SPECTACULAR NEW ENGLAND AND WHAT’S UP ON THE EASTCOAST

SPECTACULAR NEW ENGLAND AND 

WHAT’S UP ON THE EAST COAST

This time the direction had changed as we had run out of land, so off to the North we went!

As the luck would have it, we came across New York City once more (if you remember we flew to New York City just before Christmas last year). It was such a nice surprise to ‘stumble’ across New York one more time.

 

This time instead of staying in a nice hotel, we parked our home on wheels on the other side of the Hudson River, in Jersey City. 

The campground (well, more like gravel parking lot) was positioned next to a ferry terminal and was also walking distance to a rain station. The train zoomed us across to New York City in no time.

Once again, we beat our record for walking. There is so much to see in New York City. We stayed there for two full days and boy, did we walk!!! We initially retraced our favorite spots taking in all the sites. Everything in New York seems to be bigger and better!

In the evening we got to our favorite spot, Times Square (where else?). There, we posed for this lovely Statute of Liberty, who, not sure why, was extremely keen to take a photo with us.

We then ended up having dinner in our favorite restaurant, the Hard Rock Café. We kind of had an alternative motive to go there. See about 10 months ago, we met this fantastic waitress Tara, who we promised we would write to but unfortunately Bella lost her details. We like to keep our promises so after 10 months we were back…

Unfortunately Tara moved on to another restaurant and no one could tell us where.

After a lovely meal at Hard Rock Café we walked for ‘forever’ to get back to the train station. By the time we got there we were soooo tired. Our parents had to piggyback us from the station back to the campground and by then we were like two sacks of heavy potatoes over our poor parent’s shoulders. We were totally zonked out!

When we got back, maybe we were done with adventure but not our parents, oh no! They put us in pajamas and gave us some blankets and we drove around till 2am (!!!) taking night photos.

This particular day and night were very special for New York as it happened to be the 11^th of September (9/11) and so mummy and daddy really wanted to pay the tribute to those who lost their lives in the Twin Tower tragedy.

We found a memorial place, where mummy lit a candle. The lights, which you see on the right, are there to remember where the buildings once stood.

Here a few more night shots of New York City.

The next day, there was no resting for us – we put shoes on our sore little feet and off we went to catch the train again. Today New York was celebrating Fashion Week and so we went in search for some…well…. fashion stuff.

After searching for a while, we came across the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Celebration. We got to the front door but the man in a nice suit said we needed a special invitation to get in. Bella asked him if he could specially invite us but he said he couldn’t. He wasn’t even allowed to go in himself. He did show us a huge screen in the front though and so we watched the fashion parade as it was taking place. And oh, what a show that was! All those fancy girls walking around, swinging their hips and stopping for their ‘one deadly’ look! It was ace!

After the parade we scooted across Central Park in New York to get to the Natural History Museum. We’ve been dying to go there ever since we watched the movie “Night at the Museum”. Have you seen it? It is really good!

We got inside the Museum and got lost for over 5 hrs! What a huge, beautiful museum that is! We do however need to report that here have been a lot of changes made since the movie. Well, the movie was really made up and apparently filmed in Canada so all ‘the inside of the museum’ you see in the movie aint’ really there. Luckily the outside had not shifted anywhere; it’s still in Manhattan.

There was no Teddy (Theodore Roosevelt) on a horse, Dexter (the monkey) was nowhere to be seen, and Larry (the night guard) has apparently never worked there!  And what’s worse is that Sacagawea (the Indian lady who helped Lewis and Clark walk across the country) was also on the missing list. Her diorama (pretend statue) was apparently transported to Washington D.C.  Oh boy, we were disappointed!

Our faces brightened up really quickly though when we saw Rexy, the massive T-Rex Dinosaur from the movie. Lucky he was asleep.

But what got us totally ecstatic was finding the Easter Island Head, to us known as the ‘Dum-Dum’. We were more than happy to oblige, as the movie suggested – and feed him some ‘gum-gum’.

We spent hours walking through he museum admiring their incredible collections of gigantic fossils

Wow… the taxidermy animals and ‘framed and hung’ bugs. What a display!

 

On the way from the museum, we walked through Central Park and admired some street entertainers, who as usual did not disappoint in their performance or in emptying our parent’s pockets.

We then made our way back to Times Square (ay, all this walking!).

 There we participated in a communal ‘Mug Shot’, where everybody who could possibly fit into the view of a camera, got photographed and displayed on the huge screen in Times Square. Here is the billboard:

And here we are:

And if that was not enough fame for us – we climbed up to this open space in the only window still left in Time Square – and we danced like no one was watching! With over million people walking through the Times Square every day, there is a slight chance that we were actually…….well - quite noticed! Strike a pose, sister!

Tired from all the walking, our parents once again had to deal with a ‘sack of potatoes’ all the way from the train station to our cozy home on wheels in New Jersey.  Two miles each way!

The next morning we went for a drive to a really nice neighborhood of New York City to visit our French friends who we met in Bryce Canyon some 5 months ago. They were up for an adventure as well and decided to come to the USA for a couple of years so that their children would learn fluent English. What a way to learn!

Sebastien and Muriel prepared us a lovely BBQ lunch and we also got to meet and play with their 5 year old daughter –Noemie. They also had 4 older children who were all at school and a little baby Dana, who was only 8 weeks old. So much work with all the children, yet they still had time to see us and compare ‘notes’ with our parents about differences in the three country, USA, Australia and France. Of course we kids, did not care about the grown – ups conversations and so we snuck out with Noemie to play dress ups. These games NEVER get boring, doesn’t matter what language you choose to speak.

On the way back to New Jersey (our campground) we drove past a very famous shop called ‘Carlos Bake Shop’. For many of you back home the name ‘Cake Boss’ would probably be more familiar as it is a well-known Reality TV show. Well, the reason why we came up here at night was that during the day the queue (line) would be so huge, that the traffic will be a total jam! Mummy was reading on the computer that people sometimes wait 4-5 hrs to get a cupcake from Buddy, the Cake Boss.

For those of you who don’t know who Buddy is, here a couple of pictures we downloaded from Internet. Check out some of his creations.

Needless to say, he is a very sought after cake maker!

When we were leaving our campground the next morning, daddy decided to drive past the shop anyway. That is with the car and home on wheels attached – the whole 48 feet (14.6 meters)!

Navigating through the tight traffic was half the problem but trying to park the rig once mummy discovered there weren’t that many people waiting was another kettle of fish! Ayayay!

Mummy just told daddy to park somewhere and she took us both into the shop, where after being given a ticket we still waited over half an hour to be served. But man, was it worth it!

The cakes were all so lips-smackingly delicious looking that we found it hard to choose. What’s even funnier is that they didn’t have price tags on them. You just get to the front and order whatever and hope for the best! Luckily the four cupcakes we have chosen did not break the bank at all.

When we finally got outside we ran to find daddy and see if he did not bail on us. But no, daddy was there, waiting for his muffin, blocking most of the traffic and apparently garages to people’s homes. When we hopped into the car he told us a very funny story about a man who wanted to get into his garage.

The man pulled up next to daddy, wound down his window and asked him in a Mafioso-kind of way ‘you gonna be long?’ When daddy said he hoped not because he was waiting for us to get back, the man said in his New Yorkan/ Italian accent ‘Where’s ya people at?’ Daddy was getting really worried (not knowing if he was going to get his head blown off) but when he told him we were in the bakery the man just smiled and said ‘I knew you were gonna say dat, take you time man’ and he drove off.

Mummy just laughed and told daddy he just met Cake Boss’, man no 2 of the Cake Boss– Mr Castano who was just giving us autographs as we were leaving. Well, we didn’t get the autographs, as we had no idea who he was but the fact that people almost crushed us to get a photo with him must’ve meant he was kind-of important, right?

Before we move on to the next adventure, here is a rhetorical question (new word we’ve learned that day)  for you: are New Yorkans related to Sicilians? They sure sound like them!

Now that we had embarked on our - oh so sweet journey out of town, we had to get across a very big bridge.

As soon as we pulled up to the tollbooth, a lady told us that we cannot go that way with our big rig but have to travel on a different level of the bridge. What? You’ve got levels on your bridge? Apparently so! Now, how on earth would you turn your 48 feet around on a 5 lane highway full of traffic and go back???

Simple, you get yourself a Police Escort! Here is a picture of a policeman stopping all the traffic going to the busy Long Island and letting us turn around. He then escorted us through the hidden gates onto the upper level of the bridge.  That’s with lights flashing all the way! How fun! Hey, how many people do you know who get escorted by Police in New York City? Yep, that’s a first one for us as well! Woohoo!

CONNECTICUT – September 15^th 2012

Ok, our next destination was the New England area. Mummy could not wait for the foliage colors to change – she’s been hearing so much about this ‘New England Fall’ phenomenon     (new word once again). Location, camera and……..action! Wait, no….. the colors have not yet changed!

Now, for those of you who don’t know what New England means this is a quick refresher: it is an area consisting of 6 different states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. This is where most of the English people initially landed starting from 1620. Well, they didn’t really ‘land’ – there were no planes back then – they sailed in a massive, beautiful boat called Mayflower! And then by other boats…

As we were driving through Connecticut on our way to our lovely campground in a beachside State Park, we drove past a University. Mummy told us that if we ever wanted to study in the USA this is one of the few places she would approve of.

