Mail message Help From: ecchristian@dcemail.com (Carter Christian-Jackson) Date: Tue, Aug 22, 2000, 11:23am (EDT-3) To: echristian@webtv.net Subject: [Fwd: Fwd: the trip] From: echristian@webtv.net (Elizabeth Christian) Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 06:01:54 -0400 (EDT) To: ecchristian@dcemail.com Subject: Fwd: the trip OK. After you got on the train ... On the rest of July 3, we drove from Detroit to Indian River, Mich., for a rather unsatisfying camping experience ...
On July 4, we realized we had driven too far to see what we wanted to see next -- Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on the northwest shore of Lake Michigan, which was beautiful. We got a campsite in the national park, just across from the shore, and had a nice day. We watched an interesting ranger demonstration at the coast guard station of a shipwreck rescue ... and we drove through some spectacular scenery, especially past some beautiful cherry groves where we stopped and took some pictures and bought a pintful from a farmer's stand. Didn't do much for the 4th of July, unless you count laundry and watching the stars over the lake with Marti & Jay (who fell asleep & had to be carried back to campsite). The weather was beautiful.
July 5 - The next morning, we climbed the dunes (they are several hundred feet tall), which Marti & Jay LOVED doing & still count as one of their favorite activities of the trip. After climbing the dunes, we got back into Blue and drove back along the coast a ways again (past some pretty marina towns, including the big one of Charlevoix, where they were having the National Cherry Festival), and on to Pestoskey State Park. The highlight there was the pretty beach (Marti & Jay loved collecting stones, which we'll put into the rock garden at home) and the cool temperatures (too cold to swim, really). The rocks at Petoskey are unusual because they are stones that have many, many fossils in them, pressed down by pre-Ice Age ocean waters ... and we bought a nice example at a rock shop later in the triop ... We had a picnic at Petoskey and then drove up to Mackinaw Island ... after debating whether to go there, we took the exhorbitantly expensive ferry for only 2 hours on the island ... and took a horse taxi (also exhorbitantly expensive) ... over to the Grand Hotel (you can't go in without paying $10 apiece and being appropriately dressed). We couldn't manage either. But we did roam the tea gardens for a few minutes (SPECTACULAR!) and I guess they got what they asked for when both Marti and Jay had to use the bathroom outdoors!
July 6 - The next day, we went out for breakfast in Mackinaw City and then drove to Sault (pronounced Soo) St. Marie and took another expensive boat ride through the Soo Locks. Our boat was raised 21 feet to go through and we learned lots of interesting stuff. We got a great book on it, too. After that, we drove to the North Woods, to extreme northeast michigan to Whitefish Point to see the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. It was fascinating to see the actual artifacts that had been bought up from Lake Superior and the history of shipping there. The highlight was seeing the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald that had been brought up by divers wearing these high-tech suits designed by National Geographic people. They also showed a movie about how the bell was replaced with an identical one inscribed with the 29 men's names and lowered into the waters at the wreck site. Very sad. Then we drove some more (very remote woods by this time, all fir trees and beautiful ferns carpeting the forest floor), stopping at some beautiful waterfalls (the largest in the East except Niagara Falls) and then on to Pictured Rock National Lakeshore. Up this far north it was chilly at night and it wasn't getting dark until about 11 p.m. We checked into Wandering Wheels campground for two nights. They had a pool and playground within sight of our site, and we had a relaxing couple of days.
July 7 - We took it a little easy in the morning and then drove to town for a Pastie (pronounced PASS-ty) - our favorite shop was called "Grandma's Pasties" - a regional dish that's mostly like knishes are in New York, pastry around a vegetable or meat concoction. We went to one of the rock formations and had a picnic before hiking down to the beach. It turned out to be more than 1 mile down and so we hitched a ride out (the map never said there was a parking lot right next to the beach area!). Then we went back to camp, via a stop at a Kmart place for a few necessities, and cooked out and swam some more and wrote postcards.
