Vacation-Philadelphia, Hershey, Washington D.C., Kitty Hawk

So my day started out by going to work. I knew I was scheduled for atleast 4 hours of work, and had to go in. I got a ride with one of my co-workers and got to work. Within a few minutes of being there, my desk which has a computer mounted underneath decided to fall from about 3 feet in the air to land on my foot. Only a couple hours from vacation. I wanted to scream and yell, but I was on a call to a customer, and had to just silently jump. Eventually everyone figured out what happened and my supervisor came over to check on me. I emphatically denied my injuries since I knew I would have to fill out a report and possible go to emergency care. I wasn't about to let that happen. I did a wink, nod thing and she let me off the hook. Though my foot hurt, and bled, I didn't really care since I was moments away from starting my vacation. Surprisingly the darn computer still continued to function until I left, which came around 10:30 when I got the OK to leave early. Since one of my friends was also leaving, I got a ride over to PTI Airport. I got over to the car rental area, and realized alot has changed since I worked there some 7-8 years ago. The door that used to lead into the airport was now bricked up and gone. Weird! It must be some sort of 9/11 thing I guess. So I made my way to the Avis desk, which was luckily still like I left it. A very nice woman pulled up my reservation re-interated that I need insurance, and then handed my rental agreement and spot number for my Chevy Trailblazer. I walked out under the lower deck parking and there was one of the senior citizen car shuttlers with my SUV. He handed me the keys and I was on my way.

I drove back home and loaded up the truck with the kids in record time and made sure this was going to the perfect vacation.

This lasted till we got to Burlington, and then Serenity (my daughter) decided she was car sick and threw up. So we pulled over, cleaned her up, and started driving. Around Cary, she threw up again. We now decided we should get her some Dramamine, but unfortunately no one in Cary sells it. Eventually we found a Walgreens about 50 miles north-east of Raleigh and within minutes she was singing happy songs.

The back-roads of North Carolina were beautiful, and it was amazing to see how red-staters live outside of liberal Greensmecca. Around 5:30 we approached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and everyone in the car had their legs crossed begging for me to pull over and go the bathroom. Luckily about 4 miles into the bridge the have a little gift shop, eatery, and thankfully a bathroom. Unfortunately they close at 6, but luckily it was 5:48. So we made a mad dash inside and did our best to return natural resources to nature. A few minutes later and we are deep below the Chesapeake Bay in the first underwater tunnel. The kids loved it, but we wished they had made the tunnel out of glass so you could see into the bay. Still, it's one of those places you have to go atleast once in your life before you die. Once we hit the Virginia Peninsula I started looking for a hotel. I really wanted internet access and found a Best Western in Exmore, Va for 60 some dollars. Unfortunately they have no food delivery in town, So I was forced to drive very quickly to the Kentucky Fried Chicken about a mile from the hotel, and quickly rush back to the room to see 24. The KFC was out of everything, I ordered corn, they said do you want something else, we're out of corn. I said sure. I said Macaroni. They responded we are out of Macaroni. I didn't really care, I had to get back to 24!!!

But I made it back. Scarfed out on Chicken, and watched my show. The really cool thing is I brought my broadband phone box with me, so I actually have our home phone here, and we can make unlimited calls too! God I love technology.

Anyways, tomorrow we will leave here and have about 250 more miles to drive into Philly. Hopefully no one will get car sick, or drop computers on there foot.

Our day started off leaving Virginia and continuing up through the Hamptons. We saw this Tyson Chicken factory with like 50 trillion birds flying over it. Literally, I'm not kidding... I've never seen as many birds as I did today. We kept wondering why all the houses here have porches on top of the roof. We stopped for breakfast at a Hardee's where I tried the new steak burrito they have been advertising. It was ok, not the best thing in this world, but it was quick. Eventually we started to get back into the busy city, and the moment we hit the Pennsylvania state line, traffic just stopped. We were only about 25 miles away from Philadelphia but we sat in traffic for about 40 minutes. Finally we made it to our hotel in Center City. Traffic here is crazy. Anytime I want to complain about Wendover, I'll just shut up from now on.

