Summer Bucket List 2012

It's that time again. Time to go out and GRAB US SOME SUMMER!!

At the beginning of each summer, the kids and I sit down and brainstorm a summer bucket list.  

The rules for the brainstorming sessions usually are that we take turns, each of us writing down an idea of something to do, to see, to visit, to make over the summer. No one is allowed to nay-say, whine, grumble, or otherwise complain about anyone else's idea. Plus, anything goes when we are making the list. One year we had "visit China" on the list. (We went to a Chinese restaurant, did a Chinese art project, and, completely unplanned and unexpected, one of the Jedi's co-workers gave us a souvenir from China.)

Now, we usually aren't able to do everything on the list, but it's there, and we try to do at least one thing each week.

This summer, we broke our own rules a little bit. We made the list in the car on the way home from an outing with Tia Smurf. Tia Smurf was writing things down, and I was driving, and we failed to take turns like we usually do. The result is a list that's pretty art heavy, cause Smurf and I were sitting in the front seat. But, we had the list hanging on the fridge for at least a couple of weeks, and items were added on as kids thought of them, so I'm hopeful that everyone still got their share of wishes on the bucket list.

• Wednesdays on the Green @ CCAC---Free concerts and other fun activities. The kickoff is June 6th at 7pm featuring the Comet Bluegrass Allstars. My children need to hear Bluegrass :)

• Choir Game Pigs---That's right, baby! The pigs are back! We're totally going to take a day to go see them!

•  World Choir Games--Maybe as volunteers, maybe as buying tickets. But this is awesome and epic, and we need to see some of it!

• Art for All-- To celebrate it's 80th anniversary, the Taft Museum is displaying its works in 80 locations across Cincinnati. That's like a giant art scavenger hunt

• Artworks Murals--There's a huge list of Artworks Murals, a huge list! We aren't going to have the stamina to see them all, but I'd like to take camera and sketchbook and go see some of them. And maybe then paint our own on the back of the garage!

• Cincinnati Roller Girls Game--I've never seen a roller derby game, but I'm super impressed and in awe of the women and girls who compete in this sport. I think Sweetling and Toa will be as well!

•  Cincinnati Zoo-- This one is always a winner! The trick is to hit the zoo when they aren't too crowded and it isn't too hot! I wish I could say I have a perfect solution to that connundrum, but I don't. I think we'll try for a week day on the second week of June and just cross our fingers and hope for the best. On the other hand, if we go the last week of May, we'll be in time for Zoo Babies!

• Frisbee Golf-- ok, ok, technically the sport is not officially called 'frisbee golf'. But whatever you call it, there are several great courses around Cincinnati.

• Human Hamster Balls @ Newport on the Levee--  This is a bucket list item from last summer that never quite got realized (I'm blaming the busted ATM machine on the levee and a ridiculous cash only attraction. Really, who carries cash?) At any rate, it's a must-do item for this year.

• Rubber Duck Regatta -- In September, Cincinnati hosts the biggest rubber duck race ever. Check out these quick facts about the race. Toa of Boy really wants to sponsor a duck in the race!

Ok, click here and pretend these words are actually a very cool embedded video of last year's duck race.

• Cardboard Boat Regatta -- Because why confine ourselves to ducks only? Of course, we'll probably just spectate the race in the park....and then build and launch our own boats in some other location. Oh yes, yes we will!

• Sebastian's -- My children do not know what a gyro is. This must be rectified.

• Tour of Hamilton County Parks -- We hit the ones near us over and over and over again through the year. This summer, I want to visit one NEW park each week. We'll post about what we find.

• Miniature Golf-- It's not just golf in miniature. It's miniature golf. (Though, I'm not sure if Toa of Boy wanted to go play miniature golf somewhere or make his own miniature golf course. I shall have to seek clarification.)

• Red Bag Sale at the Main Library-- $10 for a big red bag stuffed full of books? Oh yeah, we're there. (And if you'd like to be there too...this year's Red Bag Sale is on Friday, June 8th from 9am to 5pm. We park in the two hour spots on Court Street.)

