New River Gorge

Pancake breakfast with grandma!

A visit to the New River, "one of the oldest rivers in the world, second only to the Nile." ???

we explored the visitor center, then

headed down to Brookside where the caretaker, Louie, gave us a tour and guided us on a hike.

We avoided the poison ivy and made it.

The river was beautiful.

A cute moment for grandma and Ky. 

This baby turtle just hatched and came out of this little hole. We found quite a few of them near our picnic table where we had lunch.

Sadly, after our picnic it was time for grandma to take off and head back to Atlanta.

We stayed and went to the Grandview area to hike some more.

There sure was a grand view!

This was a fun path barely carved into the wall of the canyon. The drop offs next to us were quite extreme.

And we finished up our day with a couple tunnels. Still not sure how to see that they are coming and avoid them with the RV. Hoping the propane ban never becomes an issue.

More McDill FUN

We were so excited to see our friends again! Last time, we just met and had so much fun. This time we knew going in that we would be blessed to fellowship with this amazing family!

And this time it was much greener because it's spring! Nevertheless, the kids were sledding (!) down this hill. 

It took some doing to get there. GPS took us off the paved roads that we know lead to their home and put us on a narrow one-lane dirt road. As we approached this turn, I yelled for Scott to stop (before the trailer ended up falling down this hole)! We were able to back up and took a turn wider. When we came to a second similar spot, we had a better approach and made it through the first time. 

Never a dull moment. 

Somehow, on this visit they were celebrating a birthday, just like the last visit. But I suppose with nine kids it is more likely to happen. (:

part of the time we were there, and everyone played inside. But when it was sunny, they were out running around. Jo even went to the river with the oldest boys to swim! We have been surprised at how warm the water is in the river is here. But that makes sense, since the Pacific is freezing and most of all freshwater rivers and lakes in California are snow and glacial run off. These rivers are primarily rain water.  

Everyone wnjoyed each other's company. 

Here is just a smattering of the state signs that we've seen in the last day or so!

Charleston, WV - Capitol #45

On the way to the capital, we passed this coal-fire electric plant and decided to look it up and read about it. It was interesting reading about how much coal is burned to create electricity, how much electricity is made and, of course, how much carbon dioxide is created.

The capital itself with very prestigious and sits right on the Kanawha River, a tributary of the Ohio.

The statue of a coalminer at the Capitol complex reminded us of the movie October Sky that we watched at Christmas time. It is about high school students in a small coal mining town here in West Virginia who won a rocket science competition years ago. It's too bad the town is 1 1/2 hours out of our way, otherwise we will probably visit.

The capital of West Virginia waveres back-and-forth between the cities of Wheeling and Charleston several times before they finally decided on Charleston and built this beautiful Capitol.

This building is in a U-shape. Each side with built at a different time, but it is able to house all parts of the West Virginia government.

This Capitol can claim to have a higher roof than the US Capitol (by 5 feet). It is also designed by the same architect, Cass Gilbert, who also designed the Minnesota Capitol.   

The chandelier hanging from the dome weighs 4000 pounds!

Next-door is the State Museum.

Everyone enjoyed learning about West Virginia's history.

West Virginia became a state in the middle of the Civil War. Prior to that it was part of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And it seems that these days no visit to a capital would be complete without a protest. This one was about climate change. 

Guess who we found in London (Ohio)?!?

Grandma drove from Atlanta to Ohio to hang out with us for a few days!

The kids were so surprised when she pulled up next to us one night. "Is that... GRANDMA?!?" said Kaia. "WHAT?!?" replied the boys. Then they all jumped out of the car and ran over to give her hugs. So fun! Best Grandma ever!

Dayton Aviation Heritage Trail

Dayton, Ohio is the birthplace of aviation. 

They even have an "Aviation Trail" of 15 locations you can visit and each one has a significant contribution to flight.

We started at the national park service visitor center.

They start with a timeline of the Wright brothers and other contributions leading up to Kitty Hawk. (When we were at that site in North Carolina we heard a little about what lead up to the moment when the first flight took place, but this definitely expanded on what we'd learned!)

Right outside the visitor center is an original Wright brothers cycle shop. This was their 4th shop, but it still stands in its original location made of the original materials - a building where Wilbur and Orville experimented and invented. So fun!

A contemporary of the brothers was an African American poet/author named Paul Dunbar. He was the first African American to make a living solely off his writing and we just learned in Little Rock that the high school for the colored students (some of whom ultimately became the Little Rock Nine) was named after him.

Well, the library at Wright State University is also named after him. And in that library, they have a ton of original historic documents about all the aviation happenings from Dayton's history. The librarian enjoyed telling us all about their collections available online and showing us much memorabilia that the Wright family continues to donate - like the gold medals in this case. They are originals, while the Smithsonian in DC has replicas.

Our next stop was the field where the Wright brothers picked up their testing after their initial successes in North Carolina. The visitor center here picks up the flight story after Kitty Hawk and takes us through their successful controlled flights and attempts to share their invention with various governments. 

Next, we visited the Air Force's National Museum. We thought the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, FL was incredible and this one is of equal quality!

It was so great, it got its own post (see next).

After the museum, we finished up our exploration of aviation with a visit to the Wright family gravesite and then headed back to the first visitor center.

This display of the Wright boys when they were young playing with a flying toy was more meaningful after the movie that showed this toy sparking their interest in flight.

We also got to go inside their bike shop which was closed the first day we came by.