Fall Break; Florence, UNA, Una, & Erik's first Camping Trip

Our final destination Friday afternoon was Florence, Alabama. We'd heard good things about this area and figured we might was well check it out. It's right on the banks of the HUGE and beautiful Tennessee river, in the same neighborhood as the childhood home of Helen Keller, and according to what we'd heard has a great historic downtown area that is neat to see. We crossed the river and the road spits you pretty much straight into the downtown area.

Which, by the way, is NOT all that interesting. I think Starkville has about as much to offer by way of fun downtown buildings and shopping. We had planned to find a parking place and then wander around town, but when it didn't really catch our interest we just kept going. The road we were on dead ended into the visitor parking lot for the campus of the University of Northern Alabama, which looked kinda interesting so we decided to walk around and check it out. From the paw prints on the road way to the statues lining the side walk, it didn't take us too long to deduce the UNA mascot.

 The first thing that caught our eye was this gorgeous fountain. Erik was pretty sad that we wouldn't let him climb in and go swimming.

 As we were enjoying the fountain I was looking around and noticed an unusual looking enclosure and just HAD to go check it out.

Meet Una and Leo III. The real live mascots for UNA. SO COOL!

Leo III, I love the wrinkles in his face!

Leo was VERY uncomfortable with all the attention. As more people started to gather (not fair, we were there first!) he got more and more worked up. He was pacing and growling and throwing a pretty major fit. The lion keeper (in the striped shirt) had to come out and talk him into quieting down. She was reaching in and petting he and Una, and is way more brave than I think I'll ever be. 

 After we'd had enough of the university, we headed into town to see if we could find anything cool. There were a few little things here and there that caught our attention, so it wasn't a complete flop.

This park had another great fountain that Erik splashed in for a while. 

Florence is the home of W.C. Handy, "Father of the Blues"

Any "Big Bang" fans out there? If so, you'll understand why we had to get a picture in front of the comic book store!

This is how Erik spent most of his time in the stroller. He refused to sit up straight, even after his fingers got run over. 

We finally decided it was time to figure out where to stay for the night. We remembered reading about a city park that had cheap camping, so we started driving around trying to find it. When we were totally lost, we finally admitted that we needed to find some internet and look up directions. We saw signs for tourist info and figured that they'd have maps and maybe even internet, so we followed the signs and wound up at the welcome center. Which happens to be located at the base of the Renaissance Tower, a huge tower that goes up  200+ feet above the tourist center and has a fancy rotating restaurant inside. Being the dorks that we are, we jumped in the elevator in our grungy travel-wrinkled clothes and headed up to check it out. (There was a menu at the bottom of the elevator and there was NO WAY we could pay to eat there, we just wanted to look out the windows.) The doors opened right into the restaurant, and the host greeted us and kindly (though not without a glance at his watch to see if he could afford the risk of having the dinner rush see us) allowed us to step inside to look around. It was breathtaking! The sun was just setting directly over the river on one side, and there was a lock and dam on the other side. You could see the city sprawled out beneath you, and it was just amazing. It was also a little trippy to watch the dining area spinning around us as we stood in the middle.

 We finally went back down and found a map to the park with the camping. We drove over there just to find out that the only tent sites were right on the river bank with nothing separating you from the water's edge. There was no way we were going to spend the next while chasing Erik away from the water on one side and the road on the other, so we headed east of town for our back-up campsite at Joe Wheeler Lake State Park. As you may have realized, if the sun was going down while we were in the tower, that means that by the time we were ready to set up camp, it was pitch black. "That's okay", we thought. "We've got flashlights!" After a few increasingly frantic minutes of searching we were forced to conclude that the flashlight had not actually made it from our house to our car. We were out of luck in a big way. We used the headlights on our car to set up camp and then used a couple of emergency candles I'd randomly thrown in to get our tinfoil dinners and banana boats on the fire and to play cards after Erik went to bed. It wasn't quite what we'd envisioned for Erik's first camping trip, but so far it wasn't going too bad.

Fall Break; Our Trip Along the Trace

Well, it seems like a long time since I've posted anything here. Our days are pretty much the same day after day, and we haven't been any where or done anything noteworthy for a while. Luckily for us, last week was Fall Break. I had a day off of babysitting, and Ethan had a day off of class (okay, so he actually just skipped his class that day, shhhhhh don't tell anyone!) so we decided to do something fun while the weather is still beautiful.
We spent days looking around online, scanning our atlas, perusing lists of day trip ideas for our area, and finally decided on a destination. The plan was to leave Friday morning and adventure around all day, camp that night and then adventure our way back home all day Saturday, and that's exactly what we did.
We got up bright and early Friday morning, loaded all our gear in the car and headed out.