• Nature Art-- I told you this year's list was art heavy. But check out this beautiful gallery of nature inspired art. We are totally going out and making some of our own designs.  

Field Trip Friday: Ceasar's Creek State Park

Since this might be the last warm Friday for this fall, I wanted to spend a good portion of the day outside. (Of course, this has been my excuse for packing up school and heading out every Friday for the past two months, but shhhhhh....)

Following a tip from a friend, we headed up to Ceasar Creek State Park for an afternoon of fossil hunting. We did our devotions in the morning, got our morning chores done, packed up some lunches and headed out.

Having been told that we needed a permit to collect fossils, we headed toward the nature center first, and so were fortunate enough to encounter Ceasar Creek Pioneer Village, which was located right across from the long gravel drive to the nature center.

Of course, this late in the season, on a weekday, none of the building were open, but we had fun peering in through windows....

...and I loved reading the signs that told the story of each house.


We were also fortunate enough to run into one of the volunteers, who gave us information on a family membership (just $25 for the family for the year), handed us a schedule of events for 2011, and invited us to come back for the Christmas Candlelight Walk on Dec 4th. Oh yeah :)


We left the pioneer village and drove down the long drive to the nature center....which we discovered was closed due to an off-site program. I was set to break state park regulations and take fossils home with us with or without a permit, but my law-abiding daughter was distraught by this plan. So we agreed to compromise by going to look for fossils, and then coming back after our fossil hunt in hopes that the nature center would be open and we could get a permit.

So we left and drove the seven miles or so to the spillway. The spillway was excavated when the dam was first construction as an emergency run off area in case of flooding. The excavation uncovered layers of a limestone rockface loaded with fossils. Signage in the spillway directed us to the visitor's center (which was not the same as the nature center) to obtain our permit.

Excited again, we hopped back in the van and drove over the van to the visitor's center on the far side of the lake. Inside, I filled out the brief form for a free fossil permit (name, state of residence, vehicle description and license plate number). The park worker explained the rules to me (no using tools of any kind on the rocks, including sticks and other rocks; no climbing on the limestone layers, they are fragile and dangerous; and you may only keep a fossil which fits in the palm of your hand.) We also received a field guide with illustrations, names, and information of the kind of fossils we might be likely to find.

While I was doing this, the kids started exploring the visitor's center. It was very cool and very well done. Not only were there samples of all the different sorts of fossils, there were many other interactive displays as well.  There was a historical display about the native peoples and the first pioneers, complete with artifacts, both real and replicated (including a life-sized dug out canoe.) There was a section on the animals of the forest and the food chain. There was a large aquarium with fish, and a smaller habitat with turtles. There was a two-part exhibit about locks, one section allowed you to operate the gates and the valves which corresponded to a animated diagram showing the working of the lock as you tried to get the boat safely through the change in water level. The other section was a table with wooden cargo ships and two locks with moving doors and a crank to move the 'water' inside the lock up and down.

We spent much longer than we anticipated just exploring the visitor's center, which really was a free museum.

Finally, field guide in hand, we headed back out to the spillway to look for fossils. The spillway itself is a rather barren flatland.

But Toa of Boy wasted no time digging up rocks.

After a trip back to the van for her sunglasses, Sweetling was ready to join us....

......And we headed over to the limestone layers.


Now, I've taken Sweetling on a fossil hunt before at a local "fossil" park, and we were really disappointed in the scarcity of fossils. So, I wasn't that optimistic for our success here. But my doubts were unfounded. We found an amazing abundance of fossils everywhere. Nearly every rock that we walked over, turned over, or picked up were loaded with fossils.

We had a great time collecting fossils. (I let each child make a pile of fossils, yes, a pile cause there were that many really good ones. At the end, I told them they could keep one of each kind of fossil...using our cool field guide to identify them of course.)

Of course, fossil collecting held some people's attention longer than some other people's attention, but that's ok.






I called us finished after an hour of hunting. By then, it was a little after three, I wanted to check out the gorge side of the dam, and we were also going to try to squeeze in a trip to the playground before making the hour drive home.....which I was hoping to pull off before Friday rush hour traffic set in.

