Friday, July 12, 2013

Put Your Game Down and Look!


 On our first day of vacation we drove from our home in Missouri to Birmingham, AL. Yes, it was a long day. I'm not sure that it technically counts as vacation, but since we weren't at home, I suppose I'll say it does.


We took a break in Memphis in the afternoon to let our little prairie children see the mighty Mississippi. We payed for parking and went for a little tour of Mud Island Park, thinking it would be a little like a state park. It was green on the map, but we discovered that it represented the money they expected you to spend, not nature in any way. It was a little more like a long skinny state fair with no rides or livestock.

There was, however, a giant, in-ground representation of the Mississippi river, through which we all enjoyed walking, and scraping our toes. Seriously, those elevation changes are killer. Daddy, otherwise known as "the smart one" was wearing his tennis shoes, so he was safer if less cool.
There was a concert that was about to begin as we left the park to pile back into our mini-van. It was a soul-music concert, so the crowd was... very racially homogenous, which confused Mim a great deal. (I don't think Zaya even noticed.) We had some interesting discussions about various cultures in our country, and how everyone has their own style and their own interests and that's OK.
So it wasn't exactly floating down Old Man River on a hand-made raft, but we felt like we'd really experienced a little more of America already, and the trip had barely started.

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