The place was called Yale and the town it was in was New Haven. It looked pretty nice with what seemed like thousands of students walking around – all with some purpose in mind.

As we were progressing slowly through the traffic, mummy was entertaining us with all sorts of facts about this town. Apparently the very first lollipop originated here! Yum! So did the corkscrew, fish hooks, Frisbee, silly putty, rubber boots, artificial heart and American English Dictionary. I guess they needed the last one to add words like: y’all, bummer, dude, and zonked out….

I wonder if we could write an Australian English Dictionary? Maybe we could include words like: Barbie (BBQ), G’Day Mate (hello friend) Billy (teapot), bloke (a man), sheila (a girl) and a ripper! (fantastic!).

I bet we would have a lot of fun with that one!

After we eventually made it out of town, we found a lovely State Park called Hammonasset. There we made a few friends and helped them catch some crabs. It was so much fun. They were very impressed that we could tell the difference between males and females. We were lucky to learn that last year in Oregon. It’s amazing what we have learned on this trip.

Our journey continued toward the border of Rhode Island. We found out there was a castle hidden somewhere in the mountains, which belonged to William Gillette. He was the man, who introduced Sherlock Holmes to the theatre and television. And if there is a castle, which belongs to a detective or a spy – we wanted to see it!

The place was quite fascinating. After watching a short movie about Mr Gillette, we went up and had a look at his lovely castle.

He built the castle in 1914 and he paid local farmers a dollar a cartload to haul fieldstones up the hill to be used in the construction. It took him 5 years to build it and another 5 to fill with unusual furnishes such as a movable table on tracks. Instead of pulling your chair to and from the table, you can pull the table in and away from you...without scratching the floor! Clever, hey?

There is also a 4ft-locking bar, with which he would play tricks on his friends. Gillette would open the bar, pour his guest a drink, and then make some excuse to leave the room. He would tell his guest to help themselves to the liquor cabinet if they wanted another drink while he was gone. He would then lock the bottom half of the bar with a hidden lock that he designed. A mirror in the room opposite hung in such a way that Gillette could see what his friends were doing in the bar from the second floor corridor. He would watch as his guests tried to re-open the bar. Once he felt they had struggled enough, he would then return to the room and just open the bar without telling anyone about the locking mechanism. The look of confusion on the faces of his guests was even more amusing than watching them try to break into the bar in the first place! 

We like these kind of jokes!

The castle itself is a maze of twists, turns, and hidden passageways making it like a playground for us, with lots of places to hide and explore. There are lots of built-in couches and shelves filled with over 1000 original books owned and read by Gillette.  Fancy reading that many books!

The castle also has 47 doors and all of them are totally different. The complex carved door latches and light switches are amazing. 

Mr. Gillette loved cats and also …..frogs. He kept two live frogs called Mike and Lena. Unfortunately the frogs kept going missing (the cats?) so he just replaced them with another…..Mike and Lena. And then another...

We walked through the castle and we also enjoyed the beautiful views overlooking the River. What a fascinating place!

Rhode Island

We arrived in Rhode Island, the smallest state of the United States. It is only 48 by 37 mles long (60 by 77 km). That’s about the same size as Houston’s bus system. But with the state’s motto "Size Doesn't Matter", it’s quite a pretty place to visit.

We found a really lovely state park, where we set up camp for the night. The reception informed us that the playground area would be occupied by a lot of people who will be rising in the morning at 6 am to pray and sing. Very loudly. They decided to put us back -somewhere deep in the forest. What they forgot to mention is that we would be camping next to a …..bucks/hens night party. A ‘little’ party where people get extremely drunk and loud before they get married. Not sure why….

We decided to spend most of the afternoon and night exploring the Capital of Rhode Island, Providence. That night they were advertising a wonderful light show in the city so we though we could check it out.

When we arrived after battling traffic for a while, we went for a walk to see a spectacular Capitol Building, which can be seen from very far away. And my, was it beautiful! Apparently it has the second largest unsupported dome in the world (the largest is in Vatican, which was the inspiration for this one).

On the way back to the river, where the show was going to take place, we thought we’d stop for dinner. Apparently the rest of the city had a similar idea and after walking forever, we ended up going to the mall (shopping center) and having something in the food court.

We then went down to the river and admired the beautiful sunset. The show had already started and crowds were large so it took us a while to get to the front. Eventually, with some patience we got to the barricade and we watched their annual Water Fire show. They had row boats and kyaks with oversized, illuminated fish on the front and they went around. And around. And around. And around again. The music being played was very, very monotonous. And so we waited. And we waited. And waited for something interesting to happen. Eventually, after about half an hour of that Bella said at the top of her voice ‘Serious? Are they just going to go round and round in circles? Did we drive all the way here to see this?’ At this moment people around us burst out laughing and said that they were thinking the same thing.

Disappointed we figured we needed to make some fun out that night so we found a hill nearby where lots of people were picnicking, watching and waiting patiently for …the fish to go the other way (perhaps?). We proceeded to roll down those hills for an hour straight. Now, that’s what you call fun! Soon a few people joined us and we had our own party going!

We got back to the campground late that night and we went to bed while mummy and daddy decided to join the party next door. ‘Well’ they said ‘if you cannot make them quite – join them’

The next day was much more fun. It was Sunday and the town near the bay was running an awareness party called ‘Save the Bay’. We never really found out what they were saving the bay from but boy, did we have fun!

We went rock climbing

And learned how to fly fish

We also joined the local hockey team for a game. As we were the smallest ones in the group we soon negotiated a few changes to the game, like swapping the ball for one of decent size

…like the beach ball.

Here is our happy team.

In the afternoon we went for a drive in Newport, one of the ‘toffee’ parts of town. We drove down a street called, the Millionaire’s Mile, where mummy was taking pictures and Bella was taking notes.

In the evening we went to a local, famous pub called the Brick Alley and ate a finger-licking hmm-hmmm dinner.

Massachusetts – mid September 2012

We spent three days in Massachusets, the state of beautiful colonial homes, nice gardens and yes, some more Dunkin Donuts. Not that we had any!

We based ourselves in a lovely state park just outside of Boston, where we spent the first day just chilling out. We caught up on some homework and then we just did a lot of creative things, like draw and paint and cut stuff up.

Bella and daddy went to the store in the late afternoon to get some s’more supplies and mummy and I started a fire.

When daddy and Bella got back daddy proceeded to cook us some wonderful food for dinner, 

while Bella and I tended to the campfire trying to keep our hands and clothes clean. Which we did amazingly well!

 

The next day we drove back south to Cape Cod, a little bay area, which extends all the way into the ocean. There we played on the beach for a while occasionally spotting humpback whales spouting and playing ‘peek-a–boo’ with the whale watching boats, which seem to dive round and round in circles.

For lunch we went to Provincetown, a very happy little town, with lots of restaurants and arty, touristy shops.

We stopped in an outdoor dinner called ‘The Burger Queen’, where a funny man with a big burger hat and a tiara took our order and made sure that everybody in the shop heard that daddy was ordering a ‘big boy burger’. While we waited for our meals to be cooked, the funny man swapped stories with us about our favorite princesses.

When we finally sat at the table, I asked mummy at the top of my voice ‘Mummy, how come this restaurant is called The Burger Queen when only boys work in here?’ Mummy though for a second and then in a lower voice said ‘You know how you are a bit of a Tom-boy and like to pretend you are a boy?’ ‘Yes, I said’. ‘Well, these boys used to pretend they were girls and I guess they never grew out of it’. “Huh?’ I said ‘You mean they are still Tom-Girls?’

On the way back to our campground we stopped to take some photos of a local lighthouse.

We also went to Plymouth, a place, which was recommended by JoAnne, our friend from Dallas, who has been our virtual guide ever since we met her in Missouri. She told us that her 14^th great grand father, Stephen Hopkins sailed to America aboard the famous ship Mayflower in 1620. So we went to check it out.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know who your 14^th great grand pa was?

The replica of Mayflower set beautifully in the snug harbor of Plymouth Rock and it was quite breathtaking. Unfortunately we didn’t get there on time to be able to go on board but we got to admire it until the sun ducked down. And to think that this boat was able to house 102 people for 65 days across the Atlantic! Now, that’s what you call brave!

The next day we went to visit Boston’s Museum of Science or as mummy calls it ‘school on steroids’. Whatever that means. It was awesome!

We played with and marveled at all sorts of gizmos.

We even contributed to the museum by designing all sorts of ‘Make Your Own Museum’ collections. 

Bella of course had to step it up a notch and made puzzles out of her collectables.

One of our favorite stations at the museum was learning and designing our own animations. We could design a fish and then ‘plunge’ it into televised aquarium. It was so much fun!

In the afternoon we went to check out another University, which is on mummy’s ‘approved school list’ if we were ever to study in the United States.

Wow, what a beautiful setting. Right on the river, where students can row, overlooking beautiful Boston. All the buildings seemed to be very old and beautiful.

As the luck would have it, we got stuck in peak hour traffic, with the most stunning sunset ever and nowhere to park. What is it about Universities and traffic? Mental note – buy a bike when we go to the University.

Anyway, here is a little shot over the shoulder that mummy made out of the car.

And over the other shoulder.

We really liked Boston (pron. Bwoston), even if they talked funny!

New Hampshire

As the luck would have it, New Hampshire had a few celebrations going on the weekend we arrived.