We drove to the park area downstream of the dam and headed out over a pedestrian bridge,

where we discovered that the water was much too slow moving for a game of pooh sticks.







But, when we have more time, I'd like to come back to hike along the creek.

All in all, an awesome day, and a field trip I'd definitely recommend to others.

For other great ideas, check out Field Trip Friday on Live the Adventure

Field Trip Friday: Hocking Hills

Once again, I break the rules. I'm a rebel that way.

This wasn't a field trip. This was a mini-vacation. But, it's an awesome area, and its my blog, and I think Mrs Prater will forgive me.

We left late on Friday morning for a weekend trip to Hocking Hills. We made a stop at church, because the Jedi needed to do some work on a church computer, and I needed to check the food pantry and pack up some more bags to be given out. On our way out of town, we stopped and grabbed two large pizzas from LaRosa's. (The pizza, by the way, made it to Toa of Boy's top three favorite things about the weekend.)

We ate pizza in the van, turning the middle seats around and putting in the little table in the back. We got to Hocking County around three and got checked into our cabin. There were two cabins at this location, run by a family on their own land. They were reached by a long gravel drive through the woods, and each cabin had a separate pull-off to park the car. The cabins themselves were then reached by a separate foot path, and were very secluded, nestled into a thickly wooded hillside. (Demonstrated in my sadly overexposed photos.)

We stayed in the second of the two cabins, which had two bedrooms, a large central living area, and a covered back deck, complete with hot tub, which jutted out onto the forest slope.

One of the bedrooms had two double beds, and one had a double bed and a set of bunk beds, which the kids gleefully claimed. (The beds in the cabin were on Sweetling's list of top three favorite things from the weekend.) After getting checked in and unpacked, we headed out to the trails, hoping to beat the weekend crowd.

We went to Old Man's Cave first, knowing from tips and from past experience that this place can get pretty crowded. Luckily, it was after four by the time we got there, and most people were beginning to leave to head to dinner. Because the summer has been so very dry, none of the falls were going.

We started our hike at the Upper Falls.... (all my photos are overexposed. I'm so upset about this. I had the camera on its default 'landscape' setting for the most part, and it just let in way too much light. Rather than whine about it before each picture, I'm just getting my whining out of the way now.)

And followed the trail down the gorge. Not only was it so dry no water was spilling over any of the falls, but it was so dry the wide stream/small river which runs through this gorge was practically non-existent, having been reduced to a few small pools here and there.

On the plus side, that meant that the kids had full access to small caves and recesses in the rock face which in the spring are unreachable, unless you want to go wading in cold knee deep water. Great fun was had climbing in and exploring all these little caves.

In fact, great fun was had climbing in general.

Though, we were careful to keep our climbing to just the large boulders on the path, and not any of the oh-so-tempting climbs off the path. On our way down the trail there was a photographer who does a lot of work in the park and he was saying that the park has really gotten strict about maintaining a no-tolerance policy for off-path climbing. He said the park will issue a $200 dollar fine if a ranger catches you climbing somewhere off the trail. He also said that since they have instituted that policy, they are down to "just" one fatality every year or every two years. But the Jedi and I were quick to hear the word "fatality" and impress on Toa of Boy how important it was to stay with us and not go off running, and climbing, and jumping.

 We hiked back out of the gorge through Old Man's Cave (which for some reason, I don't have any pictures of at all, overexposed or not). The Cave itself is a large recess carved in the face of the sandstone cliff. It is some 250 feet long and around 50 feet high. To me, the most striking part about it is how abrupt the transition is from green and gold forest with dark rock walls to this large, other-worldly place of sand and tan rocks where nothing at all grows.

