The East Coast

Erich has a sister and a brother stationed on the East coast this year so Erich and I decided it was time to visit the east coast. We had lots of fun. Erich's Brother Ben is a pilot in Dover Delaware. He flies the largest plane in operation a C-5. We got to tour and it was pretty impressive. He said it can haul like 5 black hawk helicopters at once. While we were in Deleware we visited the beach. It was quite cold and windy but fun nonetheless. Jake and his cousin Rhone (only a few months younger) kept us entertained as they played in the sand and with the seashells.
From Deleware we went up to NYC. Erich and I aren't exactly city folks and we weren't dying to experience New York traffic so we settled for a tour of the city via a ferry. We went to the Statue of Liberty an Ellis Island. That was a very fun day. The Statute looks so different in person.
From NYC we went to PA for a little ski trip. We've heard so much about all the east coast storms we were expecting some pretty impressive snow. It was more like 3 feet of slush! And there was pretty much snow only on the ski runs. Fun to enjoy skiing east coast style (or that's what Ben and Erich report) Meagan and I took Jake and Rhone to the Crayola Factory.
We ended the trip in D.C. I was worried before hand that Jake would be an impossible handful in all the museums. Not exactly the dream vacation with an 18 month old but he did remarkably well. Or at least in our eyes. Apparently people on the East coast are very good at giving parenting advice. Erich and I got more advice in one day than I think we've gotten in the past year :) Guess backpacking around 18 month olds isn't as big at the Smithsonian as it is in the hills of Idaho! While DC wasn't exactly relaxing it was fascinating. I LOVED all the museums and history. Erich's fav was the Air and Space museum and my definite fav was Mount Vernon. I've always been a pretty big George Washington fan so it was particularly neat to see his big homestead. All in all it was awesome touring the east coast. Very different but fun to experience. We learned we are not as good of navigators as we thought. Yes we did break down an buy a GPS half way through the trip. We also learned a greater appreciation for the toll-free roads in the west!
The best part though was catching up with family. It was so nice to have locals show us around and to see where they are living.
Anyhow pretty fun vacation for the Glecklers. Now it is back to the grind!