When our McLeod Plantation tour guide, Paul, tells us, “‘Plantation’ is really just a euphemism for ‘for profit slave labor camp,’” I know we’ve come to the right place. We try it out, driving around Charleston later in the trip: “Shadowmoss Slave Labor Camp Golf Club.” “Slave Labor Camp Oaks Apartments.” I can see why […]
Skidaway Revisited, Savannah History Museum, and the Jepson Center: Our Triumphant Return to Savannah
Travel dates: December 26-27, 2016 For more about Savannah, you can check out my post on my other blog about exploring the architecture and design side of the city. Or you can read my posts about last year’s visit here, here, and here. I’m not sure our return to Savannah was really all that triumphant, […]
A Day at Monticello
Travel date: June 17, 2016 At Monticello, they like to talk a lot about “the paradox of Jefferson,” which is to say, how could the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence, including that bit about how all men are created equal, own slaves? I give the people running things at Monticello a lot of […]
Visiting Gettysburg National Military Park with Kids
Travel dates: June 14-16, 2016 Honestly? Battles kind of bore me. I can’t keep the details straight in my mind. I get bogged down in the logistics and weighed down by all the….death and stuff. I love history, but I’m more of a fan of the how ordinary people lived parts. Or the details of […]
A Few Days in Vogel State Park, Blairsville, GA: Campground Review
Not to get too political, but I love it when Big Government sends hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men off to build state parks for me and my family to enjoy eighty years later. Vogel State Park, on the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains and about two hours north of Atlanta, is the […]
Lake-in-Wood Campground in Narvon, PA: RVFTA Rally and a Day in Philadelphia
I’m not sure you’d really call us rally people. If you were going to call us something. Other things would probably come to mind first. But when the dates and location for the RV Family Travel Atlas spring rally were announced last year right around the same time we were deciding that we really and […]
St. Louis Again! Gateway Arch (finally) and the Zoo (briefly): Spring Break, Part 5
Thursday was our last full day in St. Louis and, thus, our last chance to finally make it up into the Gateway Arch. Our first attempt, you might recall, ended with a mechanical problem and severe disappointment (particularly for poor Milo). And then we briefly considered trying again after leaving the City Museum on Wednesday, […]
Birmingham, Alabama: The Remains of Industry Tour, Part 2
When we left off, we had just finished our first day in Birmingham with a visit to an old quarry, and we were all set to see more industrial relics the next day. But first up on Sunday, we checked out Oak Mountain State Park, a large state park about 20 miles south of Birmingham. […]
Birmingham, Alabama with Kids: The Remains of Industry Tour
There’s something very….American about a city founded with the express purpose of becoming an industrial giant. Birmingham (named, confidently, for the industrial city in England) was founded in 1871 at the site of a planned railroad crossing in an area rich with iron, coal, and limestone–the three materials which, it just so happens, are the […]
Wormsloe Historic Site: Savannah/Coastal Georgia Trip
I started feeling some blogging angst about how to divide up these last posts about our Savannah trip. Should I keep giving a whole new post to each place we went?! Is that overkill? Or does it make it easier for anyone out there looking for information on a particular place to find it? Does […]