First we decided to join a Scottish Festival and the Highland games, up in the mountains.

It was fascinating watching big strong men in skirts (oops. Sorry – kilts) throw big balls.

Of course we got right into the spirit of the festival, we even dressed the part.

  

We met a lot of people; in fact we met ALL different family representatives (CLANS).  They gave us special passports to get stamped by every Clan and so we went all the way around, meeting everybody.

We even met the family of Braveheart.  Mummy said we are allowed to see the movie or read the book when we get a little older, one of her favorite ones.

Heck, we even learned how to dance like a Scott. Out and cross and hop to the side and weeee – spin around and out and cross and …you get the picture, right?

The whole day was a blast!

   

The campground, where we stayed was also a real hoot! What initially looked like a close-knit group of semi residents quickly turned out to be a fun group of weekenders who had nothing else but party in mind.

Once again we have learned that one should never judge a book by it’s covers. Just because someone has a mohawk on their head and beer in his hand does not mean they cannot be scientists, who put together science curriculums for schools!

While we were catching bugs and lizards all day long near the pond, the neighbors were entertaining mummy and daddy.

They learned how to throw a horseshoe and in the evening they even attended a Bingo session with them! Bingo!!!!! They don’t even play Bingo but boy, did they have fun. We watched them from the nearby playground – daddy even ended up winning some money!

We finished the night with a tractor and trolley ride. First the kids, then the adults. By golly the adults were noisier than the kids! We know because we were the only kids allowed to be on the trolley with the adults. Fun, fun, fun!

On Sunday it was Mummy’s birthday so we woke her up and gave her a few new books to read. She really likes reading.

And straight after breakfast we went to a Native American Pow-Wow, an incredible celebration of music and dance.

Right at the car park entry we met a lady who happens to own the 1and where the pow-wow was taking place, who also happened to have just traveled to Australia (and loved it of course). Within 10 minutes she introduced us to the who-is-who at the Pow-Wow.

Mummy was thrilled to discover that it wouldn’t offend anybody if we wore our dresses/ponchos mummy made for us resembling the Native American style. We dressed ourselves, decorating the dresses with feathers and jewelry. We also purchased a set of little jingle-bell anklets, which we strapped on our feet and then we were set to go!

One lady pulled us aside and gave us a bit of Pow-Wow etiquette. She said that we are allowed to participate unless the announcer says otherwise (usually the opening and closing ceremony was for the Native Americans only).  She said that if we wish to take pictures it is polite to ask the dancers first and she said that whatever we do, we should never call their clothing a ‘costume’ or they will get offended.

‘Ooops!’ Bella cried and covered her mouth with her little hands. We all turned around and looked at her and realized straight away what the fuss was all about. As soon as we got out of the car Bella went up to the incredibly dressed Indian and said-yep you guessed it- “I love your costume and these fancy feathers on your head!”. A big OOOPS indeed!

Well people, the right word is REGALIA and as we learned during the day it is also polite to ask if you can touch it BEFORE you touch it (but better just admire from the distance). A lot of the ‘attachments’ on their regalia are valuable, sometimes passed from generation to generation.

The whole day was quite amazing. We were allowed to join the native people in the circle to dance. We first had to get ‘smudged’, which is ceremony to keep all the evil spirits away. An American Indian man would bring up a smoking Sage wrap and wave it over our entire body, back and front. As it was a secret ceremony mummy wasn’t allowed to take any pictures but it was incredible!

We then entered the circle through special gate, the only opening we were allowed to enter and exit and then we slowly followed the dancers in a clockwise direction – it was enchanting! Before you knew it, we picked up all the important moves the Fancy Dancer below.

One of the organizers introduced us to a couple, who would during the break play the Australian Aboriginal Didgeridoo. They go to a lot of Pow-Wows and introduce people to this special Australian instrument. They usually have some Australian animal puppets with them as well and have a little show while they play. They didn’t have them this time. We were quite puzzled by the puppets as our Aboriginals never used them but hey, whatever floats their boat. Americans sometimes have interesting way of perceiving Australians.

Like who on earth would throw a shrimp on the Barbie?

Anyway, the couple asked daddy to come up and play with him. It just happened that the man had a few spare instruments. Daddy was disappointed that he didn’t bring his own instrument, which is a fair dinkum (original) Aboriginal Didge. Mind you they both - daddy and the man- played pretty well! I even got a chance to play.

During the break, we also watched a beaver getting skinned. The poor bugger got caught in the trap that morning and now he was going to be lunch and regalia accessories! Ay!

The dancing continued throughout the whole day. Our favorite part was the kid’s Candy Dance. They spread lots of candy and toys all over the dance circle and we played something similar to musical chairs to the Indian Drums. When the drums would stop we could run and pick up whatever we could carry. But if the drum started again, we had to give it all up and start from scratch. We only got to keep the last hunting’s gathering.

At the end we got lots of fluffy toys, which our mean mummy made us give up and distribute to other children. We only got to keep one favorite one.

But most of all we just loved dancing all day. 

Here are the lovely organisers of this Pow Wow

Maine – end of September 2012

Our introduction to Maine was spectacular to say the least.

After crossing the border to Maine we stopped at a huge information center only to discover that it is not in their policy to recommend anything. How politically correct and unfortunate for us, the traveller. 

Armed with dozens of brochures and an interesting map, which had more lakes on it than we have ever seen (some 6,000!), we shrugged and decided to head north. Part of the reason was that the leaves had not quite changed their colors yet in the south and there was more of a chance for color in the north. And so, north we went.

In the late afternoon we found a little gravel parking spot near one of the 6,000 lakes and so we decided to spend the night there.

We had an early night as the sun went down on this peaceful beautiful lake pretty early BUT we woke up to the sound of distant……. gunshots! Holy Smoke! We jumped out of beds and glued our noses to the windows to check out what was happening.

We discovered pretty soon that apparently the duck season had started and there was a bunch of mean looking bird shooters out there hoping to catch these beautiful birds. ‘Ok, time to go!’ mummy said and we quickly hopped into the car to continue our travels. Not much point getting mistaken for a duck!

 

Moosehead Lake

After travelling for another few hours we got up to the biggest lake in Maine, called Moosehead Lake. And since the touristy area of Greenville still lacked a bit of color, we kept going north, where the colors were just ‘jumping off the trees’ – they were so pretty that mummy’s camera hardly had the time to stop and ‘catch a breath’.

We spent a few wonderful days out there in the wilderness. On our first day we met Ranger Steve, who was just finishing off building a shelter.

He had a lot of timber (lumber left over and so he made us a bench to sit on and split a lot of firewood for us – we were total set!

We spent our days going for hikes and admiring incredible views

And drives in the spectacular scenery

And while we fished

Mummy was snapping some artistic photos for us to remember this special place forever.

On our last day we went to check out the only civilized attraction, which happened to have a nice restaurant. As soon as we had our lunch the manager came around and asked us if we would like to see a moose. Heck yeah! We ran for the door, without listening to the rest of the explanation just to be faced with a massive moose, which was…well, dead, really! He was tied up at the back of someone’s ute (pick-up truck), with his tongue sticking out – he sure was a sorry site.

As we hung around the backyard, we saw others coming in to get weighed – apparently the Moose hunting season had started!

Baxter State Park- MAINE - end of September 2012

We left the following day and camped out just out of the spectacular Baxter Park. 

Unfortunately, as much as we liked the place, it seemed also to include a weigh station for the trophy moose. It was so sad seeing them dragged up like this with people cheering and congratulating each other. This one apparently weights 798 pounds (361kg). That’s a lot of meat, I guess but all WE could see was this beautiful animal slaughtered! So sad! Mummy took this picture and called it ‘Behind a Shadow of Death Lays a Human Trophy’. She was going to enter it in her photography competition but we voted against it – it was way too upsetting!

The next morning we got to celebrate Bella’s Birthday! She got to dress in her princess clothes and got spoiled with presents. We had her cake straight after breakfast and we shared it with our next door neighbors – Bill and Davey.

We spent the whole day driving around Baxter Park, which was spectacular. We even stopped and went for a two hour hike!

We woke up the next morning to a rainy day. Foggy, rainy and cold. Brrrrr. ‘Well, not much point hanging around’ said mummy ‘ I think the rain is telling us to get moving’.

So we packed up our home on wheels and hit the road once again, hoping to see some LIVE moose on the way.

On the map our parents spotted a little stretch of the road right on the eastern side of Maine advertising itself as the ‘Million Dollar View Rd’. Sounded tempting enough to plug it into our GPS (fingers crossed the rain would stop).

We drove whole day stopping briefly at the Baxter State Park Headquarters to get our Junior Ranges Badges (we spent the morning filling out our books).

And then we drove and drove and we drove. Lucky Bella got a new DVD for her birthday to which we could sing along with.

It’s a big state; Maine and the roads are not always too kind to our 3 tons of caravan/travel trailer. Sometimes we would go inside and half of our belongings would be out of the cupboards. Oooops! It took us most of the day to get across the state to the east coast.

They have a beautiful home right on the lake overlooking Canada. We warmed up by the fire and our parents were treated to delicious wine. What a bizarre way to meet such lovely people.

In the morning, we were introduced to the most intriguing library we have ever seen – Library on the Lake. The night before Barry showed us a little building, which looked more like an outhouse (dunny) rather then a library and told us to guess what was inside. Well, you know what our first guess was! He just laughed and told us to go inside and switch on the light. Wow – we were just bedazzled – look at all the books!!!

