicest house in the town overlooking the lake.

 

We had a wonderful afternoon with our friends. We ate and we played and we ran around chasing each other – it was super fun

We even got to dress Vivian’s grandpa

Mummy took a few nice photos for them – here is a good one of Heather, Nate and the girls’

 

We left Nate’s parent’s place about 8:30 pm and we though we might still be able to make it to Bob’s place that night.

 Let’s pause here for a quick description – we met Bob in the pool in Costa Rica some 6 months ago and then found him again in another town of Costa Rica where we listen together to a Costa Rican man sing “Bamboleo” to us. If you remember that blog entry – the singer could not even hold a tune if it was in a bucket, LOL.

Anyway, we have been corresponding with Bob ever since and he’s been asking for us to ‘drop by’ when we come to Michigan. He had also been the main contributor as our virtual navigational system through the Michigan area (giving us places to ‘tick off along the way’, for which we were very grateful).

So right after dinner at our….friends we hopped in to the car and decided that we might still make it to Bob’s place tonight. That was before we plugged in his address and discovered he was still three hours away. Ooops! We called Bob and told him that we might be arriving at midnight. He didn’t seem to mind at all and said that if dad was up for the drive he will wait up for us!


And so at midnight we have arrived at Bob’s place in Hartland, Michigan. Not that THAT stopped our parents and Bob celebrating till the wee hours of the morning.

The next day we got to see Bob’s wonderful estate- an awesome 5 acre block RIGHT on a lake…..with all sorts of watercrafts imaginable– stupendous!

From the minute of our arrival to the minute we were leaving (some three nights later) our time with Bob, his girlfriend Sally, his Mum Dorothy and all the neighbors around – was nothing but a HOOT!


Bob had so many wonderful surprises for us; we don’t even know where to start!


First we met Bob’s mum – Dorothy. Grams Dot, as she would be referred to from now on (that’s what her grandchildren call her). We had breakfast with them in a lovely restaurant the first day and we found out that Grams Dot and Bob had a surprise for us up their sleeve. See Grams Dot happens to be a pilot and -as luck would have it- happens to own a light airplane – and she offered to take us up to show us Michigan from way above. Holy Smoke – are we lucky or what???

Gram’s Dot took us to her huge garage and opened the door and out popped her airplane (well, it didn’t really pop out – rather….. appeared).

 

Grams showed us how to do a proper pre-flight inspection; how to check if there is enough fuel in the tanks (don’t want to run out of juice while we were flying!)

 

We also learned how to do ‘taxiing’ at the airport – no, not catching a taxi – taxiing is what you call driving the plane to the take off area. And once the plane is ready, you yell out ‘prop!’ out the window (meaning I am switching on the propeller so get out of my way) and then press pedal into the floor while counting: one-Mississippi, two –Mississippi, three Mississippi – blastoff!!!

Soon enough we were up and up away! Woohoo!

Mummy and daddy took turns; we couldn’t fit everybody at once so Grams Dot flew us twice – only mummy and daddy swapped, we remained as permanent back up crew.

The view was spectacular, even though it was a bit hazy. We flew over Bob’s home and waved to the neighbors.

 

Speaking of the neighbors – we met them all! We promptly introduced ourselves to them after our flight and before you knew it, we had a 3-day party going.

On both sides of Bob’s house there were kids and it didn’t take us long to persuade “Uncle Bob” to zoom us around on the tube for hours.

We had so much fun! Mummy tried to capture our acrobatic maneuvers on the tube but every time we went up, like way into the sky, our driver and paparazzi in the boat were just landing back in the water. Needless to say mummy enended up with a few bruises from her heavy camera hitting her on the forehead. Ouch, sorry mum!

When we eventually ran out of fuel we were just as happy to jump off the jetty. Bob’s dog, Lady, was just comical – she would jump off into the water and then climb the ladder to come out…so that she could jump off again. She was a splendid swimmer and she would swim with us wherever we’d go. Here she is in action, jumping off the jetty.

And swimming.

A little pontoon just off the jetty also got a workout. All the kids would jump off one at a time or all together at once. Even Lady joined us for a few jumps.

 

While the grown ups sat on their party pontoon consuming beverages and having jolly good time, we just run and swam and played.

Bob’s neighbor, Rob, at one stage got his jet ski out and created massive waves. We all try to retain our balance while he totally drenched us and tried to push us off the pontoon. It was a blast!

