We drove around the neighborhood and one side of the place stunk. I asked the kids if they’d like to live in a really nice house, but be next to the landfill. They all declined. They’ve got good sense- or it that scents?
Monday, September 19, 2011
Mt Rumpke
Mt. Rumpke is one of the largest landfills in the US. You can see it from the highway so I figured we’d go check it out. I wasn’t impressed with it, but I guess they are not trying to be impressive. We were a week too early- there was a festival the following week with info on recycling and how the landfill works.
We drove around the neighborhood and one side of the place stunk. I asked the kids if they’d like to live in a really nice house, but be next to the landfill. They all declined. They’ve got good sense- or it that scents?
Does this mean they could litter prior to '95? Or they can litter in other area, but just not on the roads?
We drove around the neighborhood and one side of the place stunk. I asked the kids if they’d like to live in a really nice house, but be next to the landfill. They all declined. They’ve got good sense- or it that scents?
Serpent Mound
Last year in school Jacob learned about the mound people. These groups of people created mounds shaped like animals that can be view from above. It was really interesting because I’d never heard of them before and how did they know what they were making if they couldn’t see it?
When we started outlining this trip I wanted to see some of these mounds. We found a serpent mound in south central Ohio. We learned the mounds were for burials, but the animal shaped one wasn’t. This wiggling serpent marked the equinox and summer soltice where the curves came out. It was very interesting. Maybe they used this as a calendar? They did have plain mounds and people were buried there, but not in the animal shaped mound.
Burial mound
It appears they slept on the levels above others they'd buried.
The outline of the shaped mound with my family in the reflection
They had a tower we climbed to see the serpent from above.
When we started outlining this trip I wanted to see some of these mounds. We found a serpent mound in south central Ohio. We learned the mounds were for burials, but the animal shaped one wasn’t. This wiggling serpent marked the equinox and summer soltice where the curves came out. It was very interesting. Maybe they used this as a calendar? They did have plain mounds and people were buried there, but not in the animal shaped mound.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Birthplace of Aviation
Ohio’s license plates say “birthplace of aviation.” I thought that meant one of the Wright Brothers was born here because I knew that they flew in North Carolina, but I was partially wrong. One of the brothers was born here (Orville), they did first fly in North Carolina, but then they came back home and set up in Dayton, Ohio to perfect the plane. We watched a great movie about the Wright brothers and their accomplishments. It’s really just incredible what they figured out. They not only built a plane, but they learned how to fly it. There were some crashes along the way, but they learned and improved with each flight.
Their first flight was in Kittyhawk, NC in Dec. 1903. They chose the area because it was windy, because not many people would be there and because the sand there would make for a soft landing. The trip to North Carolina on the train was $1,000. They made that much each year in their bicycle store when the nation’s average annual income was $300. After three trips to North Carolina they decided that it was too cost prohibitive to travel to there each year so they came back to Dayton, found a cow pasture to work in and perfected the plane over the next two years.
They flew daily while at the cow pasture in Huffington Prairie in Dayton. Spectators would come to the farm and watch in awe. The longest flight was 39 minutes and the only reason it ended was because the plane ran out of gas. After that flight in 1905 they quit flying because they didn’t want people to see too much. They had all the info they needed to apply for patents. Once their patents were granted they flew their planes for the US military and overseas and orders started coming in for the planes.
An interesting tidbit the ranger told us was that seats used to be covered with corduroy so the pilots would slide around less often.
Neither brother married and Wilbur died from typhoid fever at 45. Orville didn’t die until 1948 at age 76 so he was able to see what a difference planes made during WWI and WWII, Charles Lindbergh’s flight and the start of commercial flights. The contribution they made to our country and our world is incredible. It was wonderful to learn about them in the birthplace of aviation.
Orville was here when the monument was dedicated in 1940.
The kids "flew" back to the car
The had five bicycle shops at different times in different areas. Ford has one of them in Michigan and there's the one here in Dayton. It was almost torn down in 1980 until someone who had been working on a book on the Wright Brothers proved it was their former bike shop.
