Cursed in Connecticut (Part One)

As promised, I am back to tell you about the exciting adventure that began on Sunday, July 22nd. Many of you may remember (but many more of you have probably forgotten, or never even knew) that we had planned to take a trip out to Connecticut at the beginning of June, the week after school got out and also the week of the Great Lakes Gathering. We managed to go to the gathering but were not able to go to Connecticut because of the unprecedented number of snow days in Christa's school district this year. Well, we still wanted to take that trip, after all, who doesn't need a vacation? We decided to go now because the people we would be visiting would all be in Illinois starting August 1st and staying through the 13th and after that Christa would be going back to school starting on the 20th. All of that in mind, we packed our bags, tossed Emily into the car and away we went.

I am the first to admit that Christa & I rarely leave at the time we intend to, and with Emily that seems to be multiplied by a number greater than I would really like. I had wanted to leave the house in the 9 to 10 o'clock a.m. range, we actually left at around 3:00 p.m.. Considering our recent record 6 hours off schedule, that ain't too bad! We brought the audio book CD's for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the drive out and began listening to it right away. Emily, snuggled into her car seat and promptly took a nap. The drive on Sunday progressed nicely, we hit a little traffic getting out of Chicago and into Indiana, but once we were passed the toll, we started really moving. We stopped about every hour and a half to two hours to let Emily get out of her seat to get some hugs and a little play time. At around 10:30/11:00 we found a hotel in Ohio to spend the night.

We left our hotel bright and early at 11:00 the next morning for the long drive through Pennsylvania and on to Aunt S & the Godfather's house. We continued our routine of stopping every couple of hours for Emily, and to her credit she was really good the whole way. I admit that I was a little worried that she would not do well spending the whole day driving in the car, but she & her mother both had a lot of fun in the back seat. Our drive on Monday took what seemed like forever (Pennsylvania has that effect on people), but we did finally make it to our destination!! After playing a bit and talking, we all went to bed looking forward to Tuesday morning . . .

. . . It is here that I should explain the title of this blog entry. For those of you who don't know, Christa is a travel jinx. Don't get me wrong, I love her, but no one should travel with her. When Christa goes somewhere, EVERYTHING is closed, broken, out of business, or missing. On our first vacation after we got married, we went to Connecticut. One of the things that we really wanted to do was go to Gillette Castle; I had been telling Christa about this for a long time, this was something that she would really enjoy. When we got there, the gate was up and the entire park was closed for the season. We went back on another trip and the park was open, but the castle was closed for renovations. When we finally made it to Gillette castle (and it was open) all of the furniture was missing . . . it hadn't arrived yet after having been in storage during the renovations; we took a tour of the empty castle. A few years later we went to spend a day in Washington DC, as part of a larger trip. We didn't have a lot of time for museums, but we really just wanted to see the monuments, as Christa had never been to DC. When we got there, all of the monuments had been removed for cleaning, I walked her around saying, "Well, in that hole would be the Lincoln Memorial, there is a picture of it on the back of this penny." O.K. that isn't entirely true, but this is, The Washington Monument was closed for security upgrades (you couldn't even get close to it), the reflecting pool had been drained so they could clean it (we were told by a national park person that it was the first time in something like 20 years!), the Vietnam Memorial was 2/3 boarded up for lighting upgrades, and there was scaffolding at the Jefferson Memorial. Like I said, Christa is a travel jinx, there are many other examples of the stuff that doesn't happen for Christa on vacation but let's get back on topic . . .

. . . The primary focus of this trip was to go letterboxing, more specifically to do the boxes placed by Aunt S & the Godfather (not their trail names, but their "blog" names). Those of you in the letterboxing community know where this is going...almost all of their boxes have gone missing in the recent rash of vandalism and box theft that has plagued Connecticut.

