Trip to Mountains, Part Eight

On a sort of side note ... Logan woke up on Saturday complaining that his ear had hurt the night before.  I saw where he had scratched his ear, but it looked okay, and he said it didn't hurt anymore.  I figured he got bit by something.  Later that day, it started draining yellow, then green, then black.  We were on the way home, so we just waited till Monday morning to go to the doctor, but the poor thing - it looked awful.  And by Monday he would complain if anyone so much as touched it.  The doctor couldn't even see his eardrum and swabbed it and sent it to the hospital to culture because she thought it must have something terrible in it.  Thankfully, it didn't grow anything that an antibiotic wouldn't cure and he was on antibiotics and ear drops.  It looks a lot better now.  But poor kid - I am betting it must have hurt a lot on Friday night.  I wish he had told us.

Saturday, we packed up our cabin (Dogwood Cove) and got into the car to drive.  Katsu had hurt his foot the night before at Fontana Lake, so we need to get bandaids and antibiotic cream at the pharmacy, but then we were ready to drive.  We drove all the way straight to the NC Transportation Museum - once we got in town, we ate some lunch and then headed over.  We meant to stop sooner and we were all starving, but we couldn't find anything!

After our stomachs were full, we went to the Transportation Museum in the town of Spencer, which looked really cute when we were driving through it.  It was super duper hot, especially after having been in the mountains.  Like 100 practically and super humid.  When we got there, we were just in time for the last train, so we bought our tickets (free again with our museum pass) and waited for the train.  It was nice and air conditioned and the boys, especially Noah, was super excited.  I had been a little bummed we didn't go on the (super expensive) train in Bryson City, but I think this was actually perfect.  It was a pretty boring train ride - just backward and forward, but Noah loved it.  The museum was actually a lot bigger than I was expecting.  We got off a bit earlier to get out at the Roundhouse.  We saw all the trains and go on any you could get on.  The roundhouse was pretty cool and the exhibits and trains were too.  I liked where they talked about the employees the best - horrible story about a person who fell in a vat of lye they used to clean all the engine parts. We went by the shop were they were working on trains.  We also went into the huge shop they used to work on the trains and saw some old cars.  They had another building with old bicycles and also the giftshop.  The gift shop had a train that went around the top of it and also a train table to play with.  It was so hot, but we sweltered through the heat and enjoyed ourselves, and on the plus side, it was practically empty - very few visitors.  Once we could pry the kids away from the train tables, we went back to our car and drove the last 30 minutes to Asheboro and our hotel.  We watched TV, relaxed, and then went to Cicis because that is the only thing the kids could agree upon.  Then, we were ready to watch TV and the kids went to bed too late.

Sunday, we woke up and got packed and went to the zoo.  Again, super super hot, but we walked around for a few hours.  We started in Africa, saw like one animal, and then took the tram to the North America side of the zoo.  Seth and Andrew were our navigators and everyone had to have a map.  We bought a teeny umbrella stroller at Walmart just so we could push Noah around and not rent a stroller.  I swear, we spent almost the entire zoo trip with one or another child at the bathroom.  Seriously.  At one point, the boys were walking and talking about poop and why they spend so long in the bathroom (the joys of having 4 boys).  Seth says "I had a poop so big it was like a poop tower".  This guy walking next to us burst out laughing and said "You can not tell me that was not funny."

Okay, back to the zoo.  Really enjoyed the air conditioned parts.  The polar bear was really cool - he would swim right up next to you on the glass and it is just amazing how large they are.  Also liked the puffins.  Andrew wanted to see everything at the zoo - by the time we got to Africa, the rest of us were fried, so he and Katsu went off to see more and we took the tram back.  The lady on the tram was really nice and stopped the tram by the animals until all the boys saw them.  There were a lot of yellow jackets everywhere at the zoo, too.  Yuck.

Anyways, it was nice couple hours.  Then, back to the car, and we drove all the way home.  It was so nice to be there!