This bicycle has a dress guard- love it!
Their first flight was in Kittyhawk, NC in Dec. 1903. They chose the area because it was windy, because not many people would be there and because the sand there would make for a soft landing. The trip to North Carolina on the train was $1,000. They made that much each year in their bicycle store when the nation’s average annual income was $300. After three trips to North Carolina they decided that it was too cost prohibitive to travel to there each year so they came back to Dayton, found a cow pasture to work in and perfected the plane over the next two years.
They flew daily while at the cow pasture in Huffington Prairie in Dayton. Spectators would come to the farm and watch in awe. The longest flight was 39 minutes and the only reason it ended was because the plane ran out of gas. After that flight in 1905 they quit flying because they didn’t want people to see too much. They had all the info they needed to apply for patents. Once their patents were granted they flew their planes for the US military and overseas and orders started coming in for the planes.
An interesting tidbit the ranger told us was that seats used to be covered with corduroy so the pilots would slide around less often.
Neither brother married and Wilbur died from typhoid fever at 45. Orville didn’t die until 1948 at age 76 so he was able to see what a difference planes made during WWI and WWII, Charles Lindbergh’s flight and the start of commercial flights. The contribution they made to our country and our world is incredible. It was wonderful to learn about them in the birthplace of aviation.
Monday, September 12, 2011
The Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an amazing man with big ideas. We spent three days touring part of the empire he created- the Rouge Factory, The Henry Ford museum and Greenfield Village.
He didn’t create the first car; he created an assembly line that required 7,882 steps to assemble the car. Bringing the car to the men instead of the men to the car proved to be a faster way to assemble it. He had a vision of everyone having a car. The first cars he produced were $630, but the prices dropped to the $200s a few years later.
I loved this- Ford received a letter from (Bonnie and) Clyde about how great his car was for a get away car and one from John Dillinger suggesting a new slogan about others tasting your dust.
The Model T sold more than any other brand (15 million) until the Volkswagen Bug in the 70s. There are still a million in the world according to the tour guide Rick and Faith had as they drove around in a Model T.
Ford collected things. He has the chair Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated, the bus Rosa Parks sat on and refused to move, a Dymaxion home that was ahead of its time, and a LOT more. He just kept collecting things. His son told him to put them in a museum and charge for others to come see it. Thus, the Henry Ford museum was born. At first he opened it up just to school groups. This place has so many cool things to see- trains, cars, all the Presidents limos, including the one JFK was riding in when he was shot.
Lincoln's chair and Rosa Park's bus
In the 1920s he created Greenfield Village. He moved his childhood home to the area and spent 18 months getting all the details and furnishings just right. He and his wife Clara enjoyed walking around in the town he created. It was just like the old days- no cars. He brought other homes to the village like Robert Frost’s, George Washington Carver’s, a one room school house, slave quarters and more. His assistants would scour the country for things Ford would like to obtain. That’s how they found Noah Webster’s house was up for demolition. His people disassembled it and brought it over.
Ford's childhood home was quite large. The front parlor.
I loved this setting. Classic. Covered bridge, Weeping willow, gazebo.
Thomas Edison's workshop. They were good friends. Ford used to work for him.
The Wright brother's family home from Dayton, Ohio
We also toured the Rouge Factory and saw F-150s being assembled. We tried figure out the path the pieces took to meet together. It was interesting watching the robotic arms putting the windshields on. They have covered their roof with plants. This keeps it ten degrees warmer in the winter and ten degrees cooler in the summer. No pictures were allowed inside the plant so I just have one of the roof.
The green roof of the Rouge Factory. The French called the red river Rouge thus the name. The city of Detroit is French and was pronounced "Deh-twa". I like that better!
He didn’t create the first car; he created an assembly line that required 7,882 steps to assemble the car. Bringing the car to the men instead of the men to the car proved to be a faster way to assemble it. He had a vision of everyone having a car. The first cars he produced were $630, but the prices dropped to the $200s a few years later.