So we checked in, went upstairs and changed the baby which had pooped all over herself moments before arriving to the hotel. After collecting ourselves for a few minutes and giving Serenity a bath we decided to make our way down to South 9th street for Steak & Cheese. Here's a little tip if you ever come to Philadelphia: Streets are all one way here, and none of them go the way you want. Also 9th street is this mythological street that should, and I do say should exist between 8th and 10th street. It doesn't. We did get to see alot of Philadelphia however, in our attempt to figure it all out. Yes the streets do look like Sesame Street, and Yes there is alot of trash and rough neighborhoods like I've seen in videos, and on TV. There are some really beautiful areas too. We passed through China Town, and the Italian neighborhoods, and a very obvious Gay neighborhood. Let me tell you, there are some really cute Gay Guys here. Too bad they're gay.

Eventually we reached the intersection that is the home of Geno's Steaks & Pat's Steaks. We quickly parked and made the decision to go to Geno's since we had parked right beside it. We ordered 4 Philly Cheese Steaks with Wiz and Onions and 2 orders of Cheese Fries. Before I could even hand the Italian guy the money, he handed me the bag of food and was checking Shannon and I out. It was really cold, so we ducked back into the truck for some heat and to eat. Let me tell you that these things are freaking awesome.

No, that's not the words for it.

Actually no words can describe these things. They are beyond the English language. Lets just say this is one food you have to try, in order to understand. We finished our food and then headed back to the hotel. We stopped at a convenience store to get some money out of the ATM, and get some diet soda. We went back to the hotel just to relax and rest for awhile.

The hotel here isn't as nice as the one we stayed at last night. It's very convenient and you can see the Rocky Steps from the hotel. Its a real old hotel that has obviously been renovated several times over the years. There is absolutely no water pressure, and I don't know if this is because of the old hotel, or just Philly's water works. It's clean and we have wireless so we can make do. The view is awesome from our window though. We can see the skyline from the our 3rd floor window, and it is without a doubt incredible compared to Greensboro's. There is a large screen on one of the buildings that is like a huge LED ticker. It keeps running website addresses, and I keep thinking how cool it would be if I could get greensboring.com on there. Of course, no one would know what the hell I'm talking about. Then again, no one really knows what I'm talking about in Greensboro.

The TV is on and they just played a little news clip of whats on the local news tonight. The headline was, 2 year olds addicted to crack cocaine brings her drugs for show and tell. I don't suppose you will hear that anytime soon in North Carolina either. They're obvious benefits to living in North Carolina that you only become aware of when you visit some place like here. But... What Greensboro doesn't have is 24 hours delivery of Pizza, Chinese, and every freaking good food you can ever think of.

I don't know what our plans are tomorrow, but it should be very, very interesting. I think we are going to have to make a trip back down to 9th street before we leave that for sure.

Sounds like a great trip so far.

Anyone else besides me dying to make a comment about this picture?

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Procrastinate now, don't wait until later.

Unfortunately this post is a day late since the Best Western we were staying at was having some wireless internet problems. Basically the network wasn't renewing the IP and calling the front desk on multiple attempts made me angry and I wanted to go down stairs and strangle them.

Yesterday involved a trip to Walmart to buy a stroller, some panties, the board game Zathura, and some Coca Cola. We also managed to get back down to 9th street to try Pat's steak and cheese. I thought Geno's was better, but Shannon thought Pat's was better.

We also did alot of driving around yesterday to see the different areas of Philadelphia. The good the bad and the interesting. Time flies while your on vacation and we spent way to much time in the toy section at Wally world trying to keep the kids happy.

Today however we we're a bit more prepared. We left for the Franklin Institute were we spent most of our day. We saw the Imax film called "The Human Body" which was really awesome. The kids played on all kinds of different stuff, and we ate and Ben's Bistro which costs a whopping 30 dollars for frozen tasting school food. The great part was the kids loved it, and that was indeed the important part. After we left there, we shot west down the interstate to Hershey, PA. Unfortunately when we arrived it was a little after 5PM and all the attractions were closed for the day. Chance immediately saw the AppleBees and had been begging to go. So we pulled into a comfort inn, which cost a whopping 100.00 but does have working internet and its quite posche. It also has an indoor pool which rocks. We had to run over to the local Super K-Mart since somebody (and I won't name, names) forgot to pack our swimsuits. Hilarity ensues as both of us had matching suits. Thank God we are 500 miles from were anyone knows us.

