Dadcation
One thing I’ve learned about having fun is it’s best to risk one’s life to achieve it, and it must be preceded by excruciating toil. So, Jody, Jim Bob, my wife, and I all bought full suspension aluminum mountain bikes recently, and I met my 2 friends from childhood just off I-20 at Oxford, Alabama at a place called Coldwater Mountain on a snowy/sleeting Saturday morning on 5 hours sleep so we could have fun. Jody and I arrived 15 minutes before Jim Bob, so I looked at…
Just over 2 hours from Atlanta is a state park in Alabama a few minutes from where my parents live, and since we had a Screaming Eagle Aerial Adventures rain check (more accurately, a “torrential, lightning-filled, and utterly destructive storm” check) left from Fathers Day weekend, we used it in late October to see what ziplining is all about. The weather provided panoramic views of the Sunday sunrise from atop a tree canopy overlooking a beautiful lake. See the lake? It’s to our left. The perched 20-something guides…
We saw the film “Muscle Shoals” earlier in the summer and decided we needed to go, much like we did with Yosemite after “Free Solo” last summer. On Friday of Labor Day weekend, we headed west on I-20 to Alabama. We pulled off I-65 in Cullman to see something I’d seen on billboards for years but never stopped to see: Ave Maria Grotto. It’s where a Benedictine monk designed miniatures of cathedrals and other landmarks from all over the world out of unwanted recycled materials like shells, broken…
When you can’t fly across an ocean, you seek recreation in more pedestrian pursuits, so this Spring and Summer, we’ve gone camping more than we did in the prior 10 years combined. A friend from undergrad named Charles invited my family to join his at Stone Mountain’s campgrounds, so we did; it was the first time we’ve spent more than a single night in a tent at a campground. He had lots of camping stuff–a camp stove, camp chairs, and camp coffee maker burner things. We had a…
We pulled into Montgomery, Alabama at the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at 11am on Saturday; a few minutes later, the five of us plus my mother-in-law were inside a city bus simulator traveling through history. We walked through the attached museum and then drove over to the Alabama Department of Archives & History, which has fairly recently been renovated; it had everything from Native American artifacts to Alabama football memorabilia. After lunch, the five of us drove toward Selma, stopping at the halfway point of the historic…
We took our first electric roadtrip as a family last weekend, as the children got Columbus Day (and the preceding Friday + the following Tuesday) off. We headed to Guntersville, Alabama on Saturday, where my parents live by the state park. But first, we stopped at a Nissan dealer in Rome to fill up on electricity and then headed northwest to Scottsboro, where airports’ unclaimed baggage is sold in a giant superstore. The children got sunglasses and watches; the Mrs got jewelry; I got impatient to get some…
Having dropped over $1000 for football tickets, we chose not to pay the inflated prices for airfare and elected to rise relatively early on January 1st and drive to New Orleans (after stopping in Montgomery to drop 3 children off at their grandmother’s house). Did you know that I-10 is so flat that you can exceed 100mph for miles and miles without worrying about a hidden highway patrolman? I do. Now you do, too. We arrived at 3pm and had beers before returning to the place where I…
I don’t normally take the entire day off on Christmas Eve, but I decided to this year, and we visited the new ice skating arena that opened a couple miles from our house the previous weekend. I hadn’t skated in years, and the 3 children had never even attempted it. When we walked onto the ice, all 3 clutched the railing surrounding the rink and slowly shuffled along, fearing falling down. The rink has penalty boxes on both sides, so there was frequent quitting to sit on the…