 

Speaking of blasts, Uncle Bob got another one of his fancy toys out – a rocket! He lit it up and KABOOM it went up to into the sky. And when it was ready to fall down a parachute unfolded and the rocket slowly descended back onto the lake.

We would then get into the rescue boat (the pontoon) and scoop it up from the lake…… just to make it go KABOOM again.

We all got to zoom around on the next-to-neighbors jet ski, which was super fun!

We went to a nice restaurant with Bob and Sally (his awesome girlfriend) where we watched grown-ups cook their own stake on a super hot stone (which apparently came from Australia). Daddy certainly couldn’t complain about the way his stake was cooked in this restaurant- he made it perfect himself.

The three days at Bobs went past so quickly and we were just so sad to leave. Now we understood where the Australian saying ‘Bob’s your uncle’ comes from. Bob might not have his own kids but he is the best uncle one could ever have.

Just before we left we had to make sure we turned ‘Uncle Bob’ into an Aboriginal

 

We left Bob’s place with sad puppy faces. We had so much fun with Bob, Sally, Grams Dot and of course the swim champion Lady. Why on earth would we want to leave?

But I guess that’s the nature of our travels: we meet people, we get to know and really like them- then we have to leave. Life will tell whether they’ll become lifetime friends or awesome but distant memories. Either way, we hope that we have enriched their lives as much I they have enriched ours. At least we will have this blog to make sure we’ll never forget them.

Anyway, getting away from philosophy and back to our travels. After leaving Bob’s place there were two other people we wanted to visit in the state of Michigan: our friends we met in Mexico and Kazik aka KC (our grandma’s high school friend).


Now, I know this might sound strange but a lot of people we met along the way are friends who happen to live in Michigan or nearby so our trip has taken a bit of a turn from just sightseeing to… visiting friends. Not that there is anything wrong with that!

Next stop on our list was a visit to our friends in Rochester, Michigan. Ms. Cammy, Mr. Jason, Katie and Jack – we met them in Cancun, Mexico last year. We called them our Doctor Friends, as Ms. Cammy is an Obstetrician, a doctor who catches babies when they first come out and Mr Jason is in Pharmaceuticals (a fancy word for drugs), hence they will be forever remembered as the Doctor Friends.

We spent a fabulous day and night with our doctor friends. First we all wandered up the road to check out their neighborhood pool, where within seconds we felt like we were back in Cancun, Mexico. We, the kids, splashed around all afternoon and the grown ups worked on their suntans and enjoyed a cocktail…….or two.

In the evening we sat outside at a built in outdoor fireplace and cooked some s’mores. This is what you call luxury camping!

Mummy and daddy stayed in a lovely guest room while Bella, Jack, Katie and I built this wonderful fort in their playroom and we bunked out together for the night – it was super-fun!

We got spoiled in the morning with a wonderful breakfast and then, after some hugs and goodbyes, we headed off on our happy merry way….

Straight after we left our Doctor’s Friends we went to an outlet center to find a present for Daddy – it was his birthday that day – 21^st birthday of course (again!).

And when we returned to our car we came across a bit of a shock.

Mummy opened her laptop and found out that Kazik (K.C.), our grandmothers’ friend who also lives in Michigan was expecting us to arrive the day before and was desperately trying to contact us. It didn’t help that we left both our computer and our phone (which had numerous messages) in the car (ooops!)– by now his whole family in Dearborn and ours back home in Australia were panicking – thinking we got kidnapped or something.

Oh, boy! We worked it out that it was a bit of a miscommunication: mummy told KC we will be there after we have breakfast for daddy’s birthday – well, Australia is a day ahead of the USA so when KC rang our grandma and ask to confirm when daddy’s birthday was, she said ‘today’ (well, maybe in Australia but not in the USA, not for another day, LOL). Anyway, to cut a long story short – poor KC was panicking that something had happened to us (especially when we weren’t picking up our phone) and so when we finally got in contact with him, he was relieved that we were still alive. Sorry KC!

The first thing we did when we arrived and finally met our grandma’s high-school friend (who we have been corresponding with for the last 3 months) was to call our grandma and tell her we are still alive

 

She sure was happy to hear from us!

Even though we have never met KC before, we quickly became good friends – he looked after us like if we were his own grandchildren; every 5 minutes he was checking up on us, often asking if we were hungry, LOL.

With our caravan/travel trailer, neatly tucked in on the neighbor’s driveway, we moved in with KC for a few days. He even gave our parents his master bedroom and both Bella and I had a room to ourselves! How special was that?