From Old Man's Cave, we hopped in the van and drove to Rock House. By now, it was nearing dusk. Which meant that we had the trail nearly to ourselves. It also meant that we had little light for photos and the entire of the Rock House, which is rather dark even in the middle of the day, was very, very dark, and hard to see where one was walking. Nevertheless, Rock House made it to Toa's top three favorite things about the weekend. Once again, he loved crawling up into the recesses in the back wall of the rock. We talked about how native peoples used to inhabit this large cave, and he picked out the recess which would be his bedroom if we lived in the cave. The trail on the way back goes on top of the cliff which holds the cave. The Jedi was commenting on how invisible that huge cave is as soon as the trail makes one little turn around the bend. Coming towards the cave from either side of the cliff, you'd never know such a large feature was there.

(And now I'm cheating, because of the light, we didn't snap many pictures of the rock house this visit, so I'm putting up one of my favorite pictures looking out of the "window" of the rock house which I took during a visit in 2004. Go ahead and tell me that it's under-exposed. I double-dog dare you to).

We hiked back to our car in the fading light, hit Wal-mart for milk and other perishibles, and got back to our cabin after 8. We made a quick dinner of cheddarwursts, then bundled up and headed outside with the telescope.

Visible in the sky that night were supposed to be Jupiter and a comet. The Jedi focused the telescope on the craters of the moon, which was pretty cool.....and then we set about trying to figure out which of the thousands of bright objects in the sky might be Jupiter. I thought we might be in trouble when Sweetling and I couldn't even find the Dippers and Polaris. But, the Jedi has picked up Saturn and its rings from our back patio in the middle of city glare AND he talked me through pointing out stars, constellations and planets over the phone when I was at an AHG campout with a bunch of little girls and I didn't even know which direction was which,  so I had confidence in his ability to eventually work everything out.

Sweetling and I stared at the Milky Way, which she had never really seen before, and we found a little cluster of faint stars near the horizon. Frankly, I was pretty overwhelmed by the sheer number of stars. Even the few constellations that I'm occasionally able to recognize, like Cassiopeia, looked  entirely different because of all the little stars, invisible near Cincinnati, which were shining through and around the constellations. Eventually, the 40 degree night tried the children's patience, and we headed for the hot tub instead. (The hot tub was number three on Toa of Boy's list of favorites.)

On Saturday, the Jedi was judging in a BBQ festival in nearby Nelsonville. We popped on-line from one of the two netbooks we had brought (really roughing it we were), to check out activities for the kids and I to do while the Jedi was at the festival. I was hoping for a Junior Ranger Badge from one of the State Parks, or some educational program at one of the parks, but our internet connection was really slow and spotty (see I told you we were roughing it.) After a little while of searching, we didn't find anything nearby that was appealing, plus, it was still pretty chilly out. The kids opted instead to hang out at the cabin, play card games, eat pizza, and watch a movie for the first part of the day.

After the Jedi was finished at the contest, it was late afternoon. We grabbed smoothies from McDonalds and headed out for another hike. This time, we headed to Conkle's Hollow. The temperatures had warmed considerably during the afternoon. It was still a little cool, but certainly not cold like the morning had been. The scenery was beautiful. (Scenery being another item on Sweetling's 'top three' list.)

When we arrived, there was a historic camp set up in a field near the parking lot, so we spent some time wandering around that, watching a demonstration on how writing quills were made, and chatting with the re-enacters (who said they woke up this morning, in their little cloth tents, to a frost covered field.)

Once again, we hit the trail late in the day, as everyone else was leaving to go to dinner. At the entrance to the hollow, there was a trail map, which we skipped, and then two signs at a fork in the trail. The gorge trail went strait ahead. It runs down the center of the gorge and is 0.5 miles, and the Jedi and I have walked it on previous visits. To our right was a large, large flight of wooden stairs, which, the sign told us, was the rim trail. The rim trail was 2.5 miles long, and we had never hiked it before. Since this would be our only hike of the day, we opted for the longer path.

On the way up, we passed a couple of warning signs, which we had Toa read aloud, all about not becoming a fatality. The signs said that the trail ran near the rim, and that the path could be very uneven, so please exercise caution. Check. Can do.

Now understand, the Jedi and I have traveled to Hocking Hills on several occasions. We've hiked along Cantwell Cliffs and taken the rim trail along the edge of the Rock House cliff, so we were pretty confident we knew what to expect from a rim trail. The other rim trails are about ten to fifteen feet or so from the actual edge, and give lovely glimpses into the valleys below from a safe distance away on a wide smooth path.