So now we are back up at the room, I'm quite relaxed from my swim, and just finished watching My name is Earl. I'm thinking the vending machine is calling my name though. Tomorrow we will go over to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, otherwise known as Hershey.

We woke up this morning and drove the few short miles to The Hershey factory in Hershey, PA. Unfortunately the behind the scenes tour is shut down for renovations, and we were limited to wandering through a huge mall of Chocolate shops, and bakeries. They did have a little thing for the kids where they get to make Hershey kisses. It was neat, and we ended up getting our fill of chocolate. We then headed a few miles down the road to a local cavern and took a tour. It was alot of fun, all except the steps getting down and up to it. After that we headed down to Amish country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We took a tour of an authentic Amish house and learned about Amish life. Not that I know all that much more then I did, but I began to see Amish life as a bit hypocritical when I saw a mixer and a gas powered refrigerator in the Amish Kitchen. Shannon decided she was even more confused as well as we watched a Amish cart and horse merge into freeway traffic.

After contemplating driving to Ohio to visit my grandparents, we decided another 500 miles was just not a smart decision with our vacation winding down. So we headed south down into Washington D.C and complete Chaos. We had gotten so used to Philadelphia and its methodology in street layout when we ended up in the Ghetto of D.C., all we wanted to do is find a hotel. After several hours of searching we ended up in Virginia, just south of the capital in Quality Inn. We ordered some pizza from a local establishment and are basically drained after a full day of excitement. Tomorrow we will head back into the capital to take in what we can, before we head back to the Carolina line.

Well we started the day off just outside of Washington D.C. in the crappiest Quality Inn. We were in a town in Ridgewood, VA and spent nearly 90.00 to stay in the poorest ran hotel I've seen yet. Certainly not worth the 90 dollars. Shannon said the creme in her coffee actually curdled. Then the continental breakfast lady asked for a tip? What the...? Whats even more funny is the comment card they put in our room was already filled out. The last visitors thought the place was a shit hole too.
But what 24 hours can make. Tonight we are in Kill Devil Hills, NC at a Best Western. This is a palace. We have an ocean view. 2 bedrooms, 2 TVs, a full kitchen, internet, a living room, and 3 beds.

Now to get here was another story. We drove into D.C and began looking for a place to park. The last time I was in D.C. which was about 10 years ago, I ended up parking in the President's parking spot. It cost me about $300 dollars in parking tickets. This time I was going to find something else that costs alot less. After a few minutes of driving we ended up in a parking garage on 9th and D Street for 11 dollars a day. We walked to the capital and got our tour tickets. That's when we had to go the bathroom, and ran over to the botanical gardens. By the time we walked out, Serenity was crying, screaming, and compulsively seizuring. (and no, I don't know if those are real words or not) So we tried to calm her down, this didn't work. We tried and tried. She was totally pissed off. Finally after several attempts we finally decided not going on the tour would be a good idea. So we started walking towards the Washington monument, thinking if we could find a hot dog cart, we could shove some food down her throat and make her happy. We found the center parkway hot dog stand and spent a whopping 20 dollars, only to find out we would stand there in the blowing cold wind with Seren screaming her head off throwing her hot dog at people. We had finally been beat. We had walked nearly 5 miles in a complete circle and the baby was still screaming as we walked back to the car defeated. When we got in the SUV, she smiled, giggled, and laughed. We knew one day we'd be back, and we'd see the rest of D.C.

Several hours later we arrived near Kitty Hawk, NC and Kill Devil Hills. This was Shannon's surprise, since she had never been to the east coast beach nor experienced the North Carolina outer-banks. We just ordered pizza, and the kids love the huge motel suite. Soon our vacation will be over, but for one last night we revel in the adventure we had, and tomorrow wake up with the Atlantic Ocean beckoning us with her waves.

Well our vacation is over. Tonight we are back at home. We woke up this morning to a beautiful view of the Atlantic ocean in one direction, and the Wright Brothers monument in the other. The kids took off to the beach to play in the sand, and touch their feet in the water. It was cold, but also the perfect ending to a week long of of vacation. Around 11AM we packed up our things one last time and took off down 64 West towards the Triangle. The car was quiet and calm, and we talked about the various things we had done during the week. Passing through the originally English settlements of Manteo, and Roanoake Island brought us full circle in US history and the perfect last lesson that began in Philadelphia, continued to Washington D.C. and ultimately lead us back to Greensboro.