Mummy and daddy really enjoyed their nightly discussions with KC over some liquid called the Grey Goose (French clear liquid…  water, I think) and we had fun getting all the attention from his many friends and family.

One of KC’s friends is Pete, who is absolutely hilarious. When Pete and KC get together they are like a funny old couple, bouncing jokes off one another. Everybody gets in stiches from laughing!

One of the days Pete invited KC and us for breakfast. We went over expecting to go to his house, but no- Pete opened his reception center (ball room) and organized his cook to prepare us the most delicious breakfast ever! We had the whole ballroom with beautiful chandeliers to ourselves! We sure felt like celebrities!

We even got to drink orange juice FROM the bar!

KC, being an excellent host, showed us what his home town is so known for – the marvelous Henry Ford Museum. We spent a whole day exploring this incredible collection of cars, train, automobiles and anything else that in last 200 years was worth remembering.

From great cars 

 

To the biggest steam locomotives in the world (which by the way was never used as they worked out after it was built that it was not economical to run it)

 

to the early planes

We saw massive engines that were used for (oops can’t remember)…something useful, I am sure…

 

And we tried our luck in creating electricity by ‘human power’

We watched some old time television - although they didn’t seem to work that well: the colors had disappeared. Maybe they just faded over the time…

Not sure why but daddy said this room (below) made him feel ancient.

KC took us over to the airplane section and showed us how to make really groovy planes out of the paper. We then went inside a designated area where you could test the paper planes. Ours were by far the best ones! They had ‘engines’ and all!

The museum had an incredible Titanic display. See it was the 100^th  anniversary of this famous ship’s disastrous end. In April 1912 the ship hit an iceberg on her maiden voyage from England to New York and sank, killing 1,513 passengers.

It took scuba divers 74 years to finally locate the sunken ship and with the modern technology of sub-diving they were able to recover a lot of memorabilia of those who perished on board Titanic.

As we entered the exhibition, we were given a boarding pass with our pretend names on it (chosen from actual people who were on the Titanic). 

We had to go through the display, which lead us through magnificent corridors (replicas of the actual ship), and we had to search for our belongings.

We also, at the end of the display, could look at the boards and find out whether our ‘characters’ survived the trip or not. Both Bella and I made it. Unfortunately KC and our parents (who incidentally owned Sears in New York – a very expensive shop – for Australians: think Davis Jones) did not make it.

Seeing this display with a name of an actual passenger in your hand certainly gave us a different perspective.

They even had an actual ice-berg (albeit a smaller one) in the exhibition. We could put our hand to it (it had human hand indents on it) and feel how cold the water was. WOW!

It took so many years to find the ship that a lot of the artifacts were quite eroded but nevertheless, it was an incredible display.

They said that the ship could have had 64 lifeboats but because they didn’t think it look too nice, they ended up taking only 20.  Big mistake!

Lots of people lost their life that night.

The exhibition did not allowed to take pictures and so all the photographs you see here are courtesy of Google Images.

We spent the rest of the afternoon checking out incredible car collection within the rest of the Ford Museum.

Below was our favorite car in the whole place. It sure looked……delicious!

The next day KC showed us Detroit, a city, which is probably the most contrasting out of all cities we have seen on our trip.

We saw the beautiful part of the city, with big buildings

Manicured walkways

Awesome boardwalks

Great, unusual restaurants (on the ship)

Fantastic water features (where KC, Bella and I got totally soaked chasing each other through the fountains – ACE!)

We then (still soaking wet) walked through the huge GMC headquarters. These is where all the bosses push their pens around the paper. The entry and foyer were exquisite.

We also got to choose our favorite cars. Here is mine.

And then we went to see the “NOT-SO-NICE’ part of town. Only a few miles out of town, people live behind bars, which cover every entry (doors and windows) to their homes. Below is a picture of a burned down house.

The next picture was downloaded from Google Images. Mummy didn’t have the guts to open the door as every third or fourth house on that street looked just like that one! What’s worse is that most of them get burned down as a-wait for this………….a Halloween joke!!!

Needless to say, we couldn’t wait to get out of THAT neighborhood!

During our stay with KC we had numerous wonderful parties at his home. All his friends (and family) were most welcoming and fun!

One evening we went to visit KC sister Krystyna, who lives in a beautiful home in a great part of town.

She made us yummy cake and let our parents try numerous delicious vodka concoctions 

Mummy made sure she collected all the recipes for the drinks, as apparently they were delicious, not that we would know ANYTHING about that!

