Category Archives: Roadtrips

As part of our day four travels, we spent about 10 miles on a gravel road in southern Illinois - we were about as far from the 'main drag' as you could get. It was a really scenic, pleasant drive. I was pretty worried about all the gravel I could hear pinging off of the car though - but luckily, the paint was fine once I checked it out later that day.

Before finishing up day four, we stopped at Boo Rochman memorial park in Carbondale, Illinois. It's a cool playground with a Dungeons and Dragons theme. It was built by a local family after there son (who was a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan) passed away. There was an enormous concrete dragon structure for kids to climb on, lots of sculptures or wizards and fairies all over the park, and a huge wooden structure built to look like a castle. It was full of rooms and winding passages - Carter and I even found a secret door that led to a hidden section of the castle.

On day four we drove through the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. I'd love to get back there someday for a more extended visit. While at the trailhead for this hike, we ended up talking to one of the groundskeepers for quite a while about all of the other things to do in the National Forest. I still have the map he annotated for us. He even pointed out some cool local restaurants we should check out. The hike was pretty amazing. Pictures don't really do it justice. It's a set of rock formations and cliffs that are made of sandstone. The signs said that they are about 320 million years old. Back then, the area was covered by a giant inland sea and rivers deposited sand and mud there. When an eventual uplift occurred, it fractured the bedrock exposing it to weathering and erosion.

On day three we took some backroads and secondary highways between destinations, just to get a feel for the landscape. It was so wide open compared to New England. A few weeks from now everything will probably be a lot more green, but it was still very pretty.

On day three our first stop was Brown County State Park, in Nashville, Indiana. There had been lots of flooding in the area before we got there, so the trails were kind of a mess. We did see a pretty cool fire tower, though. It was not very high, but it was enormous inside!

After leaving COSI, we drove out to Dayton, Ohio and took a walk at Aullwood Garden. It was very pretty - it looks like an estate that was donated to the state, just like Maudslay State Park near us. I attached the GoPro to my backpack using a 3D-printed bracket we made before we left. I didn't realize my head was in frame though - I need to make a clip that mounts more on my chest strap, and less on my shoulder.

On the second day of our trip we went to the COSI science museum in Columbus. That place was really cool. One awesome thing they had a counterweight-balanced unicycle that you could ride across a tightrope above the main lobby of the building (from the mezzanine level). Carter did it twice!

We also messed around with the GoPro some more, and made a time lapse video of our drive from the hotel to COSI. It's surprising neat - downtown Columbus is pretty.

We bought a GoPro camera for this trip, and on our first night in Ohio we tested it out by trying to capture a time lapse video of the sun going down from our hotel room window. It wasn't a colorful sunset, but I think it's cool to see the clouds moving around like that - you don't really notice them moving much in real time.

For this year's road trip, Carter and I flew to Columbus, Ohio and drove from there to Kansas City, Missouri. The trip took us through six states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri - and just a touch of Kentucky and Kansas. We'd been to Ohio before, but this year's trip still netted us five new states. This was Carter's first trip on a plane and she says she really enjoyed it. Her favorite part? The snacks. Not the view, or the excitement of traveling - nope, the little bag of cookies is what made her day!

Lori and I just got back from a weekend in Burlington, VT. Lori took these amazing pictures while we were walking along the boardwalk along the lakefront at sunset.