The rim trail at Conkle's Hollow was meant for mountain goats. Any living creature who is not a mountain goat has no business being on that rim trail. At 200 to 270 feet above the canyon floor, for large stretches of its length, this rim trail was two or three feet of rock, tree roots, and crevices RIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF. Got that? RIGHT AT THE EDGE. The Jedi walked in front of Sweetling, reaching behind him to hold onto her hand. I kept a death grip on Toa of Boy's wrist and marched him in front of me. Oh, and did I mention the rock would often have step ups and step downs of one to two feet? The Jedi would cross these, help Sweetling down, walk her a few feet away, double back and help Toa down, walk him over to Sweetling, and then come back and help me down. Cause, one misstep? One trip? One lost of balance? Game over. We crawled along that cliff edge like ants.

Why didn't we turn back? Because at first we thought, surely its just this one little patch that's like this.  Since the path was zigging and zagging to follow the uneven edge of the canyon, we couldn't really see much of it at once. At first we thought, it would get back to being a sane trail after this one little scary stretch. When we reached the first outcropping, I thought the danger was over, and we paused for a photo op. The top of the outcropping was a large, open space with a few spindly evergreens of some sort, and the view was breathtaking. We sat down, I snapped some photos, and we traveled on.

We left the outcropping, and the path went back to its mountain goat self, but I thought, it's just because we are on the other side of the out cropping. I don't know when it occurred to us that no, no, this death trap really is the trail, and this is really how it is....but at that point the thought was, surely this scary portion will end soon, and we'd be better off going forward than going back over all that dangerous stretch again.

Did I mention that Sweetling and the Jedi are both terrified of heights?

At points, we stepped over crevices in the trail just a foot or so wide, but looking down which one could see the tops of the trees in the valley far below.

And always, we'd reach little sections where the trail would widen some, and we'd think, ah, we're finished with this. Here's one of those points. A scenic overlook, which I at least thought was towards the end of the fatal portion of the rim trail. See those two black sandstone cliff faces? At the time we paused to snap this photo, we had no idea that the trail would wind around both those out croppings.....we hit the one on the right on the east rim of the trail....and the one on the left on the west end of the trail.

You will also notice the deep shadows that both those cliffs are in. That's because the sun is very low in the western sky. Remember how there was a trail marker with the distance of the trail at the beginning of the trail? We hike fairly regularly, regularly enough to know how long a trail of a given length might take us. But, we hadn't counted on the crawling pace this particular trail would reduce us too.

We reached a point, at long last, where the trail left the sheer cliff face and meandered back into the forest a bit. The five to ten feet of buffer between us and the cliff seemed like fathoms after what we had just hiked. And then, mercifully, we reached a set of wooden steps going down. Now, I knew we hadn't traveled back towards the entrance to the gorge yet, but when we reached the stairs, I thought we were done with the rim section of the trail. We all bounded down the stairs with great relief. And we followed the trail past little hollows.....

.....and then we got to a trail map. The map was conveniently located at, you guessed it, the halfway point of the trail. And, it clearly depicted that the west rim trail was in fact, just like the east rim trail. I checked out the 150 feet of dried up waterfall ledges, seriously contemplating whether we could pick our way down that. The Jedi and I discussed backtracking, because it looked like the eastern rim edge was slightly, ever so slightly, shorter than the western rim. But in the end, I just couldn't drag the kids back over the eastern rim again, and I was still clinging foolishly to the thought that the rest of the trail couldn't possibly be like what we just went over.

However, I was really worried about the fast fading light. Away from the rim, deep in the evergreen forest, the daylight was quickly disappearing. The thought of taking another rim trail in the dusk was terrifying. I remembered how blindly we had felt our way along inside of Rock House, and doing that 200 feet up was not a pleasant thought. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have opted for the eastern rim in hopes that it would catch more of the last light of the day than the western rim would in the shadows of the great pines.