Krystyna invited us the following day to come and visit her at work. She manages the cosmetic department at Macy’s. Anyway, Macy’s had a huge sale on and Krystyna topped it off with a 20% discount card she gave our parents to use. Oh boy, did our credit card get a work out! It’s funny how one can go from not needing anything to suddenly needing whole heap of stuff when they are on special! Krystna took us home to KC’s that night and stayed back for a little party KC cooked up again.

We had a wonderful stay at KCs (for which we are grateful) but unfortunately time had come when we had to get going. ‘Hit the Road Jack’ has become our goodbye song lately, we seem to sing it every time we pull out of our friends’ driveway….

After leaving Michigan, we drove through Ohio and stopped briefly near Cleveland.

Pennsylvania – 4^th September 2012

The next morning we set our compass for Pennsylvania. We were really looking forward to exploring some more about the Amish and there is no place like Pennsylvania where the grass is plenty and the Amish have flourished.

But there was one important stop we needed to make on the way – we had to stop and say G’day to our Bumble-Bee friends who have relocated from Kentucky to Pittsburg, PA to study medicine.

It was so awesome seeing them again. They are such fun people who live by a few simple rules, which are ‘right up our alley’

  

We arrived mid morning and so we all wondered off to a farmers market, where we immediately were drawn to a man who was selling honey. He even brought a few ‘workers’ with him and gave us stickers for spotting the queen.

We got to taste different type of honey -hey, we are becoming quite connoisseurs! We also got to try all different fresh farm produce and bought enough jam to last us a century, LOL.

One of the stores we saw some beautiful dresses, which we both liked but mummy was adamant she was not going to spend any more money. Lauren then said to her ‘you know what those dresses are made out of?’. ‘No’ mummy replied to which Lauren explained to her that they were made out of …pillowcases! She also told us she would make some for us when we get back to the house.

And true to her word, as soon as we got back, Lauren pulled out a sewing machine and a couple of pillowcases and off we went sewing.

 

A chop here, a chop there, a little ribbon, a little stitching and – voilà! The best pillow-dresses I have even seen!

Lauren also gave me a gift – to match my stethoscope she gave me in Kentucky (which I hardly ever part with), she surprised me with a REAL doctor’s outfit – Crikey, now I really look like a doc! Lauren even shortened the pants so that I can walk without falling over. Boy, I look awesome!!! Don’t you think?

The doctor’s outfit certainly came in handy, when suddenly Bear (their beautiful Labrador) got stung by a bee! Both, Kurt and I ran to the rescue – we put Bear on his side and Kurt removed the stinger while I monitored his breathing. He seemed to recover pretty well considering I miscounted his pulse and presumed him dead.

I did learn how to do ‘pulse taking’ properly on Kurt, though. Hmmm, should I be a human or an animal doctor?  Not sure yet.

Speaking of bees, I don’t know if you remember in our Kentucky update- Kurt’s parents agreed to transport Kurt and Lauren’s three beehives (with 50,000 buzzing bees) from Kentucky to Pennsylvania in their car. All seemed to work OK until they got to their last street, when one of the beehives proceeded to …fall over and out came the bees! Ouch!

Nah, nobody got hurt – luckily they soon arrived and managed to get out of the car and put the bees back in the hives.

Before the bees’ arrival, Kurt went around to all their new neighbors and mentioned to them that they would have beehives in their backyard. He built a fence around the hives so nobody could get too close to them. The neighbors were fine with that (they all got a bottle of yummy honey). What was funny though was when Kurt got a phone call one day from one of his new neighbors to tell him that his bees were getting out of their enclosure… He actually had to explain to someone that the bees usually leave the beehive during the day to collect nectar and they can easily navigate over a 6-foot fence. LOL

The costumes came off extremely fast when the hot, humid day suddenly cooled by a few degrees and the rain fell down from the sky. We all run out first to get rained on and do some dancing in the puddles.

Then we just played tackle football rolling in the grass, and the rain and the mud and we chased each other, getting totally filthy and ….loving it!!!

The only reason we went back inside is because the sky started it’s own fireworks and the thunder was getting louder and louder.

The next day was also a very fun day – we went to the local petting zoo. It wasn’t an ordinary zoo though, it had some big and fancy animals as well – like these two kittens below. We weren’t allowed to feed these ones. Probably because we were their snack size!

There were a few animals, which made us feel at home, like these little ‘Roos’ for example. We told our Bumble-Bee friends that the kangaroos come in different varieties, from a little 18 inch tall wallabies to the giant Reds, which can get as big a 7 feet!

