Category Archives: travel

Apes, Goatherds and Chaise Lounges

I love saving money, getting a deal, and sticking to a budget as much as anybody.  I mean, if you need a 20% off coupon for Bed, Bath & Beyond, just give me a ring.  If there were a black market for those babies I’d be set for life.
As far as I know, though, there isn’t one.  If you hear otherwise, let me know.  I’ll cut you in.  For now, I just share the coupons with my friends, or take a massive stack to the store and get 20% off of fancy pans, cool kitchen gadgets, and grapefruit spoons.  Someone has to buy the grapefruit spoons, right?
Despite my fondness for scoring a good deal, this year I decided not to rock the Staycation.  I know it’s trendy and I’m well aware that we can do lots of fun things Right Here! For cheap! I have done that many a time in the past and, frankly, there is a limit to how many times I am willing to scour the city for cheap entertainment for my kids.  If we stayed here this year, I might have sent them over to my girlfriend’s house all week, and then we wouldn’t be girlfriends anymore.  Mothers have to think these things through carefully, you know.
Those of you who read here often, or know me well, (or both) may have rolled your eyes just now when I said I’ve stayed here “many a time.”  Allow me to clarify:  those staycations—which wasn’t even a word then, we were just the only people left in town—were mostly when my kids were in diapers.  But hey, I have three kids—that era lasted for, like, a hundred years.
But that era is over.  Those boys can now pack their suitcases and haul them around.  So they do.  Which is, in part, how we end up with kids walking around Spain wearing striped shirts with plaid shorts, but that’s another post entirely and possibly a training issue.  You have to learn to let go of the little things, though, this is what my friends keep telling me.  On second thought, I don’t see their kids walking around in stripes and plaids, so hmmm.  Not sure.
At any rate, we did, in fact, globe trot this year and flew our crew through the air and over the sea to visit Spain for two weeks.  I’m considering doing a whole series of posts about when and where and how for those of you who are interested, but I fear boring the crap out of the rest of you, so we’ll see what I come up with.
In the interim, here are a few highlights from our adventures.
Apes!  Yes, Barbary apes.  They are alive and well and snacking on potato chips atop the Rock of Gibraltor.
And juice bottles, naturally.
A real, live goatherd.  No kidding.  This guy was rounding up his goats with the help of a peppy little dog.  A dog, who, let’s face it, my dog would not recognize as the same species, because that dog works for his supper!
So, no, we didn’t go to the zoo.  
Really, it was Spain.  
Let’s try this one–two points if you can tell me where it is.  
It was absolutely magnificent.

But this next picture, this is one of my favs.  
I love these streets, sans vehicles with crazy drivers, of which there were many.  Now, THERE, I could do a Staycation!
The one thing I learned after visiting all the palaces and forts and cathedrals, is that those Moorish kings knew how to party.  And how to relax.  
Here’s a shot from the gardens of the Alhambra, in Grenada, where the king would chill when he wasn’t ruling or battling.  
This guy’s descendants probably invented the chaise lounge.
Hmmm, a chaise lounge.  Time to wrap this up, friends, the sun is shining!

Visit Great Falls Park with Kids

We wanted to get some fresh air and exercise, to let the kids run wild for a bit after being cooped up in the car for too many hours.


With Great Falls Park (in Virginia) we hit the jackpot. Not only is it inexpensive ($5 per carload or $20 for an annual pass), it’s beautiful,

and it’s full of history.
Along our hike, we learned that George Washington founded the Patowmack Company in 1785 to construct a canal along the Potomac River that would connect the east to the west via a waterway, complete with locks to bypass the Great Falls. It took 17 years to complete the project and George Washington died in 1799, two years before the project was finished.  The history of the park is very interesting–there’s a little something for everyone.
If you  head to Overlook 3, you’ll find the High Water Pole, which marks the height water has reached during different years in history, and it’s amazing to see how high its been, even recently.

There are also lots of places to explore, a critical component of fun for growing boys…

Apparently, the park is also a fun place to take trick pictures. I suppose that’s learning with a camera, right?

See the Manatees at Blue Spring State Park!

Kids can learn things just about anywhere!

During a recent trip to Florida, in addition to visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, we took a side trip to Blue Spring State Park on a whim.  We’d never heard of it but Google led us there in hopes of spotting a manatee, the elusive creature who’d avoided us on our last few trips south.

Blue Spring State Park is less than an hour north of Orlando in Orange City, FL.  It was an easy drive and included crossing a bridge over Lake Jesup, home to the state’s densest population of alligators.  This can come in quite handy if the children are misbehaving in the car…”You don’t want to fall into the lake, now, do you?”  Or, if you’re just looking for learning opportunities for your kids, it’s a great beginning to a conversation about alligators, ecosystems, and animal habitats.  Either way, it’s an interesting fact, don’t you think?  I must admit that I felt a bit squeamish even though I understood we were way up on a large structure made of concrete and steel and not really within reach of the beasts.  But, really?  The densest population of alligators?  Yuck!

Keep driving north, and you’ll find yourself at the park, where you can also snorkel, scuba dive, swim, tube, canoe, kayak and camp at various times during the year.  We discovered that manatee season is mid-November through March, and because the natural spring keeps the water at about 73 degrees, the manatees love to swim there.  The park is a designated Manatee Refuge, and swimming with the manatees isn’t permitted, although I’m not sure why you’d want to anyway.  They’re not small!

Since we were there in December, we lucked out and saw not just one or two, but probably twenty or more manatees, a gator, a turtle, and, of course, plenty of fish.

see the gator?

There are several hiking tails, and we enjoyed walking along the boardwalk through the beautiful park.

The park has signposts that offer tidbits about the areas history, and facts about the local habitat.

All in all, I found it more than worth the drive.