Subsequent travel with a baby..

Part 2 of the trilogy :).

My in-laws came here in July end. And as I mentioned, travelling with in-laws was a different experience altogether. One advantage was that it was a rehash of places we had seen before, so there was really nothing for me to "see". So I could skip a few sights and breastfeed Snugli when she needed it without getting frustrated that I was missing something. Also I had help in Snugli's cerelac eating, since my MIL and I took turns having lunch ourselves and feeding her (which served as a pointer in our recent travel). But it was a bit inconvenient for my MIL and FIL as such since they are not really used to sitting in the car for hours and driving to places (we are used to traveling overnight in trains/buses in India, which is certainly not a very feasible option here in US). The other inconvenience was the food here and my FIL is a bit particular about his :-\. Yet we did manage to cover quite a bit and yup, it was lots easier :).

The first places we covered were obviously the nearest ones, so we finished of the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln (yup, that, KFC - the origin of Kentucky Fried Chicken and horses are the only things to see in Kentucky :-p) and Cincinnati. These were all within 2 hours range of Lexington, so they were quite alright. Thats when we decided to attempt Chicago which is more than 5 hours away. We planned the trip for the first weekend of August for 3 days.




The trip had its ups and downs (basically Snugli's eating and sleeping schedules weren't schedules anymore :-D), but it was mostly a success. We were able to cover all that we wanted to - the usual Sears tower, architecture river tour (on which only my inlaws went), the millennium park, the magnificent mile and the Field museum. The success encouraged us into planning a big one - the Pittsburgh and Niagara Falls trip which actually became the Pittsburgh, Niagara Falls and Dayton trip (so yup, it was so successful that we could add another place on the go :-D).

We planned a 4 day trip, most of it was driving, but everything went as planned. First we drove to Pittsburgh, where we saw the SriVenkateshwara temple.




We had lunch there and left to Niagara Falls. Night saw the illumination and spent the next day there. Again, we sent my inlaws on the maid of the mist and the cave of winds. Obviously things went according to plan :).




God! I love Niagara falls, they were as amazing as I remembered them :). We ofcourse saw the horseshoe falls next..




After seeing Niagara falls, we drove for 5 hours and reached Ohio to stop over for the night. Since we had the whole next day, decided impulsively to go to Dayton to see the Air force museum and the place where the Wright brothers first flew a successful flight (Sounds familiar? Thats because I wrote about it 2 years back!)




The trip was successful to some extent, but a few days later Snugli fell ill and that kinda put us off travel for sometime. So we sent my inlaws to Washington D.C in September (my MIL has some relatives there). But we did manage to go to Fort Knox and Louisville in September end; Fort Knox to see the famous bullion depository and Louisville for the Balloon festival. First we saw Patton museum in Fort Knox which is a museum of tanks..




Sri and I hadn't seen this museum before and it was really something interesting - full of tanks inside and out ranging from all wars. Next we drove to the Fort Knox bullion depository which stores all the gold of US. Visitors are not allowed and cars are not supposed to stop anywhere there, so we drove around and took photos..




Later went to the balloon festival. It was wonderful but still a few of the balloons the previous year were not on display and I really missed mom even more, since she was with me in 2007 :(. But Snugli did love gazing at the glowing balloons, so it was worth it :).










Later in October, we did visit a small reptile park nearby, which wasn't that big of a deal ;-). In November you know that we set off to Smokies, for I did tell you that. During thanksgiving weekend, we sent my inlaws to California to visit Sri's cousin and they were able to manage a Los Angeles trip from there. And I still haven't seen California :( (Sri are you listening?).

That was it, since December got too cold to go anywhere plus we had things to setup for Snugli's birthday party. My inlaws left to India shortly after that. Sri had some Christmas holidays and we didn't feel like spending them here in the chill. And it had been a long time since we saw some good fireworks. So we headed to Jacsonville, Florida. All that and more in the next post :).