The Model T sold more than any other brand (15 million) until the Volkswagen Bug in the 70s. There are still a million in the world according to the tour guide Rick and Faith had as they drove around in a Model T.
Ford collected things. He has the chair Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated, the bus Rosa Parks sat on and refused to move, a Dymaxion home that was ahead of its time, and a LOT more. He just kept collecting things. His son told him to put them in a museum and charge for others to come see it. Thus, the Henry Ford museum was born. At first he opened it up just to school groups. This place has so many cool things to see- trains, cars, all the Presidents limos, including the one JFK was riding in when he was shot.
In the 1920s he created Greenfield Village. He moved his childhood home to the area and spent 18 months getting all the details and furnishings just right. He and his wife Clara enjoyed walking around in the town he created. It was just like the old days- no cars. He brought other homes to the village like Robert Frost’s, George Washington Carver’s, a one room school house, slave quarters and more. His assistants would scour the country for things Ford would like to obtain. That’s how they found Noah Webster’s house was up for demolition. His people disassembled it and brought it over.
We also toured the Rouge Factory and saw F-150s being assembled. We tried figure out the path the pieces took to meet together. It was interesting watching the robotic arms putting the windshields on. They have covered their roof with plants. This keeps it ten degrees warmer in the winter and ten degrees cooler in the summer. No pictures were allowed inside the plant so I just have one of the roof.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Camping
I don’t think my family ever camped. I camped with my girlfriends a few times. It was nice to hang out, have s’mores and eat donuts for breakfast, but we’d always wake up wet since we lived in Washington.
Rick and I camped once before kids. You wonder “why don’t we do this more often?” as you're breathing in the fresh air, enjoying nature. You remember after a long night of wondering what every sound is while trying to sleeping on the hard ground and waking up at daybreak.
I don’t consider staying in the RV camping. We have all the comforts of home- actually more!-heating, air conditioning, beds, toilet and shower, convection oven/microwave. Even when the power goes out we’re still in good shape as was reinforced this weekend. Michigan had a thunderstorm and we ended up losing power. Thankfully our refrigerator switches to gas when we travel or if electric is lost so we didn’t have to worry about that. The lights can run on house battery or solar power. Our stove top is gas. We broke out the Monopoly board and played. Others dashed from their tents or pop up trailers to their vehicles. We went to bed to the sound of wind, rain and neighbor’s generators. We didn’t turn our generator on because it wasn’t too hot or too cold.
In the morning Rick went on a recon mission to find out when the power would be restored. Some said 3pm, some said midnight tomorrow. About noon I couldn’t take the neighbor’s generator’s fumes anymore and we left. We headed to McDonald’s to use their free wifi and picked up lunch somewhere else. Shhhhh. We returned a few hours later and the power was on.
The power went out again at midnight even though it wasn’t windy or rainy. The power was off for several hours again today, but we went sightseeing. I really can’t complain when not having internet is roughing it.
Rick and I camped once before kids. You wonder “why don’t we do this more often?” as you're breathing in the fresh air, enjoying nature. You remember after a long night of wondering what every sound is while trying to sleeping on the hard ground and waking up at daybreak.
I don’t consider staying in the RV camping. We have all the comforts of home- actually more!-heating, air conditioning, beds, toilet and shower, convection oven/microwave. Even when the power goes out we’re still in good shape as was reinforced this weekend. Michigan had a thunderstorm and we ended up losing power. Thankfully our refrigerator switches to gas when we travel or if electric is lost so we didn’t have to worry about that. The lights can run on house battery or solar power. Our stove top is gas. We broke out the Monopoly board and played. Others dashed from their tents or pop up trailers to their vehicles. We went to bed to the sound of wind, rain and neighbor’s generators. We didn’t turn our generator on because it wasn’t too hot or too cold.
