Crouch Chronicles Continue (Family Road Trip)

I awoke this morning in Jackson, Mississippi.  I am now in Birmingham, Alabama.  Tomorrow evening, I will arrive in Atlanta.  I could stop there, I suppose, but I'll tell you a little about our day instead.  :)

Our massive road trip continues, and I am still loving it, despite a couple of near-setbacks today.

As always, we got checked out of our hotel room about 5 minutes before noon (it's just plain hard to do it much quicker with four kids in tow).  We wanted to check out the planetarium and/or the art museum in Jackson - both were closed.  Unfortunately, we didn't figure that out until we arrived there.  To put things succinctly, Monday is not the best day to visit that particular town.  The Old Capitol Museum looked interesting (also closed on Mondays - shocker!).  We did, however, visit the War Memorial on State Street to see what it was.  I made sure to take the kids' pictures next to something called the "Gratitude Train", and I promised myself that I would look it up. 

Here's what I found, if you're interested (if not, just skip it - I'll never know anyway):

The "Merci Train" was a train of 48 boxcars (one for each state at the time) filled with gifts given to the American states from the French people in appreciation of the 1945 American "Friendship Train" boxcars which had been filled with food, given by the American people to war-ravaged France.

At the War Memorial, they have these super-heavy metal doors leading into another set of glass doors to get inside the building.  Once they open, they fit into recessed pockets like a lid on a box (i.e. no air space between the door and the wall).  Unfortunately, my wife didn't know that, and she almost lost the tips of three fingers when opening one of them.  No, I am not exaggerating.  One of her fingers is in a splint now that I found at Walgreen's for her.  If much more pressure had been applied to the door, I think our trip would have ended way eariler than intended.  Yikes.

So, we got a chance to see the Natural Science Museum in Jackson, and the kids enjoyed it, although I thought it was going to be bigger, frankly.  The outside "maze" that someone recommended was falling apart and muddy inside, but the kids seemed pleased overall. 

The baby had a pretty good day, but our timing was a little off with lunch and her nap was delayed accordingly, which made her fussier.  Thankfully, my wife earned her PhD in child entertainment years ago, so all was well.  ;)

We tried to eat an an authentic local place while in Jackson, but the two places we wanted to try were....closed.  One of them closed just before our lunch time - the other one was out of business.  We ended up eating a VERY late lunch at O'Charley's near the mall.

Along the way to Birmingham, we realized that we had booked a hotel in the wrong city.  That could be a minor problem, huh?  My wife was able to book us at the Homewood Suites, which is awesome, since it's a longtime family favorite. 

Tomorrow, I think we're going to check out the zoo with the kiddos, then head to Atlanta by around dinnertime.  If you're going to RE Tech South, please make a point to come say "Hi" to me.  I attended an event recently in Dallas, and only later did I realize that there were a handful of people that I wanted to meet who were there but we didn't get a chance to talk. 

Funniest quote from today:

Following our breakfast at the hotel, the lady working there changed the TV channel to the new "The Price is Right". 

My son said, "I LOVE watching 'The Price is Right'.  It's great to watch dumb people do stupid things for money."  So true, son, so true.

Thanks for reading!