So we got up on Tuesday morning with the knowledge that we would only be able to do Aunt S's one remaining series, "A Series of Unfortunate Letterboxes," and despite it's title, we were really looking forward to this series, but were unsure if it was still there. Off we went, into the unknown, a little later than we would have liked. When we reached the location of the first box, we were very happy to see that it was still there! We spent the rest of the afternoon hiking up the side of Mt. Everest for thousands of miles in 400 degree heat to finish the rest of the series; it took us about four hours, but that includes diaper and bottle stops for Emily. We were able to get all of the boxes except #7, which we knew was missing when we started. This was one of Emily's first real forays into letterboxing and it turns out that she is the textbook definition of a slackboxer: she doesn't do any walking, she doesn't carry any of her own stuff, she doesn't stamp in for herself, and she even slept through two boxes during the series! She can't even be bothered to stay awake long enough to find the boxes!! We returned back to the house very tired but very satisfied that we got the boxes, Aunt S was also very happy.

On Wednesday we had some very special plans. Emily's two cousins, Sarah and Amy, had no idea that we were in town and today was the day we planned to surprise them. After getting a much later start than we had anticipated, which kept us from doing any letterboxing, we arrived at their house. Emily snuck up to the door with her Bumbo (tm), her diaper bag, and her Cow. (She had the "suitcase" to make it look like she ran away from home) When Emily was all settled in, I rang the doorbell for her and ran across the yard to go hide behind a tree to wait and watch. Almost at once, we heard a shriek from inside the house and seconds later Sarah, who while looking out the window to see who was at the door had seen my mad dash across the lawn, came running out the back door and from twenty feet away lept into my arms for her patented Running Jump Hugs (tm). From inside, we could now hear Amy frantically pulling at the front door (which was stuck) and screaming, "Who's out there, who's out there?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Sarah realizing that Emily was not with us, went tearing across the lawn to the front door and got there just as Amy finally got the door open. Suffice to say, they were pretty happy and very excited to see Emily, and slightly less so to see Christa & me. After watching Emily do some crawling, we all put on our bathing suits and headed off for a swim at Globe Hollow, which is something to behold. Globe Hollow is a literal interpretation of the "cement pond" an update on the 'ol swimmin' hole if you will. It has a concrete bottom and they use chlorine to make it a little cleaner, but they fill it straight from the reservoir and the water runs out over a small spillway into a stream on the way out, so you are really just swimming in the "pond" or "lake" depending on your personal interpretation of the reservoir, but the bottom is concrete. No squishy gross mud bottom, but it does have small fish and a fair amount of seaweed. All in all, it is a very unique experience, enjoyable, but unique. We spent the rest of the day here, Emily enjoyed a quick dip and we had pizza delivered. From here we went to DQ for dessert and then Christa, Emily & I headed back to Aunt S's place for the evening.

I will leave you here until the next installment . . . coming up . . . what happened on Thursday! and Friday!

We stopped for lunch in Pennsylvania and let Emily crawl around for awhile on a blanket. She was really having a lot of fun playing with Daddy & her toy, until she saw the grass . . . then all she wanted to do was try to eat the grass.

"Wow! Look at all that green stuff!!!!!!!!!"

Steve snuck this photo of us napping in the morning. Emily woke up for her bottle and then we both fell back to sleep after she finished eating. It felt so good to be lying down instead of cooped up in a car.

On the trail of the "Series of Unfortunate Letterboxes." Emily, the ultimate slackboxer, wouldn't even walk to the boxes, she wouldn't stamp in, in fact at one point she even fell asleep and stayed that way for 2 boxes.

Even though the boxes are unfortunate, we thought that the scenery was beautiful.

You can tell by looking at Steve how hot, long & grueling our hike was.


Emily, sitting in her Bumbo (tm) on her cousins' porch, waiting to be discovered.

"EMILY!!!!!!"

Emily was quickly scooped up and brought inside.

Once inside, we got to meet Max, or as we like to call him, Max-meel-own (phonetically and spoken with a very snooty French accent) & Sarah's "BFF", Kelly.



Emily got a kick out of watching Daddy swim a couple of laps before scooping her up to bring her to the shallow end to do some swimming.

Emily & Daddy had a lot of fun swimming together, and practicing the techniques they'd been learning during Emily's swimming lessons.

Amy was also having fun playing with Emily in the water. We all had a really fun time at Globe Hollow, and it is definitely on our list to do again the next time we're out during the summer. Of course, now that I've said that, it'll probably be closed for renovations . . . ugh!