This vacation was in two parts, a La Leche League conference in Charlotte then an outdoors vacation in the North Carolina mountains. The first part of this diary, this webpage, is the time we spent in Charlotte. Each day of the remainder of the diary has its own webpage and can be accessed directly through the links below or in chronological order by following the links on the bottom of each page.
 

Charlotte - Friday October 8

We arrived in Charlotte around 1:00 in our fully loaded car. Though Missy was running the La Leche League bookstore for the fourth year in a row, we hadn't planned on taking any boxes of books. Our car would be loaded with our vacation gear including three bikes on a rack. Still, we filled half our backseat with three boxes of books. Once in Charlotte at the Marriott, Missy headed off to a meeting while Curt and Eric did a minimal unloading job prior to grabbing lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant and heading three blocks to Discovery Place. Organizing and running the bookstore is a heavy responsibility. After arriving in Charlotte, we learned one of the people transporting books had car problems and would not come to the conference and that the bookstore had missed providing us with seven boxes of books that would have to be picked up and driven 2.5 hours to Charlotte on short notice. Running the bookstore precluded Missy from attending any of the regular conference sessions. She did attend a meeting at which she received recognition and a pin for being an LLL leader for five years.

Discovery Place is an excellent hands-on science museum with sections on telecommunications, space, optical illusions, water, biology, and geography among others. As hands-on museums go, it was very well-maintained. There was a large staff of young museum employees and various shows in the different areas of the museum throughout the day. We watched a pair of rats play basketball (they got paid a food pellet for each basket) and a fun demonstration involving liquid nitrogen. In this demo marshmallows were frozen to a brittle state and shattered, a frozen banana was used to hammer a nail, ping pong balls filled with liquid nitrogen through a pin hole became jet powered spinners, air filled balloons were shrunk in a liquid nitrogen bath then expanded by the inferno (in liquid nitrogen terms) of room temperature, and water, liquid nitrogen and detergent were mixed to create frozen bubbles.

Discovery Place has some of the stock hands-on exhibits (Jacob's ladder, prisms, optical illusions, models, and dissections of the human body), some of the rarer exhibits (a touch pool containing various types of crabs and a rain forest aviary), and a slew of science exhibits and experiments that we've not seen elsewhere. The latter included a room in which one could "experience" the Big Bang start of the universe, a wall of massive tube chimes which could be played, and phones enabling chatting with a friend over fiber optic cable or microwaves,

Eric's favorite part of the museum was being raised and lowered in a chair lift driven by air pressure. Eric sat on a chair and pushed two buttons which would cause air to be sucked out of a one foot diameter tube above his head. His chair was attached to the bottom of a plunger in that tube that would be drawn up from the pressure of the air trying to fill the vacuum.

Eric and Curt had cheese sandwiches in our room before taking a dip in the heated, indoor pool on the fifth floor. Staying out of the way was their contribution to helping Missy set-up and staff the bookstore. A word about our room. It was nice, but not worth near the regular going rate. We stayed in a double which would normally cost $210 per night. Because of the conference, the room cost us $90 a night--still more than we like to pay but worth it for the convenience. The IMAX movie Curt and Eric had intended to see at night was cancelled. Picaboo Street (the Olympic skier) was giving a talk. We didn't attend her presentation but we did stop to watch some teenage boys doing stunts on skateboards. They told Eric how to make his skateboard jump. We'll see if he can put their tips into practice when we get home.
 

Charlotte - Saturday October 9

Eric took an early morning kid's Yoga class while Missy ran the bookstore and Curt rehearsed for his presentation. Eric and Curt got in a couple of hours at Discovery Place--we get in for free because of a general museum pass we have--before lunching at Taco Bell's and heading back to the hotel. Missy took a break from the store to take Eric to the hotel pool while Curt led his session on "The Manly Art of Fathering." Curt was very pleased with how the session went. It was attended by a dozen men (women weren't allowed; not by Curt's choice). After presenting his paper for about 30 minutes, there was an open discussion which was lively and informative.

In the mid-afternoon, Missy returned to the bookstore while Eric participated in a collage-making session. Later, Eric and Curt got in another hour at Discovery Place (until it closed) then grabbed some Caribbean and Chinese food for dinner. By the time they brought it back to the hotel it was getting close to 7:00. Missy had packed up the bookstore and was finally able to relax (collapse?) in the room. Curt and Eric rushed off to the IMAX theater adjacent to Discovery Place to watch The Mysteries of Egypt. It was wonderful seeing on a large screen the wonders of Egypt--especially for Curt as they brought back many fond memories of his visit there with Missy a few months before Eric was conceived.
 

Charlotte / Asheville - Sunday October 10

Rain. Aarrrgghh! This vacation, outside of the first two days in Charlotte, is heavily dependant on nice weather. The rain washed out our first outdoors day.

Eric was able to bounce a lot better than his dad who mostly flopped and called it a bounce.

We lingered longer in the Marriott and went swimming where Eric learned a new skill, bouncing on all fours on an inner tube. We drove to Asheville and bypassed where we had intended to stop; at Chimney Rock Park. Arriving in Asheville earlier than expected, we shopped at a mall and found some hiking boots for Curt and books for Missy and Eric. We also met artist Penelope ????. She had a stand at which she was selling prints of her colored pencil drawings. We bought one years ago at the Cary arts festival. Curt was interested in how financially successful an artist can be and Penelope indicated she has done well for fifteen years.

Near our hotel was a health food grocery store, Earth Fare, where we had a wonderful meal and stocked up on food for the week.

Eric got a Pokémon Gameboy cartridge during the trip to make the long rides go faster. It immediately became his favorite game and one Missy enjoyed playing as well.
 

© 1999 frantzml@juno.com