The Kookaburras were also hilarious. Daddy told them an Australian joke and the birds were laughing their heads off. People were coming from everywhere to observe it as they rarely hear these birds make any noise. Daddy explained to them that Kookaburras are very territorial and if anyone starts making a similar noise to them, they will ‘compete’. It was so funny – we had a crowd around us, while daddy was ‘talking’ to the birds. Kurt was clever to record them on his I-phone and for the next 15 minutes Kurt was playing it back and getting them to respond. People were laughing out loud because Kookaburras sounded like they were laughing too. We were all in stiches from laughing!

We fed all sorts of animals; horses, sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, camels, buffalos – you name them, we fed them.

Some animals got really good at getting attention, like this little goat below

Some were indeed hungry but some ….just wanted a little kiss

Some even insisted in the sloppy tongue kisses too, LOL

On the way back we picked some pizza and we spent the rest of the afternoon in a nearby park, playing in a playground and walking some trails. It was super fun! Little Griffin was like a little brother following us everywhere.

In the evening, when we were getting ready for bed, mummy got an email on her lap top computer from somebody we met in Mexico for literally a couple of hours. They were about to leave the resort as we have arrived.

Jackie, who we obviously exchanged details with, wrote to us that they have been following our blog for the last 6 months and can see that we are heading to the East Coast. ‘Please come and visit us when you get to New Jersey. P.S. We have a holiday house on the beach, you are welcome to use it for as long as you wish’. Mummy almost fell of her chair. ‘WOW’ she said to our Bumble Bee friends, showing them the email ‘is EVERYBODY so nice in the United States?’ Only when we think that we have already met ALL the wonderful people in this country, we get surprised like this once again. Do we want to stay on the beach in New Jersey? How could one even contemplate to say ‘no’ to an offer like this? Heck, yeah!

The next morning we had a teary goodbye with Kurt, Lauren and the little Bumble-Bee, Griffin. Something tells us this might not be the last time we see them. It is still sad to say goodbye.

Mummy tried to cheer us up and it wasn’t really till she mentioned the word ‘Hershey’ that our smiling muscles took over again. Say what?

We are going to the sweetest place in the United States, my children – buckle up!’ mummy exclaimed to our absolute delight.

The Hershey Factory (the biggest chocolate manufacturer in the US) was still a day away and our parents still wanted to ‘tick off’ a Harley Davidson factory along the way. As our luck would have it we arrived just after closing hours, at 5:30pm. Daddy walked around the building to see where we would have to come the next day (the factory was massive) but he came back with bad news – no children under 12 years of age could see the assembly line tour – Bummer! While our parents seemed a bit upset about the news, I just innocently asked “does that mean we get to Hersheys sooner?’ Mummy and daddy both burst out laughing ‘You bet!’ mummy said.

While we stopped for a break at Harley Davidson’s car park to cook some dinner, both Bella and I got on our scooters and we practiced our aerodynamic tricks. ‘Does Harley make scooters?’ Bella asked. ‘I don’t think so honey’ mummy responded ‘ and even if they did, I don’t think you could get them up in the air so easily’

Oh, yeah, just in case you noticed I was still in my doctor’s uniform. We stopped to get some groceries along the way and I had people coming and asking me if I was a doctor and if I could help them. I didn’t even blink, when I turned on my upper class English Accent (which I learned from Mary Poppins) and said, “What seems to be the problem?” Mummy thought this was the funniest thing she had ever heard.

Hersheys –Pennsylvania

You know that you had arrived in the Hershey Town when the streetlights turn to ‘kisses’ (famous chocolate) and the streets start having yummy names.

And then you see this Kid-Come–True building called the Chocolate World. Daddy recons that if he were to live in ANY world – it certainly would be a Chocolate one. We tend to agree –yummo!

We spent the whole morning at Hersey’s. We went on a little trolley which took us on a free ‘factory tour’. It is almost like being on a ride somewhere in Disneyland, where cows sing and chocolate flows from the pipes. The tour explained to us how chocolate is made -did you know it grows on a tree to start with? Mummy can we plant these trees when we get home??? And get a cow?

The best part was the end when we got to test different chocolates.

Then of course there was the Hershey’s shop, which is a horrible place to go to when you parents insist that you don’t need anything. ‘But mum, where else can we buy Hershey’s Biggest Chocolate in the World?’

As much as the chocolate and the process of making it fascinated us, our parents were just as fascinated by the man who created all this, Mr. Milton Hershey.