July 8 - We got up in the morning and gave old Blue a going over (found a nail in one of the tires and had that plugged), bought some warmer clothes at the consignment shop and then went out to lunch before hitting the road again. We stopped by a rock shop outside of town and then went to an interesting Michigan iron mining museum (even now, much of what gets shipped across the Great Lakes and down the St. Lawrence Seaway via the aforementioned Soo Locks is iron and copper ore for the steel mills and other industry in the East). They began there in the early 1800s. Very interesting and situated in a pretty woods where the first mine had been located. We drove way into the night to get to Apostle Islands (in Wisconsin) National Lakeshore. We encountered more rain and were a little punchy and had a hard time deciding on a motel but finally got settled in.
July 9 - The next day we found ourselves in a truly beautiful little vacation town, replete with many B&Bs and a ton of brownstone buildings (as it turns out, they quarry the brownstone, from which so many beautiful homes in New York are built. We took a lovely boat ride out to one of the (rustic) islands and had a park ranger tell us a little about the "second growth" forest and how they could tell it had been logged, etc., and took the path out to the beach where the biting flies were waiting for us. We walked back to the dock and hung around on that beach, collecting the many pretty Lake Superior agates there (brought several home, again, for the rock garden. Once again, we got back into old Blue and hit the highway. We had a perfectly beautiful drive down the upper Mississippi (taught Marti & Jay the crooked letter, crooked letter ditty, which they thought was so funny) along the river, with high bluffs all around, hopping back and forth over the Wisconsin/Minnesota state lines, i.e., crossing the bridges. along the way, we stopped in on the little town of Peppin, which was where the famous Little House in the Big Woods was. A recreation of it has been built on one of the county roads, so we got some really nice countryside in. By this time, we are in "heartland" kind of HUGE CORNFIELD territory. We bought some "Little House" souvenirs and headed on down the highway to St. Croix Falls (Wis.) State Park late at night, where there were yukky flies that looked a lot like roaches were laying in wait for us ... July 10 - Next day (it rained that night) we got up and packed up and went for a hike at St. Croix falls where they had a neat U.S. Park Service exhibit about these things called "potholes," which are perfectly round holes in rock by waters that the receding glaciers 15,000 years ago dug into the rocks. We enjoyed our little 1/2-mile hike and got back into the car and drove some more ... to Wisconsin Dells and got a campsite late.
July 11 - First, we went over to Taliesin (Frank Lloyd Wright's home) but it was a monstrous $40 apiece to tour it (you can't just walk around the grounds by yourself, either) so we just had a snack in the Wright-designed visitor center (originally designed as an inn) and moved on. where we saw Circus World Museum (check out their site on the Web ...) for a fascinating look at circus history and artisanship. It was WONDERFUL. Much better than the Ringling thing in Sarasota. And they had a 1-hour circus, to boot. Then it was back to the campsite and out for a disappointing, and way too expensive, Polish dinner, and to swim in the pool and do laundry again and get to sleep relatively early.
July 12 - We got out of the campsite and headed down to New Glarus, a facinating Swiss village. The people back in the early 1800s in Glarus, Switzerland, had too many people and so asked for volunteers to go set up a colony. They funded the move and the people sent out a scout to find land and then about 200 people came over. It was one of the first cheese factories in Wisconsin. They had about 11 historic buildings all put together to show how they all lived (and explained their history, etc.) for about 150 years, until modern times. It was very small townish, not touristy, and our docent was a Swiss man who had immigrated in 1951. Very interesting. Then we went into the town on our way out and bought a lot of nice cheese and hard salami and local specialty of knackwurst for eating later. A little further down the road we went to a larger town's factory (and cheese store) by the highway and saw how cheese is produced today. Very interesting. So on we drove, mostly on interstate, to Springfield, Ill., for more camping. It was very humid & hot.