But, we went on. I think the Jedi didn't want to face the eastern rim trail any more than I did. And in the end, I am so glad that we did. The western rim was actually the pleasant hike we had been anticipating. It had a couple of tricky spots, but nothing like the terror of the eastern rim. We walked through a section of autumn trees, all aglow with the indirect light of sunset. Toa named it the "Golden Garden". We found large caves invisible from the valley far below. We made the hike of the rim and out of the forest in plenty of time before it got dangerously dark.

In fact, the western rim hike was so successful, that at the bottom of the trail, the Jedi suggested we do the .5 gorge valley hike we had passed over before. The kids, however, were done with hiking and were ready for dinner. So we headed back to the cabin and I worked on dinner while the Jedi and the kids went out to the hot tub. (The cabin's range didn't boil water, only heated it, and the cabin didn't have a stove, so I did dinner in sections in the small microwave oven, then kept things warm on the range top. It wasn't that bad, cause the Jedi had brought home lots of leftovers from his bbq judging earlier, so other than cooking a side dish of noodles, I was just heating things up.)

 After dinner, we had a family game night. (Family time together was the third item on Sweetling's favorites list.)  On Sunday morning, we grabbed breakfast at the cabin, packed up, and headed home.

My three favorite things about the weekend were--

• Time with the Jedi.
• Stargazing on Friday night
• The Rim Trail. (yes, I know that doesn't make much sense, but since when have you started expecting logic from me? After we were all down, and safe, I really appreciated the beauty of the trail, the adventure of the trail, and the teamwork we needed to move everyone safely along the trail.)

Check out more adventures on Field Trip Fridays.

Field Trip Friday: The Santa Maria

  In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue....

Five hundred years later, the city of Columbus, Ohio opened the most historically accurate replica of Columbus' flagship in the world. The Santa Maria. This ship floats anchored on the Scioto River in downtown Columbus, Ohio.

My first impression upon seeing that ship was that it couldn't possibly  be to scale. Surely, surely, Columbus and his crew hadn't set off across the Atlantic to an unknown destination in a perilous journey of unknown length in a little wooden ship so tiny. But yes, yes, they had. The ship is exactly to scale.

Here is Sweetling standing on the dock near the ship for a better understanding of just how small this ship was. The Nina and the Pinta were even smaller.

We met up with several families from our co-op, and we took a guided tour of the ship together. Coincidentally, there were about 40 people in our group, and there were 40 men on the Santa Maria during Columbus' voyage. It gave an idea of how little personal space each sailor had. Here are just a few of us crowded on the deck (and most of our group were young children.) The large wooden column on the right is the ship's main mast. The canvas tarp overhead wouldn't have been there in Columbus' day of course, but is there for the comfort of tours and too keep rain out of the main hold (which would have been sealed shut during Columbus' journey, but is kept open for tours on the replica.

Interestingly enough, the hold was not used for anything except the storage of supplies. I always assumed that part of the hold was the crew's quarters. Not so. The main doors of the hold were shut and sealed with tar, and access to the supplies below was made through two tiny square hatches in the steerage (the area underneath the quarterdeck.) Twelve-year old cabin boys were sent down into the pitch-dark, rat and cockroach infested hold to retrieve whatever supplies were required that day. They felt their way along, counting the 'ribs' on the side of the ship to get to the general location of the supply and then feeling inside barrels and crates to identify the contents. Fun job. (The main doors were opened when a large barrel of water or other large object was needed brought up, then the doors were sealed shut again.)

If you're wondering where the sailors slept if not in the hold, the answer is, wherever they could find a bit of deckspace. The main deck of the ship had two somewhat sheltered areas underneath the foredeck and underneath the quarterdeck. You can see a little into one of those spaces in the photo above. No one had a bed on the ship, except for Christopher Columbus, who had a cabin he shared with 8-10 other men (ship's officiers and representatives of the crown) and the owner of the ship, who had a small cot in the ship's steerage.

The steerage is the area underneath the quarterdeck, in the stern of the ship. It contained the ship's cannons, the large wench for raising and lowering the anchor....