Mr. Hershey, who was born more than 150 years ago, has the most wonderful rags to riches story or parents have ever heard. Not only did he start with nothing, but by the time he was 43 he sold his first successful company (Lancaster Carmel Co) for $1mil – and that was in 1900!

Then he not only invested all that into Hershey’s chocolates, he also built a whole model town for his employees: beautiful homes, tree lined streets, great public transport, quality schools, and extensive recreational facilities, including huge swimming and amusement parks.  He always said, a happy and content employee is a productive employee.

And to top it all off he and his wife started a school for orphan boys and in 1918, and after his wife died prematurely, Mr. Hershey give his whole fortune (all company stocks) to the school. He worked for the benefit of his employees and the school for another 27 years until he died. What a man! What a chocolatier!

Now at least when we want to buy some chocolate all we have to do is say ‘But mum, it’s all going for a good cause’. How could she possibly say ‘no’?

Lancaster - Pennsylvania

We left the town of Hershey that afternoon and headed straight to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where we checked into a nearby campground and off we went to find some Amish people.

We were in luck of course as the Lancaster area has about 30,000 traditional Amish people living and farming the land. We were greeted by lots of horse drawn buggies, white picket fences and a town, which beautifully blended the cultures of Amish and English (non-Amish) together.

A huge Target shop for example was especially equipped with horse buggy garages so that when the Amish come to shop they can easily park their wheels of transport.

It was almost surreal walking through the shops and seeing whole families walking in, all color coordinated and immaculately dressed. There is something incredibly fascinating about them.

Our parents took us on a couple of tours so that we could learn more about the Amish culture. First we went to an Amish Farm – a household, which is no longer used by the Amish, which got converted into a museum.

We toured the house and its many rooms, learning lots. We have learned for example that the reason the Amish do not have electricity is not because the don’t like electricity – they simply believe that if they allow themselves to have electricity, next thing they would be doing is buying radios, televisions and computers and with that they will get possessed by world’s problems. They wish to live a simple life and not get their minds polluted.

On our farm tour we thought we would wear our new dresses Lauren made for us- we figured we would kind of blend in. What do you think?

I even got myself a little bonnet and a gorgeous little ‘faceless’ Amish doll.

We walked through the whole farm

And looked inside the school. It was beautiful.






Check out the size of the book they have to study!

We then went on an organized bus tour, which took us to a few farms.

We got to try some wonderful Amish soft pretzels – they were just scrum-didly-umptious!

The next morning Mummy and Daddy treated us to a horse buggy ride with an actual Amish man. Chris was his name and he was awesome! He let us sit in front with him and help him drive Sally, the ‘musical horse’.

We called her a ‘musical horse’ because she had certain gas problems and every step she took, she would…. well – fart. It was totally hilarious, especially when she was trotting! Fart, fart, fart, fart…. fart, fart, fart, fart – oh, boy did we have the giggles going!

Chris was really funny too. Unlike most Amish people he didn’t mind being photographed. He said that some people still mind but a lot of them don’t. He said ‘if it makes you happy, it makes me happy’. Well he sure made us happy! What a nice man!

He showed us some farmers who didn’t mind having their photo taken

And even some kids driving little miniature horse and buggies.

Chris also showed us a school, where the kids just finished for the day. 

We went to some people’s farms

And drove through Amish people’s backyards, where kids had prepared some cookies for us – it was just such a remarkable experience!

Chris also commented on our dresses He was very impressed when we told him they were made out of pillowcases. We were over the moon!

What amazed us the most though was how comfortable the buggy was – we could’ve kept riding for hours! ‘Mummy, can we get a horse and a buggy when we get home?’

It certainly was one of the highlights of our trip.

On our way out of town, we noticed a sign that said ‘5000 dolls here’. There is no chance we would let our parents go past this one, oh no!

When we went inside we were in absolute awe! Even mummy stood there with her jaw to the ground. Daddy immediately warned us not to get any ideas.

The dolls were just beautiful – one prettier than the other.

Oh, check out these Asian little girls! They were so adorable!

The owner’s son (who was dressed as a doctor) also took us upstairs where they had an actual baby nursery. One can go there to ‘adopt a baby’. Awww!

Mummy looked up at daddy with pleading eyes when we were holding two adorable twins but there was nothing that would persuade him to part with $165 for each of the babies. How sad – we already had names for them and all….

Our consolation prize was two little dolls, which fell under the $20 mark (combined!). Mind you, we were just as happy!

