NC or Bust

Every year or two we take a trip to North Carolina. My mother-in-law owns a rental log cabin there about 3500 feet up in the mountains, a mile and a half off the Appalachian Trail. It's a long trip, but worth it.

Living in the mountains poses certain restrictions on road building -- mainly, there's only so much that you can economically alter Mother Nature. This means that the road bend to her whim, not the other way around. It's a kind of game driving with so many S-curves for the last hour or so as we approach her property. Last hour of driving, but that only equates to about 15 miles because it's soooo curvy. I thought about counting the S curve signs from the time we enter North Carolina to her cabin, but not in time to do it this trip. Maybe next trip.

The other thing that comes with driving in the mountains is height -- something I'm afraid of - especially when you're only a few feet from a couple-of-hundred-foot drop off. I guess to be fair, half the time I was on the inside of the curves hugging the mountains, but the other half I was hugging the door handle.

Did I mention it's a long trip? It's about 10-11 hours if you drive straight through. With three kids, we break it into two days for all of our sake. We also try to keep the kids occupied as best we can. The week before we left, we hit the bookstore and happened upon some Tamagotchi toys. They are those little key chain pets that with constant attention metamorphose from tiny "babies" to adult LCD characters that mate and produce offspring. The "owners" need to feed, play with and clean up after, and train (via praise and timeout sessions) the pets in similar fashion to the baby dolls that the high school Parenting classes use. These little buggers come with a voice too -- a little multi-variable chirpy tone. I decided to name the sound the "Tamagotchi Crickets." I admit to helping parent the little creatures occasionally (one of the games you play with them is kinda addictive). My wife actually had one several years ago (before kids) and managed to keep him alive for a couple of weeks.

More vacation blog posts soon...