Over the past several years I’ve gone on quite a few trips for work to the East Coast.  Back before Ashley was born, Kathryn met up with me in DC for an awesome trip.  Other than that, the family has stayed on the Western side of the country.  I’ve found myself wishing that Kathryn could come on some of my trip and see the countryside and enjoy the food with me.  This was the impetus for our Carolinas trip.  My cousin Nancy and her family live in the Raleigh North Carolina area, and Kathryn’s brother James and his wife live in the Charlotte North Carolina area.  WIth a destination in mind, we started pricing out a trip.  We were excited when we found direct flights from SLC to Raleigh for under $300 a ticket.  The icing on the cake was I could get all our tickets for free with our skymiles I’ve been accumulating.  Over the course of time, the trip evolved.  First, Kathryn’s family decided it would be fun to come out as well for the James and Marta part of the trip.  Then a stop in Charleston South Carolina was added to the itinerary.  It was a great trip with lots of fun, food, family, and adventures.  If we don’t count Eliza being up frequently in the nights, the girls did awesome.  Here are some of our adventures.

Getting to the airport was a very stressful adventure.  We left with plenty of time for a normal day, but we didn’t take into account two huge wrecks and delays on the freeway.  We were the last ones on the plane, and they called our name over the local intercom.  Luckily we weren’t to the point for the airport wide intercom.

It was a 5 pm flight out, so that makes for an 11ish pm arrival EST.  Then we had to get our rental car and drive for 30 minutes to Nancy’s house.  We made it though.  Thank goodness for navigation on our phones.  It’s hard to imagine a trip like this without it.  Driving through the winding countryside in the middle of the night is challenging enough.

Check out these two little buddies.

Ditto

Nancy has this great museum / kids place call the Museum of Life and Science.  It was awesome and had so much fun things to do like a giant treehouse village, a fun stream to splash around in, animals, puzzles, a space section that I loved, and so much more.  You could spend days there.

Check out this hands on toy.  It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve played with at a place like this.

After the museum, we went to a fun BBQ place then after that, Nancy and family went home to put the kiddos in bed and  we went to a popular local creamery for some delicious ice cream.

DId I mention that Eliza didn’t sleep well?  She had a bit of a stuffy nose and couldn’t breath very well while sucking on her binky and we were in new unfamiliar places.  Anyway, it made for terrible nights.  On Friday morning we were planning to head out for Charlotte after having breakfast, but Eliza woke up at 4 in the morning and we decided to just go for it and get a jump on our day.  So we quickly packed up and threw everything and everybody in the car.  Both the girls slept for several hours of our 5 hour trip to Charlotte so that was great.  We finished listening to the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell on the drive.  Great book and very thought provoking.

We met up with the Hawker Clan at the hotel in downtown Charleston and in no time we were off on another adventure.  We visited the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.  It was very pretty.  Lots of different plants than we’re used to.  It was hot and humid too!  Really a fun place though.

What better way to cool off after a hot afternoon than to go swimming!

“I get you mom!”

The next day we went on a carriage tour of the city by Palmetto Carriage Works.  It was fantastic!  We had a native Charlestonian retired college professor as our tour guide.  He was very knowledgable about the city and had lots of fun stories and facts to share.

After the carriage tour, we split from the group and headed off to the beach.   We crossed the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge on our way to the Isle of Palms beach.

The water was a perfect temperature.  This was my first time swimming in the Atlantic.  I’ve walked on the beach several times, but never made it in the water.  We all had a blast playing in the waves.

When we were done at the beach, we packed up and headed out for James and Marta’s house in the Charlotte North Carolina region.  The next day we had a great Sunday with them enjoying food, fun, and family.  Ashley really loved her uncle Adam.  He was so great with her!

The next morning we were off again on another adventure.  We got breakfast at a little boutique waffle place.

Then we stopped at Lake Norman.  It’s a large man made lake for hydro power, water for the surrounding cities, and lots of beachfront property.

“Seriously Mom!?  Another picture?!  Ugggg”

The next adventure of the day was pretty awesome!  We drove out to the Lazy Five Ranch in Mooresville NC.  It’s a drive through zoo where you can feed the animals.  It was a really fun experience.  The emus were particularly creepy when they’d come right up to you and stare you down.  It seemed like at any second they would start pecking out your eyes.

Here is a video to get the full experience.

Here was our sweet ride for the trip.  Now it was time for our final adventure, the trip home.  We worked our way back to Nancy’s house that evening and had a fun time with them.

We really appreciate their generosity in hosting us twice, especially since we disappeared on them twice in the wee hours of the morning.  We were out of there and off to the airport before dawn again.  Ashley was a little loopy in this picture 🙂

Wahoo!  Toe touch!  We made it back to Utah!  “I’m sooooo glad to be off the plane!!”

This whole luggage rack was our stuff.  We had quite the system to move all of it through the airport.  Luckily most of it was checked.

We had a fantastic trip.  Thank you to everyone that made the trip possible and so much fun!