Philadelphia - Pennsylvania

Our final stop in Pennsylvania was Philadelphia, where we stayed for a couple of nights, spending a full day sightseeing this beautiful city. There we went to learn a little bit about USA history. Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia in 1776. Also we have learned that Pennsylvania was once the capital city of the USA. I know that’s probably in every American’s knowledge bank but for us 6 and 7 year old Aussie girls it certainly is an interesting Trivia.

We also went to have a look at the Mint. Unlike the Mint in Denver, where you have to book 5 years in advance to check it out (ok, slight exaggeration), we were able to go straight in on a self-guided tour, which was quite fascinating.

Mummy wasn’t allowed to take pictures (just in case we would like to copy the process) so it’s a pity we cannot show you the ‘assembly line’. It was fascinating to learn how the coins start with a concept and then get sculptured by artists and then get turned into a coin.

The final step on embossing the coin is done by this massive machine, which literally stamps the coins with a force of 2 trains travelling at 130 miles per hour smashing into each other…., ouch!

This factory produces over 20 million coins a day. Neat, hey? ‘Mummy can we…..’ ‘NO, that’s illegal’ mummy responded without waiting for me to finish the question. Is she a mind reader or something?

An interesting thing we have learned is that every coin has a little letter engraved under the ‘In God We Trust’ script. And this letter tells us whether this coin was made in Philadelphia OR in Denver. As you can see the coin below came out of Philadelphia Mint.

We went for lunch on the renowned South Street. Of course we had to try their famous Philly Cheesesteak, which was way delicious (although Grandpa Sherman from Santa Fe would be happy to know that it did not top the Chicago Italian Beef Sandwich he recommended).

We finished the afternoon with the ‘Please Touch Me’ kids’ museum. We were so excited to go there – how many museums you go to where they ENCOURAGE you to touch stuff? Oh yeah, this is OUR idea of a museum!

As we walked into the building, our parents’ jaws dropped to the ground – the building was just stunning! Mummy was getting dizzy from looking up and taking pictures of the ceiling. Round and round she went until she had to stop to find her equilibrium. No idea what that was but she said it must’ve fallen out. While she went looking for it, we ran around to......well- touch some stuff.

There were lots of playrooms, which had different themes. We played some music

 

We played doctors in a kids size hospital, where we became the doctors

And x-rayed all the patients

Then we tried our luck serving at McDonalds

I even made some buns at the bakery!

But the most fun we had was at the little people’s supermarket, where we got to shop till we dropped

And daddy became our check-out chick!

The day finished on a high with a lovely carousel ride

 

as well as a kiddies concert in which we participated with our ever present excitement!

We spent the night at the campground in New Jersey, right across a border from Philadelphia. There we met a really lovely Romanian man, Tibi, who put on some music in his car when he saw us dancing in the rain jumping over paddles. That evening we all joined Tibi for a fire and some marshmallows at his campsite.

In the morning we packed up early and drove all the way to the coast to see Atlantic Ocean for the first time in our lives. We also couldn’t wait to get to the holiday home  and catch up with our friends who we met in Mexico.

New Jersey - September 2012

We spent the most wonderful 4 days in Lavallett, New Jersey. I am not sure how we got so lucky but Jackie and Bep thought we were nice enough to give us their holiday home, which was super ace! 

We arrived mid morning on Friday, parked our caravan/trailer on the side of the house and spread our wings in this wonderful 5 bedroom home. Ah, how’s the serenity!

We were only a couple of houses away from the beach, and what a beach that was! We couldn’t wait to get into our swim gear and jump into the Atlantic Ocean. And get our toes (and everything else) full of sand. 

 

Jackie, Bep and their wonderful kids: Pia, Dori and Julian brought us over some yummy dinner, which Jackie (the Master Chef) prepared earlier.

After the dinner, they asked us if we wanted to get some ice-cream down the road. Say what? An icecream? You betcha!

What we didn’t expect though is walking to a theatre restaurant where the waiters are like Broadway actors singing and performing the funniest comedy ever!

As we walked in, the show had already started and so everyone greeted us with a huge applause. They had a joke on my behalf as I walked in in my doctor’s uniform so they assumed I was coming straight from the surgery.

We didn’t even get to sit down when daddy was called up and asked to read one of their items off their menu. Everyone was looking forward to listening to his Aussie accent. But they also tried to trick daddy by getting him to read something, which was half in gibberish, so daddy told them we did not have those ingredients in Australia.