Barry told us we could come in the morning and choose whatever books we liked. He said we didn’t even need a library card to take some. Needless to say, in the morning we spent an hour looking through the books. Mummy even left some of her favorite books, which she already finished reading.

We left their place by mid morning and we took a scenic drive down the east coast. It was highlighted on the map as a scenic drive and if it wasn’t for the rain and lots of junk that people keep in their front yards, it probably would be scenic. Maybe.

We did manage to find a few nice spots though where we pulled out for a bit of a break.

Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor - Maine

Oh boy, is this a busy place for tourists in the fall, or what? We were lucky to find a campground right in the National Park and get the last remaining spot. Lucky we arrived here mid week.

The Acadia National Park was beautiful although there were more evergreens than in the north and it had substantially fewer maples, but it was still spectacular.

We drove through the whole park and did a few nice hikes. We also did a Junior Ranger Program. As part of the program we had to attend ranger led program. We discovered that there were a couple of them up on the hill looking out for birds.

What we found out is that there was a whole club of people sitting in their chairs with binoculars in their hands counting AND recording all the migrating birds.

‘What? You actually count them???’ Yep, apparently they have been doing it for the last 12 years, from dawn to dask, during 3 migratory months! Count every different species flying by. ‘Mamamia!’

They even have a website recording the numbers just in case anyone was interested in knowing how many Peregrines flew past their door that day!

When we had a look through the super-duper binoculars they shared with us, we asked ‘but how can you tell one bird from another? They look like little speckles through those binoculars’. ‘Oh, that’s easy: one bird does: flap, flap, glide and the other one does glide, flap, flap, flap’. Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense we said mystified and proceeded to catch some snakes leaving our parents to work out THAT puzzle.

The lady ranger showed us also how to read the weather on her sophisticated gadget.

We spent the rest of the day driving around the beautiful National Park admiring the vistas.

When driving around we’ve noticed that Americans also have a bit of Aussie humour in them. Check out the name of this toilet. 

I’ve always wondered, why do they call it a ‘restroom'? Does anybody ever goes there to......... rest? 

In the afternoon we went on a couple of hikes 

and we also went to a wonderful place called the Wonderland Tide Pools. It was a superb place where after a nice hike we got to catch some crabs.

While mummy was snapping photographs...

The next morning we left Acadia National Park with intention of going back North to where we initially camped in Maine. As much as we really enjoyed Acadia we missed the wilderness and the spectacular red trees, which didn’t seem as popular down south. So we hopped into the car and off we went back north.

On our way we stopped in a nearby town to admire a beautiful Botanical Garden, where we could’ve spent a week had it not been for the massive rain that followed us.

They had a beautiful children’s’ section with gorgeous huts, sheds and green houses. It was like a paradise for us.

There was even a section where we could build houses for fairies. I bet they would’ve liked the houses we built!

We left the garden early to escape the rain. As we drove, it started to get more and more intense and so we found a larger town, which had a McDonald and we managed to get onto the internet. We found out that the next few days would be freezing and wet. Very wet. And so after short discussion our parents decided to change direction to West and go back to New Hampshire.

White Mountain National Forest- New Hampshire

We ended staying three nights at the Covered Bridge Campground mainly because it was a weekend and a public holiday and since this was also the end of the season, everybody decided it was a good weekend to get out. Hence once we found some space in the campground  (right in the middle of beautiful forest) we decided to hang on till the end of weekend.

At the campground we found fantastic camp hosts, Nora and Steve who we very quickly became good friends with and shared a few memorable campfires with.

During the day we went on a few hikes, which our camp hosts recommended. We went to check out near by waterfalls and gorges: Sabbaday Falls, Rocky Gorge and Lower Falls – all of which were spectacular! We spent a whole day hiking and loving it!

We even went across a historical covered bridge, one of many New Hampshire is known for.

Every morning we would scoot around on a golf buggy with Steve to check out the whole campground. Sometimes he would even race Bella on her scooter. He was really funny – he’d tell us all sorts of jokes. Nora was also ace! She would dance with us in the evenings or let us play on her hammock.

When we were leaving she gave us this awesome pumpkin she had on her display. It is October after all and people here are starting to get into the Halloween spirit. And since this pumpkin is made out of foam, we will be able to take it home with us to Australia. This way we will always remember Steve and Nora!

At our campground we also met a man from Alaska – Grizzly Adams our parents called him even though his real name was Mike. We invited him over to our campground for lunch and he told us some fascinating stories.

Mike spent most of his years working in Dutch Harbor in Alaska working on the boats. Have you even seen the show ‘The deadliest catch’? Well, he was the ‘catcher’ of the king crabs in the freezing and treacherous waters of the Barring Sea. In the late 60s, he told us, which is way before we were born (or wait, before our parents were born) he was making $150,000 for 6 months work. As we are too young, we don’t know what the going rate is for work these days, but that sure sounded like a lot. For half a century ago!

Well Mike lived a fast and adventurous life and now he is just chilling. He has his truck and his tent and he made a plan to camp the whole country and play some golf. He’s been doing it for the last 6 years. What was even more amazing is the fact that he was only wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops while we were standing by the fire in our winter jackets and beanie hats. He said he doesn’t feel the cold the way we do. Brrrrrrr. We were freezing just looking at him.

We left the campground on Monday, as it was the last day of the season. We bid Nora and Steve goodbye. They invited us to visit them in Florida, where their home is. It would be awesome seeing them again.

On the way out of our campground we stopped at the ranger station in White Forrest National Park and did our Junior Ranger program.

As the rain started to follow us we decided to keep moving along to see the rest of the state of New Hampshire. As we were heading further north it got even colder. In fact soon the mountains were covered in…snow. Check out this little resort in the mountains! Nice, hey?

The whole drive in fact was quite spectacular!

Vermont – October 2012

And before we knew it, we went over a bridge and daddy announced ‘Welcome to Vermont’! Here we go, state number 38! And what a pretty State it is in October!

We decided to spend a couple of nights in KOA campground. For our Australian friends, think ‘Big 4’. It was so great to have the luxury of heater running all night and not be worried about switching on a light (so we don’t waste the batteries). Oh yeah, and the hot shower too. Nice!

We stayed in the south of Vermont, near a town called Woodstock. No, not the one our grandmas would’ve heard of – a different one. Apparently the town was voted the most beautiful little town in the USA. It sure was pretty!

We also had a look at a nearby Qeechee Gorge

And went for a hike up the river and around a little lake. There we played with the leaves and relocated a few caterpillars.

 Mummy of course took some photos.

The next day it started raining. A lot! Even though our parents had the intention to staying longer and enjoy Vermont, the truth was, we could hardly see out of the windows, it rained so much. So …we hit the road again.

Mummy was so disappointed when we drove past the beautiful red barns with nice deciduous trees around them and she couldn’t even take a picture because there was so much fog and rain. The computer was telling us that the next few days are going to be just the same.

So what’s the only thing that one can do to cheer up, when in Vermont? Go to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory of course!

 

Ben and Jerry ice creams are apparently very popular in the United Sates and especially in Vermont, which is where they originated. And they are YUMMY!! They have the most wicked combinations of flavors and the whole factory is such a fun place to visit.

We went on a factory tour, where once again we got to watch how the ice cream is being made and then we got to try some delicious ‘milk and cookies’ ice cream, which was just divine. Exactly what one needs on a rainy day!

Outside the factory they had the funnies graveyard we have ever seen. It had headstones for all of the different flavors, which they tried over the years and laid to rest.  These flavors obviously had not worked.

New York State

As the rain continued, we found ourselves crossing the border to New York State. Initially we planned to go straight across the sate to Niagara Falls but after stopping at a rest area for the night, our plans had changed. Again.

We met a gentleman at the rest area who worked there that his favorite area in New York to holiday at is 1000 Islands. What, they have 1000 islands in New York? We gotta see that!

We drove most of the day and we got to the area of the 1000 Islands late afternoon. As it starts getting darker earlier and earlier, we decided to pull up at a beautiful rest area just 20 min short of the port town and settle in for the night. We decided to get up early the next and check out the islands and a castle, which we found on internet …

The next morning we woke up to below freezing temperatures. Brrrr. We rugged up and drove to Alexandra Bay, where we hopped on a one-hour boat tour, which went up the river, zigzagging between the islands, showing off the lavish real estate. The stretch of the river was called The Millionaire’s Row. Yep, that would explain it!

As we rode inside a cabin trying to distinguish the guides’ voice from lots of noisy people speaking Chinese and Indian, mummy was the only one who was brave enough to out on deck, taking pictures. Of course.

She came down with fingers turned into icicles, but she managed to take a few good shots.

And this is the shortest bridge in the world to ever link two different countries (USA and Canada). It is 5 ft long and belongs to one family. The water on the north belongs to Canada and the water to the south is in the United States.

The gentleman who owns it has dual citizenship and apparently packs up a picnic and 6 beers and leaves the country (across his bridge) if his wife gets angry with him.

At the end of the tour we got transferred to the most fascinating island – The Heart Island with the most amazing castles.

The island was purchased by a self- made millionaire at the turn of the century. It was supposed to be his family’s holiday destination. He initially built a little cubby house for his two children.

