Drive Time

Mom, Kent and I are moving on in our travels and are logging a fair bit of drive time. Kent is our expert in navigation and controls.


Mom is the pro at documentation of progress made.


And we have been passing the hours with games of Battleship and, most popular, Scrabble.


Good times and memories.

Beach Bums

After a great week with my Dad and step mom, Kim, I met up with my Mom and step dad, Kent. We will be road tripping our way up to PA, visiting family along the way. Our first stop was my step brother Josh's house to visit him and his wife, Jessie, and their daughters, Hannah and Mikayla. We had a wonderful visit. I had not seen then in a very long time, and I enjoyed seeing my beautiful, delightful nieces. Hannah wanted us to go to the beach, so Josh and Jessie took us to the beach at Ft. Fisher.


The water was a little cold for us to go swimming, but the weather was beautiful for wading and gathering seashells. We even found a jellyfish that had washed up!


The girls had a good time. Hannah and her mom played around climbing on the rocks and jumping from pylon to pylon. Hannah is an excellent jumper!


Mikayla is a doll! She is a very good-natured little girl, and enjoyed playing with a bag full of shells her sister had collected.


This trip also marks the first time my Mom and I had been on the beach together. We have each been to the beach, but never at the same time.


I had a fabulous time at the beach with my family, and hope to go again in the future.

Within the Realm

Well, my week in SC with my Dad and Kim came to a close quickly. We had a wonderful time, and are awaiting our next opportunity to spend time together. We went on many adventures while I was there, one of them being MagiQuest.


MagiQuest is a lot of fun. It is kind of like a scavenger hunt meets a video game. You start by getting a wand. The wand is your playing piece. You wave it at different things in the "realm" (playing area) to make things happen within the game such as to "enchant" animals and creatures to talk and give you clues or tasks, open treasure chests to find lost items ands gold, duel with goblins and dragons and the like. You take your wand back with you each time you play, and it remembers where you are within the game and allows you to pick up where you left off. My Dad and Kim found out about MagiQuest before I went to visit. They thought it sounded fun, and so did I. We went three times while I was there, and we made it through to the "Master Magi" level. The inside of the 'realm' is all decorated and the people who work there dress up, so if you have a good imagination you really can get into it and pretend you are in a magical land. Here you can see the castle where the princess lives. Inside the castle there is also the library and access to the dungeons.


Here is the tree house where the fairies live.

And the duel masters hut was decorated very nicely. I had fun looking at everything they had in there.

After all those magical adventures, we were hungry, so we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. The food was very good, as was the company!


It was a great trip. Thank you for the good times Dad and Kim!

Midnight Matinee

Tonight I went to see the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 with my dad. He had never been to a midnight movie release before! (I have been to a fair share...) We had a good time, and are awaiting the last installment due in July.

Down on the Plantation

I am currently visiting my dad and step-mom Kim in South Carolina. Yesterday we drove to Mt Pleasant and toured the Boone Hall Plantation. It was a lot of fun. We got to go on a driving coach tour around the whole plantation, then there was a live demonstration about the Gullah culture that emerged from the slaves. After that we listened to a talk about the slaves and their life on the plantation. We were able to tour the remaining cabins, which contained an audio and/or visual clip, plaques and relics to educate you on the lives of the slaves from their enslavement through emancipation.

This is a photo of "Slave Row". Nine of the original shacks are still standing. The plantation produced bricks at one time and these are built from the rejected bricks. Each hut housed approximately 16 people. Inside I estimate they are about the the size of two queen beds pushed end to end. Boards would have been laid on the rafters of the roof for the children to sleep.

We also went on the tour of the first floor of the main house. The second floor is occupied by the owners of the plantation. The house is very beautiful colonial style furnished with antiques from the period the house was originally built in.


The whole plantation was very beautiful and the experience was educational and fun, but I think the image that I will remember the most was the Avenue of Oaks. The avenue leading up to the house is lined on each side with centuries old Live Oaks draped with Spanish Moss. It was gorgeous. My favorite parts of the house were the library/ball room and the breeze way which both featured floor to ceiling windows, lovely floors (hardwood in the library and original bricks made on the plantation laid in herringbone in the breezeway) and both rooms opened up into a garden courtyard. Unfortunately no photography was permitted inside the house, so you will just have to use your imagination, think Jane Austin.


Avenue of Oaks as seen from the house.