July 13 - We got up & went to the Lincoln Home for a National Park tour. Actually got to see THE famous stovetop hat. I asked Marti & Jay what they knew about Honest Abe and they recounted that he kept messages in his hat ... (well, it was really the mail). But the highlight was that during the video Jay pulled his first tooth! He was wiggling it and asked me if I wanted him to try and pull it. I said yes and he tugged and out it came. He was SO EXCITED. He showed every park ranger and shopkeeper and person on the street from Springfield to Atlanta, GA. ... I made him put it in my wallet so the tooth fairy could trade it for $$$ and promised Marti that she gets $$$, too, when Jay's teeth come out, since hers aren't coming out for a couple of more years. Poor thing, she's disappointed. ... Then we went to the Dana-Thomas House, a 1905 Frank Lloyd Wright mansion owned by the state of Illinois. Seeing that Marti & Jay were going to be a handful, the staff hustled up a state worker to lead us around by ourselves. It was perfect. She told us the highlights, helped entertain and educate the children (who were a little confused by this time and thought the Wright home was Lincoln's...). Just perfect. After that, we went to the church where the Lincolns belonged, more to see the six Tiffany windows there (HUGE ones! The biggest I've ever seen) made not too long before they went bankrupt. And from there we went out to the cemetery to see Lincoln's tomb. It was very Victorian and somewhat reminiscent of Napoleon's tomb. The crypts themselves were very similar, large and elaborate boxes of red marble. From there we drove to Hannibal, Mo., hometown of Mark Train. Had supper in the dark & went to bed. Oh, we had to go out and get $10 worth of $1 bills for the tooth fairy to bring. Jay fell asleep during the ride, so Marti was actually the one to put the tooth under his pillow for him (in a Ziploc bag).
July 14 - Jay & Marti woke up rich! We went to Mark Twain's homeplace (bought some kiddie paperbacks of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn & Prince & the Pauper) and museum. They had a great exhibit of ALL the Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers, as well as originals of the illustrations he did for a set of the Mark Twain books. They also had interesting pictures of the riverboats and a fake pilot house with big steering wheel and steamboat bells and whistles. We had a great lunch and ice cream and Marti & Jay spent some of their $$$ on souvenirs.
Then we drove on down to St. Louis to see the Gateway Arch and the National Museum of Westward Expansion. We had an early supper at McDonald's (it's a fake riverboat built out on the Mississippi landing, just under the arch). Then we went into the arch and rode the "pod" all 630 feet up to the top. It was amazing! Then we rode down again and got into the car and drove to St. Genevieve, Mo., the first French settlement west of the Mississippi. They have about 200 Creole homes from the 18th century. And for our last night on the road, we splurged on another hotel (it was only $49.50, including tax) right in the middle of the historic district. July 15 - We got up and had breakfast in the hotel lobby and looked at the picture history book of this little town (very interesting about the 1993 flood).
And then we went over to the Balduc house (c. 1733), which is owned by the Colonial Dames and had a fabulous tour that was just about the right speed for Marti & Jay and very interesting. Then we tried to go out to take the car ferry across the river (they wouldn't accept our check for $7!) so we had to turn around and head on to the next bridge across. Anyway, in the drive down to the levy we saw an interesting marker with the heights of all the recent floods and the 1993 one was about twice as bad as the others.
They also had a gleaming new floodgate, too, as part of the $40 million effort to protect this little hamlet. So we got a rock puncture in the van tire and had to change it and then get to a tire shop. It worked out perfectly, and the guy put a plug in it in about 1 second at a grand mechanic's bill total of $10!!! We were back in business and on to the Trail of Tears State Park, where 12 of the 13 detachments of Indians crossed the Mississippi. There was a sad marker to one of the chief's daughters who died on the west bank. She's buried there but the marker is also for the other 8,000 people who died on the journey. The museum depiction was very good, too. Marti & Jay liked the playground best. By this time, it was late and so we high-tailed it to the Interstate (crossing the good old Ohio River just where it joins with the Mississippi, so we were coming full circle) and down to Nashville. We got to Cheryl's and Marti & Jay flopped onto the pallet and slept till morning. Rob and Cheryl and I chatted until very late and then crashed.
