The Salad Days

We had to skip the drive-through safari on day five of Carter's road trip - it was pouring rain and they were closed. But luckily our next stop was immune to the nasty weather. This cavern system was huge - and there is even more to the system (that was just discovered a couple of years ago) that isn't open to the public - those additional rooms and tunnels would more than double the size of the 'show' caves. Our guide was really good, and shared lots of additional information above and beyond the normal tour, because our group was so small and they weren't expecting many visitors that day with the weather the way it was.

Day four of Carter's road trip took us to a pair of museums - the Virginia Air and Space Center, and the Science Museum of Virginia. The Air and Space Center was pretty amazing - it was one of NASA's public outreach locations, and had all sorts of cool space-related exhibits (in addition to the airplanes and jets you would expect). The science museum was pretty impressive too - but for some reason every science museum I've ever been to with the kids has been too dark to get good photos.

We finished day three of Carter's road trip in Virginia Beach. The weather was still pretty rotten, but we had brief breaks in the rain that we used to walk the beach. We had lunch at the cool seaside Dairy Queen that's been there for over 65 years. Our hotel room had a 6th floor balcony that looked out over the ocean, which was pretty awesome. We never made it down to the Neptune statue at the other end of the boardwalk though - Carter ran out of steam before we got that far.

Day three of Carter's road trip took us to the Virginia Zoo. Due to the rain (and the fact that it was a school day), it turned out that we were the only customers at the zoo that day. We had the entire zoo to ourselves, which was actually pretty awesome. Carter said it felt like we had our own private zoo. She especially loved the orangutans - she said that she loved how human they seemed when they would look at you.

Day two of Carter's road trip saw us visiting Assateague Island and Ocean City, Maryland. Assateague Island is a National Park on a barrier island off the coast of Maryland and Virginia. The most interesting thing about it is the herd of wild ponies that live on the island. The weather was miserable, so we only saw a few ponies - but it was still pretty cool. The unexpected thing we found on the beach was dozens of washed up shells of horseshoe crabs - not many of the shells were fully intact, but we did see a few that were pretty big. After we left the island we traveled on to Ocean City. It was a nice little seaside town. In the summer I'm sure it is crazy, but this time of year it was nearly abandoned - which was actually kind of nice. We walked on the beach, played some mini-golf (we were the guy's only customers all day), and had dinner at a cool little place that only makes pizza and pancakes, any time of day.

First stop on Carter's road trip this year was the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, New Jersey. I've been there with Sean, but this was Carter's first time. She says that her favorite part was petting the stingrays in the touch tank - but a close second would be the shark tunnel.