In the morning Rick went on a recon mission to find out when the power would be restored. Some said 3pm, some said midnight tomorrow. About noon I couldn’t take the neighbor’s generator’s fumes anymore and we left. We headed to McDonald’s to use their free wifi and picked up lunch somewhere else. Shhhhh. We returned a few hours later and the power was on.
The power went out again at midnight even though it wasn’t windy or rainy. The power was off for several hours again today, but we went sightseeing. I really can’t complain when not having internet is roughing it.
Dancin’ and singin’ in Motown
We had a great time touring Hitsville USA- the Motown Museum. It’s in an unlikely place- a house among houses. It’s easy to drive past, which we did, but GPS told me it was there. The only pictures we could take were of the outside, so here it is-
Inside we had a lively tour guide who sang and showed us the basic “back up singer dance moves” throughout the tour. Berry Gordy Jr came from a family of eight children. His parents had five businesses. Berry asked his family for a loan of $800 in 1959 (they had an account set up for such things) and he had a year to pay it back at 6% interest. In seven years, he’d made $20 million from the $800!
He had the same song become a hit with different artists since they needed to fill up their albums. Heard it Through the Grapevine was sung by Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight and the Pips and others. He also had nine labels as the radio stations were restricted as to the number of times per hour they could play a label, so with nine labels his artists weren’t competing with each other as much. One of the family businesses was a printing business so making labels was easy.
Everyone sounds better singing in the shower so the first songs released were actually sung in the shower. After that, they brought in some people to help with the acoustics and determined cutting a hole in the ceiling and putting the microphones up there would produced the same kind of sound.
Another interesting thing the company did was to bring in a lady to teach manners and groom them to be professional. They had someone else go to the venues and measure the stage so the performers would feel comfortable knowing they had space. They would count the number of steps to the microphone for Stevie Wonder.
We toured Berry Gordy Jr’s apartment in the house next door. He lived upstairs and the downstairs was used for business. Diana Ross was a secretary at one time- she only lived six houses down. Also in the neighborhood lived Smokey Robinson, The Temptations and other talents. As the business grew he purchased half a dozen other homes on the street.
On display was a sparkly glove and fedora from Michael Jackson. It wasn’t covered in a display case until someone stole the hat. MC Hammer was upset and offered a $50,000 reward. The hat was returned and now “you can’t touch this.” Other interesting fixtures were a cigarette machine with packs going for 35 cents, and a candy bar machine with 10 cent candy- Baby Ruth was fourth from the right so Stevie Wonder could always find it. It was fun to see the old packaging from the 70s.
Our last stop was in Studio A where all the famous people recorded. I can’t imagine being in there during the summer- they didn’t run the AC because it made a humming noise on the recordings, people smoked and Auntie made chili dogs when they were recording. The room wasn’t that big and sometimes sixty people would be in there! The guide had the girls line up on one side and sing and dance to Stop in the Name of Love. The fellas sang My Girl. Rick was the only one really doing the dancing and singing. Too bad we couldn’t take pictures!
Inside we had a lively tour guide who sang and showed us the basic “back up singer dance moves” throughout the tour. Berry Gordy Jr came from a family of eight children. His parents had five businesses. Berry asked his family for a loan of $800 in 1959 (they had an account set up for such things) and he had a year to pay it back at 6% interest. In seven years, he’d made $20 million from the $800!
He had the same song become a hit with different artists since they needed to fill up their albums. Heard it Through the Grapevine was sung by Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight and the Pips and others. He also had nine labels as the radio stations were restricted as to the number of times per hour they could play a label, so with nine labels his artists weren’t competing with each other as much. One of the family businesses was a printing business so making labels was easy.
Everyone sounds better singing in the shower so the first songs released were actually sung in the shower. After that, they brought in some people to help with the acoustics and determined cutting a hole in the ceiling and putting the microphones up there would produced the same kind of sound.
Another interesting thing the company did was to bring in a lady to teach manners and groom them to be professional. They had someone else go to the venues and measure the stage so the performers would feel comfortable knowing they had space. They would count the number of steps to the microphone for Stevie Wonder.