Bella was ‘plucked out’ of the crowd to do the dance with an absolute hilarious performer (aka Jim Carey), who just climbed through the window!

She is quite a performer, our superstar Bella!

During the whole show we laughed so much our cheeks were hurting. Mummy even cried from laughter.

This is the man responsible for the show and fantastic ice cream restaurant – anybody who travels to New Jersey HAS to check this show out (oh, yeah, the ice-creams were great too!)

And here is our group with all the performers who we entertained for another half an hour after the show. 

They even sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Bella for her up and coming birthday and we returned the favor by singing for ‘Money, money’ by ABBA to them. They said they have never heard of young kids who know ABBA songs. I guess mummy tries to keep us in the dark ages for as long as she can.

We gave them all big hugs before we left.

They all even signed a placemat for me to remember them.

The next day we went to visit our Beach House friends at their real home, not too far away. Their house was beautiful but then again what would you expect – Jackie is a talented artist indeed!

She showed us some of her wonderful work in her studio

And check out the guitar she is working on right now. It will be going into an exhibition in New York!

We got to play with Dori and Pia a lot. Seems like we have a lot in common. They also have the American Girl dolls. Pia has my favorite horse-riding outfit for her dolly.

In the afternoon we got to see Julian play in the band at the senior’s football game. This was our first ‘exposure’ to the American football and my, do they have a lot of players playing on their team!

The game was very interesting although not knowing much about it we spent most of the time watching the pom-pom girls (cheerleaders) dance to the wonderful music Julian was playing.

 

At one stage mummy was glad we were watching the game from behind the fence.

There was a photographer on the other side who almost got squashed by a footballer who ran at her like a truck with no brakes.  Luckily, she escaped without injury and thankfully managed to save her camera!

After the game finished we went to give all the players hi-5 and joined some local kids for a game.

Apparently we broke 27 rules in the first 5 minutes of the game. Oh, boy. I guess this aint no Aussie Rule Football! We were hoping they won’t notice!

After the game our friends’ neighbor invited us over to her place for a swim at their pool. Since we did not have our bathers, the girls lent us theirs. Daddy almost fell over when he saw us wearing these.

It was so refreshing hopping into a pool – the weather has been very, very hot so a nice dip was just what ‘the doctor ordered’. It was so nice of the neighbors to invite us.

In the evening we found whole bunch of different musical instruments in Jackie and Bep’s home. We all got together for a jam session. Daddy even brought his Didgeridoo. Man we were so……noisy. You are lucky these pictures have no sound! Oh boy!

I got totally psyched by this trumpet.

We spent the next day hanging out at the beach house. It was so nice to just kick back and do…nothing. Even though this is a very long trip for us, as you can see we don’t spend too much time in each location, and so we try to jam in as much as we can into each and every day – which as fantastic as it is – gets a bit tiring. So this was our ‘chill’ day off.

After lunch Daddy and Bella go stuck into puzzles.

Mummy and I decided to leave our two brain athletes to do their thing and we went for a long walk on the beach.

With the camera of course!

And when we got back after an hour or so, the two Einsteins have already finished a 300 piece puzzle! Wow! Mummy and I could never do that! We both go by the policy that ‘if it doesn’t fit, we’re gonna make it fit!’ I guess that does not wok that well with puzzles.

The evening was very fascinating. We went to watch Beb and their son John (who incidentally just arrived from Italy where he is studying photography) and some of their friends –  go surfing!

This is their favorite past time. Bep, doctor by day and surfer by night, had a few good tricks up his sleeve. We all watched them as they took on the big waves, dodging sharks along the way (ah, wait, no-no sharks – got it muddled up with surfing back home, LOL)

The sunset was also spectacular!

Anyway, it was a great night hanging out with their friends at the beach. Jackie made delicious hamburgers, which fed everybody within a half a mile radius (She is a great chef!)

He next day we all went out to dinner together.

Mummy also took a couple of photos of this wonderful, fun family. We’re sure going to miss them! Reluctantly we said our goodbyes that night.

After saying goodbye to our next-to-neighbors at the Beach House, who we incidentally befriended as well (surprise, surprise) – we hit the road once again.

This time the direction had changed as we run out of land to travel east- “Let’s check ut New England and it's autumn glory’ said mummy....Daddy just nodded in agreement and headed North.

Do you like the colours of Autumn? Oh, I think you will be in for a treat!

Join us for an update next month.... 

Till then “Hooroo” (Australian for see ya!)