We didn't know where we'd be at lunch time, so we made up some Green Chili Burritos and had them warming up in the window for whenever we got hungry. SO YUMMY!

We drove up to Tupelo, MS, passing lots of cotton fields all white and ready to harvest. I have to admit, seeing the cotton in the fields and in the big bales along the roadside makes me a little homesick for Thatcher.

Want a better look at any of the pictures on my blog? Just click the picture for a larger view. ( Don't worry, I know this particular picture isn't anything special, but just in case you want to see some other one I thought I'd let you know.)

In Tupelo, we got on the Natchez-Trace Parkway and headed northwest-ish. We'd heard good things about the Parkway and thought we'd check it out, although I have to admit we had our doubts. I mean, just how cool can a road get?  We were both forced to admit that it's pretty darn cool. You never see any buildings, and rarely see signs of other humans. Other than the occasional power line or overpass, it's just you and the road. The grass is neatly trimmed, without a speck of garbage. It's really just a beautiful roadway. There are pull-outs marking interesting sights along the way, and we stopped at several of these, though we only got out at one.

Pharr Mounds, the largest and most important archaeological site in Mississippi. 

The view upstream as we crossed the Tenn-Tom. Those are the locks that enable boats to get around the Bay Springs Lake Dam. 

The Cypress trees are changing colors for the fall, aren't they pretty?

We decided to get out at the pull out for the Tenn-Tom Waterway. Erik was sure excited to get to run around outside for a little while!

Headed from the parking lot to the waterway. 

So excited!

Erik spent most of the day doing one of two things. For more details, see exhibits A and B

Exhibit A. Snuggling with Elmo and taking a nap. 

Exhibit B. We call this fuzzy picking. You know, like berry picking, except he's picking the little fuzzies off his blanket. 

Another reason we call it fuzzy picking. Just like berry picking, sometimes you get one that's just too big and inviting to save for later and you have to enjoy it now. 

The first leg our our trip ended as we exited the Trace and headed east along the top part of Mississippi and into Alabama. Stay tuned for where we went next!

Catching up with Erik

I realized that it's been a while since I posted pictures of Erik, and figured you all must be dying to see his cuteness. Erik is now one, walking and running everywhere, getting into everything in sight. He loves to play outside. He loves feet and anything associated with them (IE shoes, socks, etc...). He can say hug, mama, dog, and bottle (although that one sounds like baba). He is stubborn, but sweet. He loves to play with other kids, and if there's a kid around who's a little older than him, he'll follow them around and put everything he's got into doing whatever the "big" kid is doing. At his most recent check up last week we found out he is still in the 95th percentile for height and 75th percentile for weight, he's a very big boy!

Erik LOVES to play outside. 

Lounging in the toy box. 

A pillow for your head, something to prop your feet on, and milk and animal crackers. Does life get any better than this?

Do you want some?

Erik recently figured out how to climb up on the furniture, and loves to lounge around in the arm chairs. 

We are learning how to color, and Erik loves it!

Our new friend Paisley is helping Erik to learn that he is not the center of the universe. He loves to push the stroller with her in it. He brings her pacifier when she cries. His favorite though is helping to burp her. Nothing like a mommy approved opportunity to hit the baby (don't worry, it's all carefully supervised!).

We bought Erik a sippy cup with a straw in it, and he loves it. This day he was too tired from playing outside to pick it up to get a drink. This works just as well. 

Waiting for lunch to cook. 

Do you think he's hungry? 

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

As you can probably imagine, it's pretty wet here in Mississippi. We've had some pretty impressive storms lately, and I have to say it's a VERY good thing that nobody in our family is upset by thunder or lightning. We've had some storms that had the windows and doors in our apartment rattling in their frames. 

We had one of these storms a few days ago, right as Ethan got home from school. Of course, being the sensible creature that he is, he grabbed the camera and headed right back outside into the middle of all the action. He got some great pictures so we could show everyone what a little drizzly Mississippi rain is like. A day or two later we all went out for a walk to get some pictures of what it looks like on a  non-rainy day so you could have something to compare it to. 

This is Ethan standing in the middle of the road with water up to his ankles.

The water drains off the road into this little ditch that runs along the back side of our apartment complex. 

Here we are walking along the little wall next to the ditch., headed away from the road you saw in the previous picture. 

Looking back up the ditch. 

After the ditch passes our apartment, it joins in with a bigger one that crosses through this culvert under the main road. 

It just doesn't look quite so cool on a dry day. 

Ethan and Erik checking out the ditch.

As our walk was coming to a close, we turned Erik loose and just let him decide where to go. He wanted to sit and stomp his feet on this staircase for a long time. He thought it was the funniest thing EVER.

Yes, he's WALKING! Nothing is safe anymore, this kid can go anywhere he wants, any time he wants, so watch out!