....and the ship's tiller. 


And on the edges all that, were poor tired sailors trying to catch a little sleep. Work was always being done on the ship, and there were sailors on duty 24/7, so sleep was snatched whenever one wasn't on shift. For those of you thinking that sailors slept in hammocks (which was me), hammocks were discovered in the new world during one of Columbus' voyages, and weren't put into regular use on ships till sometime after that.

I didn't bother taking pictures of the hold, since it was so small and crowded down there. Nor did I get a picture of the bow of the main deck, under the foredeck, though I wish I would have now. I can't imagine why I didn't. I did snap a picture of the ship's kitchen. Again, in my head I had the notion of a small, cosy little galley. Nope. Here it is.

The kitchen is just a small grill set up on the main deck. It could only be used in good weather on relatively calm seas. Other than that it was just cold hardtack. There was a sample of saltpork hanging underneath the foredeck. It was a unidentifiable twisted, black thing. We learned that the black was mold, and that when you cut off the mold, the meat underneath was "edible". Yum. Of course, you had to soak the meat for a day or two before it could be chewed and eaten. Double yum.

From the main deck are ladders going up to the foredeck, on the bow of the ship, and the quarterdeck, on the stern of the ship.

The quarter deck had the ropes and pulleys to control the main sail (which weighs in at 1,000 lbs when it's dry), as well as what we generally think of as the ships "rigging", the net like ladders which run up to the crow's nest. (Or at least, that's what I think of, landlubber that I am.)

The rigging attaches to the outside side of the ship, just beyond the railing of the quarter deck. I won't even tell you what the bit of rope Toa is playing with was used for. But it's called the "bitter end" if you want to look it up. (But I'll warn you, it has to do with how the sailors went to the 'bathroom' and there wasn't any toilett paper on the ship.) Had we known what it was used for, even though this particular bit of rope was never used that way, even Toa would have been grossed out enough to leave it alone. Even grosser, yes, it gets grosser, was that there was only one of these bitter end bits of rope kept on ship, so everyone got to share.

The quarter deck also had a door to the Columbus's (and the officiers') cabin, which contained his maps, a desk, his navigational tools, and his journals. Columbus kept two journals, one with a greatly reduced set of numbers to represent the distance traveled, which is what he told the crew, and a secret log book in which he recorded the actual distance traveled. (He was afraid of a mutiny if the crew knew how far from Spain they really were.) And of course, the cabin held the only true bed on the ship, though "bed" is a rather loose use of the term. Columbus' bed was just a wooden box with a straw pallet on top. Here's a group of kids perched on the "bed".

The weather was beautiful and the tour of the ship was fascinating, though the thing both children took away from this experience, when I asked them about it separately at a later time, was that they never would have wanted to be a sailor.

So, this is not a photo of a pirate queen in another life.

While we were in Columbus, we took a free tour of the state captial building. Highlights, according to the children were...

...the map room with a huge floor map of Ohio by counties,

....the domed rotunda ceiling

......and, Toa's pick, the golden eagle in the State senate chambers.












(Sweetling liked being able to cast a vote on the issue of the day in the museum, but we don't have a photo of that.)

Mommy liked that a representative from our State senatorial district came down to talk to the kids about how the legislature functions. I liked seeing the Senate chambers...

the chandeliers in which were recreated based on reporters sketches of the original room during a ball attended by President Lincoln and his wife.










In general, I really loved the attention to historical detail that went into a recent renovation of the state house. Throughout the original state house, all the lighting fixtures had a small 'key' on them to represent the gas knobs that were turned to release the fuel in the original gas lighting fixtures. Shortly after the turn of the century, the State courthouse was built next door, furbished with the brand new electrical lights. This building was later 'annexed' to the statehouse, and in the renovation, period style "Edison" lamps were reinstalled.

And of course, no trip to Columbus would be complete without a visit to COSI.

We were away from home twelve and a half hours all told, but it was a great day!

What about you? Have any field trips to share? Want to read where others have gone? Hop on over to Field Trip Friday and join in the fun :)