We toured Berry Gordy Jr’s apartment in the house next door. He lived upstairs and the downstairs was used for business. Diana Ross was a secretary at one time- she only lived six houses down. Also in the neighborhood lived Smokey Robinson, The Temptations and other talents. As the business grew he purchased half a dozen other homes on the street.
On display was a sparkly glove and fedora from Michael Jackson. It wasn’t covered in a display case until someone stole the hat. MC Hammer was upset and offered a $50,000 reward. The hat was returned and now “you can’t touch this.” Other interesting fixtures were a cigarette machine with packs going for 35 cents, and a candy bar machine with 10 cent candy- Baby Ruth was fourth from the right so Stevie Wonder could always find it. It was fun to see the old packaging from the 70s.
Our last stop was in Studio A where all the famous people recorded. I can’t imagine being in there during the summer- they didn’t run the AC because it made a humming noise on the recordings, people smoked and Auntie made chili dogs when they were recording. The room wasn’t that big and sometimes sixty people would be in there! The guide had the girls line up on one side and sing and dance to Stop in the Name of Love. The fellas sang My Girl. Rick was the only one really doing the dancing and singing. Too bad we couldn’t take pictures!
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Thankful for freedom of religion
Our last stop in Indiana was in northern Indiana. We thought about touring Notre Dame, but they don’t let you go through the stadium and they are extra protective during football season so it didn’t sound very fun. But the Amish area did sound fun. There’s a 90 mile loop through different towns so we picked up a cd from the visitor center and drove through the area looking and learning. We stopped and picked up some goodies along the way- noodles, cheese and snacks for a picnic lunch.
We spent a few hours at the Menno-hof visitor center and learned about the start of the Anabaptist groups 500 years ago. The center took us through different rooms in history including one set up as a dungeon since they were persecuted for their beliefs. It had an Anabaptist catcher and a tongue screw- they give me the chills.
William Penn invited the different groups that were being persecuted in Europe to come to Pennsylvania so another room was a ”boat” about their trip that took three months.
We learned about Dirk Willems who was running from his persecutor over ice when his persecutor fell in. The man’s friends didn’t help him, but Dirk went back to rescue him. Even though he’d rescued him, Dirk was later persecuted and burned by the man.
We were able to “step” into an Amish kitchen and dining room and listen to normal dinner chatter.
It was fun seeing the horse and buggies in town. The Amish don’t want any graven images of them so they don’t want their photo taken. Can you imagine not having photos of your relatives to remember them? Photos are such a big part of my life so I thought it was sad. Which would be harder to live without- photos or electricity? This day trip resulted in some good conversations with the kids the past few days.
Horses tied to a hitching post at the grocery store- no Amish in the photo
It was interesting to me to see "regular" houses with buggies out front
Lots of colorful laundry hanging to dry. What's it like in the winter?
Click on photos to enlarge
We spent a few hours at the Menno-hof visitor center and learned about the start of the Anabaptist groups 500 years ago. The center took us through different rooms in history including one set up as a dungeon since they were persecuted for their beliefs. It had an Anabaptist catcher and a tongue screw- they give me the chills.
William Penn invited the different groups that were being persecuted in Europe to come to Pennsylvania so another room was a ”boat” about their trip that took three months.
We learned about Dirk Willems who was running from his persecutor over ice when his persecutor fell in. The man’s friends didn’t help him, but Dirk went back to rescue him. Even though he’d rescued him, Dirk was later persecuted and burned by the man.
We were able to “step” into an Amish kitchen and dining room and listen to normal dinner chatter.
It was fun seeing the horse and buggies in town. The Amish don’t want any graven images of them so they don’t want their photo taken. Can you imagine not having photos of your relatives to remember them? Photos are such a big part of my life so I thought it was sad. Which would be harder to live without- photos or electricity? This day trip resulted in some good conversations with the kids the past few days.
Click on photos to enlarge
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