Of course if he was going to built a home on it as well he needed electricity, so he built this little generator and pump house 

He hired 300 workman to build a dream holiday home for his beloved wife, which he was going to be a gift her birthday on Valentines Day. The home was going to accommodate 100 guests (just in case she wanted to bring some girlfriends for a long weekend).

And this is what an almost finished product looked like

I say ‘almost finished’ as sadly, his wife died two weeks before her birthday. The 300 workers received a message to put their tools down and walk away. Mr Boldt did not set his foot on the island ever again. He simply left the castle to battle the elements, harsh winters, weather, thieves and vandals. He was totally heartbroken.

The island was eventually sold to the Thousand Island Bridge Authority. They bought it for ………ONE dollar!!! They did have to sign an agreement though that ALL the money raised through the operation of the castle will go to its restoration so that the island would be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations.

Oh, yeah, and they got another island thrown in for that price. This is The Boldt Castle Yacht House on neighbouring Wellesley Island used as Mr. Boldt’s garage of course. See the massive doors in the front? That used to house the owner’s yachts. He was believed to own over 60 of them! Not sure if all fit into this yacht house though.

And what a fantastic job has the Bridge Authority done with the restorations. So far they have spent over $15mil. Many rooms, which were totally stripped naked by the vandals were rebuilt and decorated.

There are still a lot of rooms, which need to be fixed (there are 127 rooms and 30 bathrooms in total) and so it will be an ongoing project for years to come…

Even the Italian Garden full of herbs got finished.

The grandkids donated this beautiful dinning table to the castle. It was their wedding gift from Mr and Mrs Boldt. How nice!

What a lovely Island indeed. Just the story was a bit sad. Mummy was teary when we watched the movie and I asked her ‘are you crying because the lady died?’. She said ‘no honey, I am amazed that man was married to this lady for 24 years and still loved her so much. That is just so beautiful!’

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention this little house. The anecdote goes that Mr. Boldt has built this house for his mother in law who apparently suffered from sleepwalking. Ha, ha. Apparently this was only a joke, he didn’t own this island…

Niagara Falls

The only word, which can possibly describe these waterfalls, is WOW!!!

It’s funny, the Niagra Falls were almost an afterthought for our parents – they just assumed that it will be just another waterfall (just bigger) and they initially didn’t think they’d want to detour so far from the New England area to see it. Well, aren’t we glad we did!

We arrived at the falls just after the sunset. Our starving tummies quickly discovered Hard Rock café, which had live music on. We happen to be big fans of Hard Rock Café.

After we filled up our tummies we went to walk it off …and of course check out the falls. As the falls are very well lit, we could see what looked like massive amounts of smoke coming out of them and we could hear huge rumbling. We quickly discovered that it wasn’t smoke we were seeing – it was mist from the water falling down! Massive amount of mist! Like if half a forest was on fire!

And the rumbling?  Well, yes you guessed it! It was the mighty Niagara river flowing at a speed we have never ever seen before.

And then we arrived at the falls! WOW! The light shinning across from Canadian side was lighting up the falls. It was incredible! Not only was it a beautiful site, it was exhilarating to watch soooo much water pour down the river. Apparently the water flows so fast you could fill up 4000 bathtubs every SECOND!!!

Don’t they look beautiful with all the light?

When mummy showed me this picture, I wanted to get a spoon and scoop up the ‘yoghurt’, LOL

After mummy snapped up enough photos we went for a half an hour walk across to another set of falls we saw in the distance. We walked across a bridge admiring the massive speed the river was travelling.

We then came up to another waterfall called the Horseshoe Falls. It was even bigger than the American Falls.

The next morning we retraced our steps to see the falls in the daylight. First we went to the American Falls. There we were greeted by beautiful rainbows, which seem to hang around most of the day when the sun peeks out (maybe this is where the pot of gold hides?).

We watched brave people hop on the boats and come up close to the falls just to feel the massive, roaring mist fall on them drenching them head to toe.

We also watched some people who decided to get soaked by walking up to the waterfall’s base. It looked like fun but mummy and daddy said it was way too cold for us to do it (it was below frrrrrezing when we woke up this morning). Besides mummy didn’t want to get her camera wet. Fair Enough.

We then walked across to see the Horseshoe Falls once again. Have a look at these pictures. The second one shows you the edge of ‘no return’

After lunch we put mummy on a helicopter for a 10 minute flight. It was too expensive for all of us to go so we sent her up as our family representative. Who would have thought she would come up with such beautiful photos?

Below you can clearly see the river dividing USA (on the right) and Canada (on the left) and the two falls. You can recognize the massive Horse Shoe Falls by its shape. The Falls closer to the Bridge are the American Falls aka Niagara. Just so that you have a better perspective – check out the size of the cars at the car park!

Here is a close up of Niagara

There, over the years, have been incidents where people had fallen in and have been swept away by the raging water – never to be seen again. Some have attempted to do the plunge in a barrel. Some survived, some did not.

There was even a guy in 1990, who wanted to raise awareness for the homeless – he decided to do the jump on a jet ski with a parachute. It probably would’ve worked had it not been for the HUGE mist from the falls, which collapsed the parachute. The fact that he actually forgot to attach the parachute to himself could’ve also played a major role in his death.

Watching the massive Horseshoe Falls it is almost impossible to imagine that it could ever …stop – yet we have learned hat it actually did! In 1848.

In March of that year, people living in the area, who were used to the noise of the falls walk up to the eerie silence. Niagara had stopped.  For thirty long, silent hours, the river dried up and those who were brave enough walked or rode horses over its floor.  Then, with a roar that shook the earth, a solid wall of water, like a massive tsunami, curled down the channel and crashed over the edge. Niagara was back in business to the immense relief of everyone.

News travelled slowly back in those days but eventually an explanation arrived. Lake Eerie, which is where the river travels from froze up partially and the ice jam blocked the river.

With its massive pressure the water finally broke free after 30 hrs of build up! It would’ve been amazing to see the massive wave coming through. From a helicopter of course! Wait! They didn’t have helicopters back then!

Incidentally, the falls also froze in 1936. Wow that must’ve been a cold, cold winter! Even Alaskans would’ve cringed.

Back to Pennsylvania October 2012

We looked at the map to decide our next destination – West Virginia (state number 39) and we realized that we would drive straight past the doors of our fiends, the Bumble Bees in Pennsylvania. Now how rude would it be to drive past and not say ‘G’day’. So we had contacted them and what initially was supposed to be a stop for a ‘coffee’ (for daddy of course, not us) – ended up being a whole weekend. We just love our friends, the Bumble Bees

When we arrived Curt asked daddy is he would want to help him harvest some honey from his friend’s bee-hives. He said that his friend is getting old and need some help. ‘Why, sure’ daddy said and they scheduled to go the next morning.

We played with Griffin in the afternoon while our parents caught up with Lauren and Curt. In the evening we all went to visit next-to-neighbors. They had the most amazing playroom in the basement. How long do you think it took our parents to get us out of there? LOL

The next morning daddy and Curt got ready to go help with the bees. Daddy proceeded to put on layers upon layers of clothing on ‘just in case’. By the time he finished he looked like a sumo wrestler and we all had a bit of a giggle about it. Once daddy and Curt left, Lauren and the little handsome Bumble Bee- Griffin took us to a festival, which took place in the town near-by.

Being October, the colors were in full bloom and it was so much fun watching the country celebrate the Fall. We got to browse through a wonderful craft market- all inspired by the up and coming Halloween. Too bad we cannot take some of these big pumpkins home!

During the day we also got to play ‘big sisters’ to our cute Bumblebee Griffin. He is such a fun boy!

We even got to boogie to a great music the band was playing.

When we got back daddy shared some stories with us: how he and Curt were surrounded by ½ million bees and how they tried to negotiate the removal of honey from their hives. Wow, that sounded like Halloween party to us!

Daddy apparently asked the owner of the bees how to become a beekeeper. He told him this: First you have to get a handful of marbles and put them in your pocket. Then you buy the bees. Every time a bee stings you; you throw one marble onto the ground. Now, once you’ve lost ALL YOUR MARBLES then you can call yourself a beekeeper.

In the evening Curt’s friend from school dropped in with his family and once again we had lots of nice kids to play with.

As usual, we had a very sad farewell – who knows when we see each other again?

West Virginia – October 2012

We have been looking forward to coming to West Virginia. Not only have we been told that it is absolutely spectacular (especially in fall) but we also had some friends we wanted to visit.

About 8 months ago, when we went to Mexico, daddy went scuba diving while we played by the pool. During this trip he met Amy and Bill from West Virginia. We didn’t really get a chance to spend too much time with them that day as they were flying out that evening, but we had been corresponding with them via email (well, our parent’s have been).

Bill happens to be a Vet and Amy sent us a message that if we would like to, we could come up to their clinic and watch a surgery. WOW!!!!! I was over the moon when I found out about it! As I am absolutely determined to follow the steps of Steve Irwin and become an animal rescuer, I must become a vet. It’s never too early to start work experience, is it?

I was up at 6am waking our parents- all dressed in my doctor’s uniform and a stethoscope. We didn’t have to be at the clinic till 8 am but I wanted to make sure I was on time on my first day at work.

We arrived just before 8am and met up with Bill, who was absolutely awesome – he showed us all around his clinic and introduced us to all his staff, including three doctors.