July 16 - We got up packed and went to breakfast and then drove home. Aunt Bettie was happy to see us and I unpacked the china and glass -- none broke! -- and went to work. I'm tired and now it's time go to home. I've been working on and off on this since about 10.
Love ya, Eden.
Message From: elandow@ajc.com (Eden Landow) Date: Mon, Aug 7, 2000, 12:35am To: echristian@webtv.net
Subject: We had fun The whole household (including Aunt Bettie) had a fun time in Chattanooga/S. Pittsburg this weekend. We stayed at the Read House (it was THE place when Aunt Bettie was young and is now very nicely restored and a central location in Chattanooga. We drove up yesterday (stopped for some outlet mall shopping - got a ton of Back to School clothes for Marti & Jay, plus a couple of things each for me and rob and Aunt Bettie (who got a great swimsuit - Size 8) and checked into the hotel and went to the cemetery.
Well! As it turns out, some of the Woodfin family (distant cousins actually on both sides of Aunt Bettie's family the Bibles and Beenes) were there and BOY did they make over Aunt Bettie, who was "best friends" in school with the grandmother they all miss.
So, and by now it's raining and we're all huddling under two big umbrellas Rob pulls out of the car, they chatted for many minutes and we promised to e-mail. Then we went to Aunt Patsy's. She spent a week in New York with her granddaughters and may have overdone it. Now she has water on her ankle and taking diuretic. We made her promise not to do anything for us and just to let us visit.
Marti & Jay acted WILD!!! so Rob and I took them out for ice cream & a walk. So then we drove back to the hotel, ordered room service & went to bed. M&J& AB in one bed & me & rob in the other.
Today, we got up, had a wonderful (included in the room rate) buffet breakfast and then rode the free electric shuttle down to the famous Tennessee Aquarium. None of us had been there before. Aunt Bettie let us ride her around in the wheelchair, which of course Marti & Jay drove us crazy trying to climb all over. But we had a nice time. Then we sat out on the big courtyard thing they have there and watched a woman juggling/fire-eating act. While Rob went to get the van, marti & jay played in the fountain and got soaking wet (no water in marti's ears, though).
Then we rode down to the outlet mall for still more back to school shopping. So Marti & Jay are SET. I can tick off that big job before school starts.
We rode home in time for me to go to work. It was a wonderful time. I hope she'll come with us to the beach for Labor Day. Maybe she'll get a little more confidence to go places with us (although I do worry that she could fall). I think it would be nice to just go someplace (no steps!) and sit for three days. Oh, so Friday night, before we left, Phoebe came by with her friend Joe. She had dinner with us and we sent her home with $100. I told her to plan on coming the Friday night after my birthday to spend the weekend. Can you try to be there then, too? Stuart is coming for a visit, too. He's arriving Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. and leaving Monday around 2 p.m. Also, Monday night we are going to the Fox Theater to see "The Sound of Music" on the family movie night. It starts at 8:00. Wanna come with us? I know you've seen it 100 times, but I thought it would be nice to see with Marti & Jay. Who knows when it'll play in a big theater again? I wish they would show "GWTW' there.
I think that's everything. I'm working Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday nights this week. Rob's birthday was yesterday (Saturday) - He's 39, just like Jack Benny. : -) So if Rob stays 39, I can stay 37, right? ;-)
I think that catches us up. Did you have a nice weekend?
Message From: elandow@ajc.com (Eden Landow) Date: Sat, Aug 19, 2000, 6:37pm To: echristian@webtv.net (Elizabeth Christian) Subject: Re: I'm at work
Yep, OK day. Too hot. Work's OK. I'll let you know when I leave, but 8-ish sounds right.
