Mr. Destructo and I took a last minute roadtrip up to New York after Memorial Day. Ye-Ye had planned to leave on a trip to Taiwan and China right before Memorial Day but changed his plans so we went for a visit. Mr. Destructo was very excited about going to the bubble tea shop in Flushing. I promised him a treat if he agreed to get his hair cut at the Chinese beauty shop. He really wanted to have the rainbow jellies he experienced last time. But, alas, they were out of rainbow jellies. We slowly and carefully perused the alternatives and he eventually decided upon the very plain, translucent white lychee jellies to add to a coconut slushy. He said lychee jellies are much better because they have lychee flavor and rainbow jellies just have regular flavor.
In the car on the way home, he announced that next time, he was going to have lychee-lychee, a lychee slushy with lychee jellies. And luckily, we did go to Flushing again before our trip was over and his dream came true. But he was so full from lunch that he gave me half of the slushy.
We happened to visit the same weekend as the yearly carnival in the town where my brother lives. It was a carnival with real rides and a fun house, nothing like the Schoolhouse Carnival with our homemade games and cake walk. Uncle W got all the kids wristbands that allowed them to ride as many times as they wanted.
On our way back to the NC, we made a surprise stop. The last few times we've done this roadtrip, I noticed a park-like area next to I-81 in Pennsylvania with military vehicles. It turns out, those are the outdoor exhibits at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center. The museum is free and has both indoor and outdoor exhibits. I gave Mr. Destructo the choice and he wanted to see the tanks and such outside. We took lots of photos. I really wanted to recreate the photo of the Tiananmen Tank Man but I did not have a little plastic shopping bag so we improvised.
You could not climb onto any of the equipment. Mr. Destructo read those signs himself. I thought he would be disappointed but he was not. I was also surprised that he wanted to stop at all the interpretive signage to know about what it said and what the photos depicted. We were able to go down into the different bunkers. One was very spooky and pitch black at the end. Mr. Destructo hightailed it out of there when he saw how dark it was. They also had museum staff stationed at random places. We were always startled to come upon them. There was one guy sitting in a shack in his green fatigues in the Vietnam War display and another at the end of a WWI trench wearing a woolen period uniform. I asked him if he has to wear the costume all summer. He told us he doesn't have to wear it every day but a few years ago when the museum was new, he had the wear the uniform while filling sandbags for the trench in the middle of the summer so that was a lot more miserable. We took so long looking at the outdoor displays that we did not have time for the indoor section. I told Mr. Destructo we would stop for those next time. That works out well because in July, I would much rather look at army memorabilia in air-conditioned splendor than trudge around a mile-long outdoor trail.
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