He showed us all sort of weird and wonderful instruments they get to work with. Like this gun. Well, it’s actually a tooth grinder for horses. Ouch, hurts just looking at it!

Bill deals with all sorts of animals, big and small. Today on the agenda were a few surgeries, mainly to do with owners not wanting their animals to have babies. Although we are still unsure why they were boys being operated on as well. ‘Mummy, isn’t it only girls that have babies?????’

All the doctors in the clinic were nice enough to let us watch EVERYTHING.First we got to watch a girl cat have a surgery. And then a puppy dog.

In fact I was helping them later to check for heartbeat after the surgery. Just wanted to make sure all patients have made it through. Luckily they all survived!

It was very interesting watching the animals, cats and dogs being put to sleep and having them breath through tubes. Check out this poor munchkin!

Bella got really lightheaded watching all this and so she chose to look after the patients after the surgery and also entertaining the patients to be. Me? I was mesmerized.

I watched all three surgeries from beginning to the end – it was very fascinating. Daddy, who was also standing in a distance watching it, was making weird faces (like if he was in pain). When I asked him what was wrong, he just showed me these.

It was an absolutely the most amazing experience! Thank you so much Docs!

When we finished all surgeries Bill and Amy showed us their farms. They have lots and lots of cattle and they all came out to say hello.

Bill and Amy’s daughters also have their own beef (um cattle) that they are raising for show. These boys here belong to Ashlyn. She looks after them and feeds them and keeps them nice and clean.

We also got to meet Bill’s mum, who was very lovely.

After that we went to visit one of Bill’s clients who called him to check up on his horse. While Bill was working we got to play with other animals: dogs and horses and donkeys. The barn, mummy said, had the best view she had ever seen. For a barn that is.

We enjoyed a lovely lunch together and then went with Amy to their house while Bill returned to save some more animals. We were so thrilled we were able to see him work.

Amy drove us around for a while showing us some beautiful vistas.

One of our favorite ones was from the quite part of town on the top of a hill – the cemetery.

In the afternoon Amy invited Bella and I to join them at the volleyball game. Their daughter Madison was playing that night and they wanted us to come and see it. They also wanted our parents to have a day off – and have a date!

We first went back to Amy and Bill’s home and we met Ashlyn, their younger daughter, who let us play with her crown. She won a pageant recently – she is so pretty you can tell why she won it!

We then went to see Madison play. She was fantastic! I think we will start playing volleyball when we get a little older.

We also met some nice new friends. Here is one of them, Tommy.

Amy and Bill gave us lots of ideas of places to visit in West Virginia. One of them was a river walk in Point Pleasant. There on a floodwall at the Fourth Street Entrance is a mural painted by Robert Daffford. It is absolutely breathtaking! It is 350 feet (107 meters!) long and it illustrates the battle between Native Americans (Shawanee Indians) and newly arrived Virginians in 1774. They fought for a day and then negotiated a treaty.

Each battle scene had to be painted with special paint so it’ll outlast the weather and cost around $14,000 each. There are more than dozen scenes already and the work is still in progress.

We also went through a museum of where the first settlers lived

Fayetteville, West Virginia

Ok, we were kind of looking forward to this insane weekend. This is the only time in the year that West Virginia is opened to legalized suicide. Well, not quite a suicide, but if you have ever seen anyone jumping off the bridge to open a parachute seconds before you hit the ground – you’d call it a suicide as well.

Once a year Fayetteville hosts Bridge Day, where base jumpers from all over the world get together to see if once again they can survive. We even saw people walking around with a slogan ‘I am not dead yet’. Hmm, interesting

We arrived a couple of days earlier, prior to the Bridge Day event so that we could do some hiking and work out the best spots for mummy to photograph the jumpers from. As it turned out the best spot was actually from the bridge.

After a lengthy drill from our parents regarding ‘Don’t try this at home’, we watched hundreds of crazy people leap from the bridge into the unknown.

There was about 100,000 people watching, most of them on this sensational bridge, which got closed down for traffic (This is a major Hwy I-90).

Some base jumpers did handstands, some did back flips off the platform and they all looked insane to us. Mind you they were all wearing colorful outfits, colorful parachutes, usually had cameras on their helmets and made it look like they were having fun.

There was an 83 year old jumping, there were people getting married and there was even a man jumping off on a wheelchair. He got injured a few years back (yes, by base jumping) but it looked like he hasn’t learned his lesson yet.

This fellow below was really funny. His name was ‘Hazardous’ Harold. We asked him ho come he is wearing such funny hat – he took it off and winked at us: he had no hair left on his head. He said this way he still looks cool.

We saw him the next day in the newspapers on the front page. We watched him plunge off the bridge. Lucky he made it!

On the way back from watching this crazy sport, we stopped to watch an artist make timber sculptures by shaving them with chainsaw. It was incredible! We stayed and watched mesmerized as the man started with a log and finished with a bear. What was even more incredible was that he turned, looked around and pointed at Bella. He called her over and gave it to her as a present!

Wow, Bella was over the moon and when the artist, Bob Snowberger, found out we were from Australia he took the bear back and colored it with …fire.

‘Hey Mummy’ Bella turned around with the biggest smile on her face, ‘we can take him back to Australia, right?’. She looked at her with her pleading eyes followed by the eyes of 100s of bystanders - ok, so maybe this wasn’t the good time to discuss Australian customs or the weight limits we have on the plane. We still had a couple of months to travel so Bobby (as it got named after his creator) was to travel with us extensively.

During our stay at Fayetteville, West Virginia we also did a few hikes and went to this wonderful mill, where mummy’s camera got a bit of a work out

We then met another artist. This time we learned how to do wood carving. He was very talented. He even allowed us to help him carve. A very patient man he was, considering we smashed his fingers. Oooops, sorry!

Before we left West Virginia we went to see a beautiful, luxurious hotel/resort called the Greenbrier. It sits on 6,500 acres, including three golf courses and it’s own train station!

But what’s most amazing about the hotel is an underground shelter used buy the entire United States Congress for 30 years. More than 100,000 square feet (1000 squares), with concrete walls up to five feet thick (1.5 meters), it is the size of two football fields stacked underground. It was built to shelter 1,100 people: 535 senators and representatives and their aides. I wonder how would they work knowing that their families didn’t get in.

Very interesting indeed.

We also got to sit back and enjoy the morning paper at the hotel lounge, where we saw our buddy, ‘Hazardous’ Harold on the front page, just before his ‘leap of faith’ off the bridge.

We sort of drove through Virginia stopping only for lunch, we were gong to spent some time there later on. Right now we were on a mission to get through Maryland to Washington DC. The District of Washington, which borders Maryland and Virginia is the Capital of the United States.

Washington DC

Mummy through her best friend Google found a campground nearby, in fact it was only 14 miles from the president’s house. When we arrived, we couldn’t believe that there was a forest and a campground smack bang in the middle of the city! They even had wild deer in there! That was just ace!

On our first day there we detached our home on wheels and drove to town to say G’day to the President. Our enthusiasm was short lived when we got stuck in city traffic. The whole town looked like it was getting fixed, with road workers, police and security everywhere. Perhaps they were rebuilding a new bunker since the one in West Virginia was revealed and open to public? There were even security people speaking to their coats at the church!

We drove and drove around trying to find the White House, where the boss lives but we somehow could not find it – not that we would get any parking spot anyway. We decided to go and check out some museums instead.

Washington DC is full of weird and wonderful museums. This one below we didn’t get to see, but we did ventured off to the ‘Spy Museum’ instead. We figured with some extra training we might be able to find the White House the next day.

The next day we thought we’d be a bit smarter and catch a train to the city. It was very easy to do. As we arrived at the Smithsonian station we got out to be greeted by all the landmarks Washington DC is so well known for.

Here is the Washington Monument. It was a little bit smaller than we thought!

Well, actually it wasn’t. It was a massive 555 feet (approx. 55 floors) tall. Unfortunately the lift that could take you up to enjoy the view had been damaged in a hurricane a couple of summers back so no one can go up there any more.

 All the Monuments and Landmarks in Washington DC seem to very close to each other … if you are flying a helicopter. Our little legs were so tired by the end of the day we didn’t know if we were coming or going. We were almost as tired as these Asian tourists who fell asleep on a bench – gracefully I must admit!

We went to have a look at some of the most spectacular Smithsonian Museums. There was 19 to choose from and they were all for free! Wow, that’s a bonus!

First we went to Natural History Museum. It was breathtaking.

We joined an organized tour to see the highlights of the museum (otherwise we’d spend 3 days just in this one). We saw fossils, and bones discovered and learned some more about evolution.

There was a huge display of taxidermy animals. It was huge – but Robert from Bryce Canyon would be proud if we told him that we liked his better!

The tour went on and on and it was very interesting but the lady lost us when we got to the fork in the road, one leading to see gemstones and the other one to see …bugs! Of course we opted to see the feeding of tarantula rather then display of diamonds and rubies. The tour went the other way – I guess the grown ups lose their sense of humor sometime between being a kid and adult…

We watched the feeding of this cute, fluffy, eight legged creature. The lady was very entertaining. She said that apparently some kids have tarantulas as pets.

‘Mummy, can we…’

‘NO!’

We then looked at a lot of other bugs and eventually ended up in the butterfly enclosure. Wow, how beautiful!

