Making Our Lists and Checking Them Twice

Tomorrow, since we have a long drive back home to Virginia, we'll all be working on our lists of our favorite things from the trip.  I might be able to blog from the passenger seat tomorrow, but if not, we'll keep writing on the blog over the next couple days to wrap things up. 

One thing I was thinking about tonight is what didn't survive the trip, what never made the trip, and what we ditched along the way.

The biggest thing we forgot is the big book of dvds I've been burning for the past six months.  I would record shoes on tivo that Jeff and I like and burn them onto DVDs to show on the tv in our bedroom.  I had the book out along with two smaller books of DVDs for the kids, but somehow, the big book didn't make it.  On the days we couldn't get a satellite signal, those dvds would have come in handy.

Two of our camp chairs didn't survive the trip and had to be discarded along the way.  We picked up two new ones at a Walmart. We think that might be partly due to certain children flinging their bodies into the chairs instead of just lightly resting their bottoms in them.  The kids do not agree with this assertion.

The dusty winds of Monument Valley took the life of one of our digital cameras.  The dust got into the retractable lens and jammed it up.  It was an Olympus pocket camera I picked up on Amazon.com when it was on a clearance sale, so I'm not too upset at the loss.  The kids like to take pictures on the trips, so I'm always on the lookout for a cheap pocket camera for them to use.  Letting them use a digital camera lets me delete the pictures that didn't come out instead of wasting money printing them.

As always, I overpacked, and I ditched some things along the way.  I really tried this time, but I did it again.  I packed too many clothes for me, that's for sure.  I didn't wear half the pants/shorts I packed.  I did wear alot of the shirts.  When Henry finished a Star Wars puzzle I packed, we put it back in the box and donated it to the game room at the KOA in Strasburg, Colorado.  I also left some books in "Leave a Book,  Take a Book" stands in some of the campgrounds.

I overpacked food as well.  I am writing this partly as a reminder for the next trip.  I don't know why I don't think about all the grocery stores we'll visit along the way. The canned goods and jars of spaghetti sauce can stay at home - they're heavy and take up space.  No need to bring three kinds of vinegar; I never made my own salad dressing and only used the marsala wine for dinner twice.  The balsamic was all I needed. 

I thought I was being smart for pouring flour into an empty oatmeal container to bring along, but I didn't ever need the flour.  I tossed it out as part of a purge before we went over the Rockies so I could lighten our load.  This time, I'm going to take better note of what I have to haul back into the house so I don't pack it again. 

One thing that did work out well was freezing chicken breasts and steaks in marinades (or without) in Ziploc bags and stacking them in the freezer.  I also made chili at home and froze that in a Ziploc bag, and it stacked well in the freezer with the rest of the meat.  I'll definitely do that again.

Lessons learned, that's for sure.

Right Back Where We Started

In keeping with the deja vu theme, we're now back in Columbus, Ohio, our first stop of the RV trip.

We got here yesterday, after a four hour drive from Indianapolis. Shortly after we arrived at the Cross Creek Camping Resort, part of the Alum Creek State Park, we headed out in the Jeep to go to the Columbus Zoo.

Henry has been excited about this zoo for a long time.  It's the zoo that Jack Hanna, an animal expert, is from.  Henry was very excited to see that not only do they have a zoo, but also an aquarium, water park and amusement park rides.  Bonanza!

I'll let Henry write about the zoo in detail later, when he's over his obsession with the FIFA Soccer app on the iPad.  I'll just sum up that despite the heat, it was an enjoyable three and half hours at the zoo.  The polar bears were very active and fun to watch.  We also saw moose, black bears, elephants, rhinos, flamingoes, gibbons and other animals.

After our zoo visit, we had a little time to rest before heading to Jeff's friend Jay and Sheri's house for a barbecue.  Ruth and Henry played with Sheri's daughter and Ruth made a good friend that she already misses.  We hung out for awhile, but not everyone is on vacation, so we eventually headed home so they could go to bed.

This morning, we headed back to the Columbus Zoo to hit the waterpark, called Zoombeezi Bay.  It was pretty crowded even right at opening time, 10:30 a.m.  The kids and Jeff hit the wave pool and lazy river while I got a locker to store our valuables.  I met them as they were heading to water slides, and watched Ruth go down a hilly water slide.  It looks like the ones they have a carnivals that the kids sit on burlap mats to go down, but on this one, Ruth laid on her stomach on a foam mat.  She said it went really fast.



The Funnel



Henry and Jeff went on a monster slide.  It sailed through a tube that dumped them into a huge funnel, so that they shot up along one side of the funnel, then slid back to the other, until eventually they dropped out the hole in the bottom into a pool.  Jeff said he went backwards in the tube he shared with Henry, so he couldn't see where they were going, but he could see the look of terror on Henry's face.  Neither one of them wanted to do that one again.

There were many laps in the lazy river for all of us.  Unfortunately, due to an "accident" shortly after opening at the wave pool, they had to close it.  Seems someone couldn't make it to the restroom in time, if you get my drift.  Yuck.  The water park's policy is that they have to test chemicals for 10 hours after the accident, so the wave pool had to remain closed.  The impact was felt throughout the park.  The lazy river was packed; so much so that Jeff gave up on it because there was no room to stretch out without bumping into people.  The lines at all the slides were really long. 

After about four hours and a lunch break, we packed up our stuff and headed back into the zoo to check out a few things we missed yesterday.  Ruth and Henry both loved the animal show they have a few times a day, so they asked to see it again.  The show features pigs, a porcupine, kangaroo, ducks, geese, birds, cats and dogs who take turns running on the stage. 

Many Dippin' Dots and Icees were consumed by the group to stay cool, because the temperatures were between 86 and 92.

Exhausted, we headed back to the campground. 

The refrigerator is pretty empty, it being the end of the trip.  Since we were tired and hot, we balked at barbecuing our last night and went for Mexican food.  We ate at Senior Antonio's Mexicano Restaurant in Lewis Center.  The nachos with beef and cheese were delicious, as were our entrees.

Stomachs full and tired, we headed back to the campground again, after a quick stop at Walmart to pick up aloe vera for Henry's mild sunburn and drinks for the ride home tomorrow.

Casinos Here, There and Everywhere

Ever since South Dakota, we've seen casinos scattered all over the Midwest.  In South Dakota, they had little ones in convenience stores and bars.  They have them in Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois.  Some are riverboat casinos, but there's also ones that are casino-hotel complexes.  Some are pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so we're left to wonder where the people are coming from to keep them in business.  To be honest, it just doesn't seem right to see them here.