Rob & M&J are at Jessica's birthday party. Wish I could've gone.
Finally got around to paying bills last night (late) and there never seems to be enough to go around ... broke after getting everything caught up & the credit cards just rise and fall like the tide. I know that one day we'll be shed of them and so "up" won't be such a shock. We are still FAR from where we were when we bought our house in 1993 and we've had a good time this summer, so I really shouldn't worry. I've got about $2,500 out in invoices ... Part of all this was that our car tags, car insurance and religious school tuition all came up at once. But those are once a year things I won't have to worry with for a while.
I'm glad to have spend our other money earlier, making a generous donation to the Fernbank PTA and a big check to Betsy for her wedding present. Message From: elandow@ajc.com (Eden Landow) Date: Sat, Aug 19, 2000, 7:47pm To: echristian@webtv.net (Elizabeth Christian) Subject: Re: My telephone plug won't stay in the telephone...
404-526-7073. I've just set page A2. I'll call the film output desk in a minute to make sure it processed OK & then take off. See you at about 8:05 in your lobby, OK? Mail message Help
I NEVER MADE IT TO THE CIRCUS, BUT THEY WENT AND HAD A GREAT TIME
From: elandow@ajc.com (Eden Landow) Date: Tue, Sep 5, 2000, 7:02pm To: echristian@webtv.net Subject: Circus tickets
I have 5 tickets to the Barnum's Kaleidoscope show, now playing under the big tent at Centennial Olympic Park. They were $1 each at work for tomorrow night's show (Wednesday, 9/6 at 7:30 p.m.) Do you want to go with me & Rob & Marti & Jay? We're planning on getting down there an hour early for the pre-show events. Let me know ASAP. I'm at 404-526-7594 tonight (Tuesday night).
Mail message Help From: rdl7@cdc.gov (Landow, Robert) Date: Mon, Sep 18, 2000, 10:28am To: jackson_e@mercer.edu Cc: echristian@webtv.net Subject: Wedding anniversary.... Mama,
As you may realize, Thursday is our wedding anniversary. I don't mean for it to look like we would like to have you over just to watch Marti and Jay, but we are hoping you could come by that evening to do just that while we go out for a while. Eden really wants to go out somewhere and frankly we're thinking of going to Emory Alumni Weekend event that night. Also, we're thinking of going to Lullwater Day on Sunday if you might be interested in accompanying us.
Please let me know what you think of these two proposals. If you can't make it on Thursday, I guess we would have to see about Mary.
Thanks, Rob
Mail message Help From: eden_rob@hotmail.com (Eden and Rob Landow) Date: Thu, Sep 28, 2000, 6:51pm (EDT+4) To: echristian@webtv.net Subject: Fwd: back to you
Well! Remember we ran into Beth Stuart at the Emory Alumni Picnic? She and I have exchanged e-mails and she has reconnected me with (drumroll, please) Mrs. Knight the all time favorite teacher! Here's what she writes me. Now living near Estelle and Ben's condo on St. Simons Island. P.S. Will you be here tomorrow by 3?
Eden.
From: "R. Miller"
Hi, Eden -- Great to hear from you and to learn that you get down here occasionally. Please let me know when you're coming. We've been in the house we built (East Beach) for one year and I'm attaching pictures of it, as well as some pics from last New Year's Eve when we entertained friends at a dinner party here.
In one pic I am serving caviar. Your life sounds packed with fun and interesting things -- way to go!!! We (my husband Ray and I) are trying to get ourselves squared away to leave next Wednesday for a trip to France and Italy. It will be our 25th anniversary on October 18. We'll be back on Oct. 31.
Can't believe I was 28 when I taught you! I'm now 55 -- shocking!!! All for now -- Love, Diane
PS from Ray: if the photos don't come through okay, please let us know.
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