As we walked through the rest of the museum, realizing there is so much more to see; we remembered that we were told in New York that Sacajawea (the Native American girl who helped Lewis and Clark cross the country on foot) was placed in this museum – so we went looking for her.

Nope, she was nowhere to be found! But wait, she was more part of American history, not Natural History – so we decided to go to check out the next building – the American History Museum.

Another massive 4 story building was awaiting us, we went and checked out all the nooks and rooms but guess what? She wasn’t there either. There were lots on different wars Americans have led – but nothing on our lost Indian girl.

We finally got back to the information center to ask where she lived these days and they told us she was not there! Oh no, where did she go??? Everyone looked at us with puzzled looks. She was gone!

We decided we are going to use our ‘spying skills’ and track her down. She was last seen in Canada being filmed for ‘The Night at the Museum’. They pretended she lived in New York but she wasn’t there. In New York they told us she will be in Washington DC but she also was not there. Hmmm. We put thinking caps on….

Mummy, can we just Google her?

Mummy spent good two hours Googling our lost Indian Girl from the Night of the museum but she could not find anything. Can anyone tell us where did she go. Teddy (from the ‘Night at the museum’) would be mighty disappointed…

After we left the museum, we walked all the way to the State Capitol, which was very, very beautiful.

We then walked all the way back to the World War II Memorial

And finally we were pointed in the right direction – the White House. We got all the way to the gates, we rang the bell but nobody answered. This policeman on the horse told us that the president was out – collecting votes for the next election. Oh, our luck!

His house looked quite nice, all white, really.  That’s probably why they called this 132 room cube- the White House. He even had his own veggie garden. Oh, what a pity we missed him!

We finally made it back to the tube (train). Totally squashed between peak hour commuters, we finally got back to where we parked our car. By then we were ready to pass out like the two Chinese girls had this afternoon in the park.

The last day in Washington DC we spent at the zoo. Yes, another zoo. Mummy and daddy said it’s not very often that you can go to the zoo for free and if it is for free and the Smithsonian runs it, then by crikey, we were going to see it!

We spent over 7 hrs. walking around the zoo. Talk about exercise! It was such a wonderful facility with animals from around the world.

Bella’s favorite animal was the seal, which played with her for a while.

Mummy’s favorite animals were the lions (the tigers were asleep). They didn’t mind posing for the photos, which always makes mummy happy.

Daddy’s favorite animal was the beaver. A lady came out fed them. They were really funny, especially the one on her left. He would gently tug her with his hand and you could almost imagine him saying in his Mexican slang: Ey, seniorita, you have some sweet potatoes for me?

I liked the Comodo Dragon – he was huge! Being a big fan of lizards, he was by far my favorite. In fact they are so huge that they feed on deer and hogs! My hero, Steve Irwin, has also told us that they have been known to pull down a water buffalo! Now, that’s MY kind of lizard!

The next morning, we decided to head off as we heard from our neighbor that there was a huge…… um.. hurricane on its way! As we don’t watch television, we rely on people around us telling us what’s going on. Usually if the news it’s bad enough we soon find out about it. The bad news was that it was huge and it was coming straight at us from the east coast. The good news was however that we had a few days before it came around. Our parents promptly packed us into the car and mummy punched SOUTH/WEST on the GPS.

Before we knew it we were in Virginia, in a town called Williamsburg. We didn’t really explore the city as such as we arrived in late afternoon but we still managed to find something mighty interesting!

MagiQuest! Have you heard about it? Well, we had never seen it but we were told by our buddy Jayden, who we met a lifetime ago in Houston (our Canadian friends) – to definitely check it out. So here we were, with hurricane Sandy on our toes – fighting dragons in the most fascinating computer game we have ever seen.

It was a real life game, where we were the magic users and instead of the game taking place in a computer as most kids would play it, we were running like crazy in real life with our infra-red wands.

The ‘game’ was taking place on mainly two floors of a hotel (The Great Wolf resort - check it out, it’s great!). 4 large corridors have been designed so that kids run from one corridor to the next one collecting points by pointing their wand at different objects. When we pointed at treasure chest, it would flash and open and extra points were added to our total scores. It was exhilarating!!! Or parents tried to keep up with us but after four hours straight running up and down the staircase, constantly in opposite directions, they were breathless. Lucky they closed the game at 9pm and we could leave – otherwise we would have to carry our parents back to the campground!

We returned the following morning to continue the game. Our parents were a bit smarter this time – they knew where they could stand to see us most of the time but they didn’t have to run with us. Cheeky parents!!!

We finished the game at midday, four hours later. Mummy said that even though she doesn’t like computer games in general – this game had her thumbs up! She said she has never seen us run for 8 hrs. in 2 days with such an enthusiasm! We didn’t even realized we were… exercising!

 Asheville – North Carolina

SO we finally arrived in Asheville. Along the way we were meeting people who kept on telling us to definitely visit this town in we ever make it to North Carolina.

Asheville, a hippy, happy town, known for its liberation and arts. We spent half a day strolling the streets when we notice something unusual – there we lots of dressed up people gathering in the centre of town – all on their bicycles.

As the luck would have it, they had Halloween ride around the town with people dressed in all sorts of weird and wonderful costumes.

We only just got there when the announcer got everybody to position themselves on the steps for a group photo. They all lined up beautifully and mummy noticed very quickly that they did not have any professional photographers. People seem to look around to see whom they were supposed to smile to. Bingo, mummy thought and she proceeded to get to the center of the town square with her massive camera and suddenly she had everybody’s attention. We joined them promptly for this group photo – journalism at its best!

Later on, we wandered to some galleries but through the windows we soon discovered that there were kids outside playing with leaves. With an eyebrow raised we looked at our parents just to be replied to with a big grin – sure we can play outside! And off we went!

Oh, did we have a ball! The two girls we met were so much fun! One of them was an actress ‘Ace’ they called her, played in 5 movies or something. How cool! Her dad who we met later also played as an extra in the Hunger Games, which incidentally was filmed only a few miles out of town.

We played for an hour at least, burying ourselves in the leaves and scaring all the people walking past – hey it was just about Halloween!

Later on, when it got a bit darker, all of us (including our actress parents and her friend) went to indulge in some ice cream. While our parents sat in the corner and chatted we consumed the biggest, yummiest ice cream ever.

The next day we want to burn off those calories from the previous day – we went hiking. Being at the Hunger Game location we geared up appropriately – the hairstyle and bow and arrow in hand, we went hunting. Although we weren’t quite sure what we were hunting for – our parents were a bit sketchy on what the book/ movie was about. They just told us that the hero was great with the bow and arrow. That was all the information we needed, really.

  

In the late afternoon, as a reward for great hiking, our parents took us to the cinema to see a movie we’ve been eagerly wanting to see: Hotel Transylvania – it was sooooo funny! We loved it!

Our last day in Asheville was spent at the Biltmore Estate. Gosh, we could’ve spent a week there. A massive mansion built over 4 acres. Not including the land. The actual house is 4 acres big!!! It’s the size of about 88 average homes put together. The land it sits on is over…..wait for this…. 8,000 acres!!!!

It was built by a gentleman named George Washington Valderbilt, a third generation squilionaire in 1895. His grandpa was a shipping tycoon and left his father $100 mil. His father doubled it in his lifetime to $200 mil. But then gave most of it to his older brothers and only $10mil to George. He must’ve been a naughty boy as a youngster! Mind you in late 1800s, I guess $10mil was worth a bit – well, enough to built this masterpiece!

The house itself has 250 rooms, 65 fireplaces, 34 bedrooms, an indoor pool, a bowling alley and more. And all of the above are SPECTACULAR!!! We walked around with our headphones, which explained what each room was. Bella was taking notes as to what to put in her future home.

My favorite room was the winter garden, which was right at the entry. 5 story high with glass on atrium and a fountain in the middle, looked like a graceful jungle – with a baby grand piano in the middle, of course.

Bella’s favorite room was the banquet room. Seven story high with three massive fireplaces. The table could sit 38 people (and often did). And not on any chairs – they were all sitting on thrones!

Mummy’s favorite room was the library. Housing some 10,000 books (out of 23,000 in the whole house)- it was just breathtaking! Floor to ceiling shelves with the most beautiful, antique books. Mummy collects old, leather-bound books and this collection was the best she had ever seen. We couldn’t get her out of this room!

Daddy loved the whole ‘castle’. The way it looked on the outside, inside and the gardens. Oh, the gardens! The man who designed George’s gardens was the same man who designed the Central Park in New York. Except this one was 140 times bigger! Incidentally, the man who designed his house was the man who designed the Statue of Liberty! Nice, hey?

When George moved to this home he was still a bachelor and was 33 years old! He soon found a wife and they had a little baby girl. Unfortunately, George ended up dying when his little girl was only 13 and by the time she had inherited the estate she and her husband couldn’t keep up with the costs and opened it to public. I guess we are glad they did otherwise we would have not seen it. What a beautiful estate that was! Absolute thumbs up for that one!!!

While we were walking through the beautiful gardens (and we mean beautiful!!), we noticed a man dropping to his knee and proposing to his girlfriend. Awwww, how beautiful. They both broke down in tears and it was just special to watch. Mummy even took some pictures for them, which hopefully will be cherished for lifetime.

We ended up having dinner in one of the restaurants near the Biltmore wineries. It was an amazing place with great atmosphere…

 

                                 awwwwwwwwww!!!!

