New Orleans

So after a great time with our friends in Houston, we headed home by way of New Orleans in Louisiana. Here is the lovely state border sign:

We stayed 2 nights there as Tim's Birthday gift, and so had a whole day to wander around New Orleans, see some sights, and have some new experiences. Here are Myra and Tim sharing lunch on the River Walk.

We then took North America's oldest continuously running trolly car over to the French Market.

Myra had a great time riding the trolly.

Here is a shot of the French Market. Apparently it is the oldest existing market in North America, and had been built on the site of a Native trading site, so there has been a "market" at this site from well before they kept records.

We then found our way to a French cafe that has been serving coffee and beignets (french doughnuts) since the 1860's. I'm pretty sure its the oldest restaurant we've ever eaten at. It was a very tasty experience, and there was a trumpet player serenading the patrons with New Orleans styled gospel music the whole time as well, which only added to the cool experience.

Lots of great, historic architecture here. There is the iconic St. Louis Cathedral next to Jackson Square:

Great big, sweeping, trees in the square:

And cool buildings in the French Quarter that you really don't see in other parts of North America - or at least I haven't - perhaps Quebec has a few things like this?

A nice paddle wheeler, river boat cruise ship

Anyway, that was a lot of our day there. Lots of walking and seeing cool architecture, and historic places. We had a fantastic Creole dinner at "the Gumbo Shop". We then found a cookbook by them, so picked that up to learn to make some tasty food. We heard some great music as we were walking around, but since we had Myra with us we couldn't really go to any of the joints in the evening.

The next morning we left early and drove across North America's longest bridge: The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. Talk about long!

A great place to watch the sun coming up, however:

On the way home we added Mississippi and...

...Arkansas to the list of states we've been through.

Anyway, we drove through some more crazy storms on our way home, and we were glad when we finally arrived home in Elkhart. It was a great trip. We're really glad for the chance we had to go visit our friends, to see where they live, work, and experience life. It was also great to have some family time again, just the three of us; our last road trip as a threesome, since next time there will be a fourth person in the car. :-)

Texas and Troyers

So we arrived at the Troyers to spend a few days with them at their home in Houston, TX. Myra noticed immediately that they had a dog, and even more exciting, that their dog had a doggy bed. Myra enjoyed climbing into it and pretending to be a puppy.

Charlotte & Myra, Hannah & Malakai headed out to the Houston Children's Museum while we were there. Myra and Kai enjoyed having tea together.

Myra also enjoyed watching herself in the mirror while she played the drums.

The tinker toys were pretty cool.

And later that day, the play place at the local mall served as a good distraction for the kids. Marty and Tim watched the kids while Char and Hannah wandered the mall.

The next day we drove out to Galveston to hang out on the beach.

So did many other. Though, perhaps this picture makes it look more crowded than it really was, cause it wasn't really that crowded - just a nice shot of the miles of umbrellas that colour the coastline.

We all enjoyed sitting in the water and getting washed by the waves.

This is what happens to a shot when Marty walks up and says: "Who wants to dig in the sand?" and then drops buckets and shovels in the sand :-)

Myra quite enjoyed digging in the sand with Marty.

Myra and Malakai enjoyed hanging out in the beach chairs:

What wasn't captured on "film" was the incredible sunburn Tim acquired at the beach. Apparently he didn't replenish his 50 spf often enough.

Back at the Troyers Myra moved from being entertained by the dog's bed, to being entertained by the dog - which was an important move because for a while she was quite scared of him. Here she is reading to him.

Myra also enjoyed building castles with the blocks and instructing daddy on just how it should be put together.

Tim and Marty took Malakai and Myra to a park while Hannah and Charlotte went to a movie. Myra found her way to the slide without a moment to spare.

She also tried out the teeter-totter.

She and Kai enjoyed racing across the grass so fast they were a blur...

...and then lying in the grass thinking dreamy thoughts.

Anyway, it was great to connect with the Troyers, we'll all miss them. After church on Sunday we had to mosey on our merry way. We headed off to New Orleans for our homeward route and to see the city as a birthday present for Tim. But I suppose that's for another post...

The Road to Texas...

So we left Kansas behind and started another long drive down to Houston, Texas. Our drive took us through Oklahoma.

Myra was particularly helpful in this portion of the trip, and took it upon herself to navigate the map.

Part of the reason for looking at the map was to make sure we found this section of Historic Route 66. Yes, that's right, the same route referenced in Cars. However, this stretch was a little less hilly then the Cars section, which is probably in New Mexico or Arizona or something - I guess that's for another trip. In any case, we got to travel a little on a short section of this historic road.

There was a nifty round barn along the route:

And a rather fancy gas station with a large statue of a pop bottle out front.

Eventually we made it to Texas...

Gainesville was our halfway point where we stayed for night. Myra enjoyed her usual ride on the luggage cart.

For some reason, they also upgraded us to a Jacuzzi suite for free, so we made sure to enjoy the large tub.

The next day we continued on and our road brought us through Dallas. On a trip to Dallas last fall, Tim's brother Jon was unimpressed that Tim had only seen Texas Stadium, and not the new Cowboys Stadium (Jon is a big Dallas Cowboys fan, and Cowboys Stadium is their brand new Stadium). In any case, here is Cowboys Stadium, Jon you'd better appreciate this, cause we made 3 wrong turns while trying to find it.

About half the states we've travelled through have really lame rest-stops with one really fancy one (the other half have consistent decent ones, but no super fancy one). Texas would be one of these places, and the play place below is at their really fancy one. Myra was quite excited about this, as you can see by the following picture.

Anyway, we rolled into Houston later that day to the welcome of an incredible thunderstorm. The lightening was repeating in rapid fire triplets and quadruplets in the same arc. We've never seen anything like it. So we were glad to arrive at the Troyers, and we'll have more to tell you about our adventures with them later...

Kansas

So on Saturday we entered Kansas for the first time.

Here is Myra continuing to enjoy her balloon bunny in the car. On a side note, while we were still in Missouri our air conditioning started acting up (not a good thing in 38C weather). We ended up visiting a Mazda dealership in Kansas city and had it serviced. It ended up being a problem with a wiring harness, which was covered by warranty, so we got that plus a whole air conditioner servicing for free! Cool!

We visited our Friends Alan & Katie or as Myra says: "Alal a Kakie". In either case, we visited their church where Alan is the pastor, as seen here:

Char & Myra got hot and so took some time to cool off in the little pool

We saw some cool Kansas sunsets:

Immediately followed by some big 'ol Kansas storms. In fact we had 3 separate storms inside of a 24 hour period. That's even more crazy than Indiana!

We headed out to the Zoo in Hutchinson:

Tim did everything he could to convince Myra to enter into the kids prairie dog tunnels. He was unsuccessful, but at least he got to poke his head out of a hole.

Instead, Myra enjoyed feeding the fish and ducks with Alan & Katie

In the afternoon we went to the "Cosmosphere" and looked at a whole bunch of American & Russian space program artifacts. Here is Tim trying to fly a space module:

He later contemplated purchasing this new computer:

Katie & Myra enjoyed drawing on some concrete:

And before we knew it, it was time to go. More later...