Atlanta, Georgia

The next day we drove through two states. We stopped and had lunch in South Carolina and then in the evening we ended up in Atlanta, Georgia. After all, it was Halloween the next day and we were determined to have a blast!

Mummy did a search on Internet to find out why on earth people celebrate Halloween. We don’t have it down in Australia so we were quite interested to find out.

Well, the story goes back to European Celts more than 2000 years ago. On November 1st they celebrated the end of summer. They thought ghosts visited the living on October 31st. They dressed up like ghosts so the spirits would not harm them.

Today, many      countries still    remember the dead on November 1. It is called All Saints Day. Another name for it is All Hollow’s Day. The day before, October 31st, is called All Hollow’s Eve, or Halloween for short.

Halloween is an old tradition in Ireland and Scotland. In those countries, people dressed up and carried lanterns made of turnips. When people moved from Ireland and Scotland to the United States, they started using pumpkins.

This is where the jack-o’-lantern comes from.

They also had a tradition of giving food to the spirits. Later, they gave the food to poor people. This is where trick-or-treating comes from. Now kids come and bug you at home for some candy! Interesting, hey? Not many Americans even know that!

And so….

The first thing in the morning, on the Halloween morning, we went to the Georgia Aquarium. Not only is it the biggest aquarium in the Western Hemisphere but the apparently fish celebrate the Halloween as well.

We dressed ourselves appropriately. Bella went as the Ice Queen and I was a Zombie Doctor (with blood all over me and a ‘Next Please’ sign around my neck). Mummy painted daddy’s faces in bruises, stitches and blood. If anyone asked him what happened to him (he looked very realistic) he just said that Dr Zombie fixed him up. LOL

The aquarium was just breathtaking! Daddy said they were one of the nicest and healthiest looking fish tanks he had seen. And he had seen a lot!

At the aquarium they had a costume competition. Although we did not win (the theme was aquatic), we sure showed them how to dance. We were so good the host of the Disney Radio wanted to take a photo of us for their website.

There were so many wonderful fish in this aquarium. We even got to pat some stingrays and hammer head sharks.

We then went to have a look at the biggest aquarium we have ever seen in our lives. WOW! They even had two whale sharks swimming in it! This aquarium was apparently donated by a man who owns the Home Depot shops around the USA. It cost mare $250mil to build and stock!

All around the aquarium there were stations with candy and we got to trick and treat. Most of the stuff they were giving away though was healthy stuff, like bars – so we gave them all to mummy and daddy.

After the aquarium we drove to a shopping mall, which was about an hour away. It advertised everywhere that it would have shops giving out candy to kids. They started it at 6pm but we didn’t get there till 7pm because the traffic was very busy.

When we arrived there – the place was full of kids, all dressed up ready to collect their candy. We noticed that everybody was kind of lining up on one side (outside Toys R Us) and so we joined the queue, admiring everybody’s outfits. Eventually we got to the front and with our best smiles, we said ‘trick or treat’. And to our outmost disbelief an old lady handed us a piece of paper with word search and coloring on it. ‘Are you kidding’ we asked ‘that is the worst trick or treating gift we have ever got!!!’ Our parents make us do a difficult word search EVERY SINGLE DAY! They let us off the hook this morning to let us celebrate Halloween – and we got this??? Oh, boy!

Very soon we realized that most of the shops had run out of candy and they were giving out some stickers and coloring sheets, which were photocopied in a hurry. ‘Let’s get out of here’ daddy said and after grabbing some dinner at the food court, we left promptly.

Mummy got onto Internet to see which neighborhoods are good to trick or treat. Not being from the area we didn’t know where was safe and where not. Unfortunately most of the areas she was coming up with were way away and we wouldn’t get there till after 10pm. Ay, we really though we missed the boat.

Daddy stopped at the nearby Walmart to grab something and he asked a man there where to go. ‘My neighborhood is very safe and it’s only 2 miles up the road’. Armed with that information we went there and to our surprise we discovered an incredible estate with not houses but mansions. We walked around and collected whole buckets of candy. Now that’s what you call Halloween!!!

The next morning we got to hang out with our new neighbors. There were 6 kids in total and we were friends in an instant. We had a lot of plans for that day but really, we just couldn’t wait to get back to camp to play some more.

Two major things we did that day was checking out Atlanta’s famous attractions: The Coca-Cola factory and behind the scenes tour of CNN Studios.

First we went and learned all about the secret Coca Cola ingredient, which the company hides behind one of these:

And this is how the robots turn it into a fuzzy drink, which our parents constantly refuse us to drink. This of course was in slow motion - the real factory runs and super speeds

So that people ALL over the world could drink it, regardless of how it gets delivered to them...

Did you know that a pharmacist as an elixir for remedying medical ailments created Coca-Cola?  Go figure…..  We just thought it was a soda drink!

We spent a couple of hours wondering around this well designed house of Coke. We watched a 4D movie and met its actors.

We also met the famous Coca –Cola Polar Bear, who even let us pet his nose.

But our favorite part was the testing room – not only did our parents allow us to finally test this forbidden drink (well, to us anyway) but we got to sample different drinks from all over the world – all 64 of them!!!

We even got to mix our own concoctions – there were mixing machines that allowed us to expand on the 64 tastes of Coca- Cola, Fanta and others.  Some of these tasted pretty good…  Others…. Yucky!!!!!

Now with all the sugar from Halloween the night before and the carbonated bubbles of today – we turned into little kangaroos – we simply bounced off the walls and ceilings!

I was curious and asked my mum why is it that they brought us to this factory considering we re not normally allowed drinking these fizzy drinks. “Marketing’ she said to me, ‘If you ever need to sell something in the future – learn from the best how to market it’.

Our next tour was through the famous CNN (Cable News Network) World’s Headquarters. Wow, what a massive building. We took a behind the scenes tour and we got to see all the reporters, camera and light operators, directors and writers work together to update people around the world about the current affairs.

As we were watching the screens images of the recent hurricane Sandy, which we managed to escape, were playing over and over. It was very sad news and our little hearts were going out to all of those who were affected.

In fact our surfing friends had been out of electricity for the last few days and we were really worrying about them. We are not even sure if the beach house they let us use was still standing – that area got hit very, very hard…

It was amazing to see how many people had to work hard to put the news together.

The tour guide showed us all the latest technology the news reports and anchors are using. Have you ever wondered how on earth the anchor can talk to the camera and remember all the stuff she has to say? Ok, so you guessed that she reads it– but how does she do it without moving her eyes?

Well, the camera is behind a one-way mirror. Above the mirror there is a computer screen which reflects ont the mirror.  The screen, which has words written back to front and only a couple of words per line so when the anchor (the news man or woman reads it) his/her eyes don’t run around like if they are watching tennis. Very nifty design indeed.

When our guide finished her explanation she asked for a volunteer to read the recent news. Wow! Most of the adults looked at their feet (bad school memories perhaps?) but not Bella, oh no! She put her hand up as high as she could. The lady told her to come up to the front and sat her at this massive news desk and got the computers rolling.

Without any hesitation Bella starting reading, pausing exactly where she was supposed to. The lady helped her with a few fancy words (there were a lot of them) and Bella’s face appeared on all the screens.  She was good she got a standing round of applause from everybody. Well, everybody was standing anyway. We were so proud of her! Anchor for CNN- fancy that!!!

As I mentioned before, as much fun as we had on the tours, we just couldn’t wait to get back to camp to play with our new friends.

And fun we had!!! The whole group, who we just named the Rountrees (because that’s their last name) consisted of grandparents and their married kids with their grandchildren. There was Bo and Candi (hmm, yummy name) and their kids: Kaeli, Tucker and Isaiah. There was also Kim and Eric and their boys, Eli and West. We really liked playing with them!

At night we all sat by the fire and Kim and Eric played a guitar and sang so beautifully, we thought she was a superstar! 

We were planning to head off the next morning but our neighbors told us about a Pow-Wow, which was staring the following day and so this mixed with the idea of spending another wonderful night with our Southern speaking, beautifully singing, fun neighbors tilted the scale for staying another night.

We went to the Pow Wow the next day and we found out that the actual dancing ceremonies start the next day but this particular day was designated for schools. Without knowing this we joined the crowds at the entry and we slowly followed them through the gates. Before we knew it we were joining a school class in front of us for an Indian show, which was incredible! We learned the differences between the Eastern Tribes and the Western Tribes.

We also got to meet a few tribe representatives.

This lady was a full-blooded Native American. Although she agreed to take a picture with us, she refused to look into the camera. Something to do with her soul not being taken away….

We saw real campsites set up by the Native Americans. 

This lady told us that the tipis (tents) always belong to the females and if the men misbehave they will find their moccasins outside of the tent. That means they are not welcomed inside. And if they are really, really bad, the lady can throw or burn the moccasins and the man has to go and find himself a new home. Mummy really liked this idea. She said she will have to buy daddy some moccasins and occasionally leave them outside. LOL 

We spent anther wonderful night by the fire with all our wonderful sounding friends and we were very, very sad to bid them goodbye the next day.

We took this final picture of our group (just the kids) so that we can remember them. Little did we know that sometime in the future some of them would become our dearest friends.

*******

Our adventure update will continue shortly (sorry, we are having so much fun, mummy can't keep up with the updates). Please join us soon to see us goofing around with the Disney Crew - all of them in fact - on an incredible private island!!! LOL