Adventurers Fall Schedule

Yet another win for last week, I set up the Adventurers schedule!

If you're new to the blog, we live near Washington DC, home to an astonishing number of free world class museums, monuments, and other cool stuff.  

Adventurers, now in our sixth year,  is our weekly foray into this fascinating world!

Here is our field trip advice.

Here is our 2015 Fall Schedule:

9/9 Air and Space (space side)
9/16  Air and Space (air side)
9/23 Natural History (mammals, dinosaurs, insects)
9/30 Natural History (geology, gems, oceans)

10/7 Apple/pumpkin/broccoli picking at Larriland (pay for what you pick, free parking, usually takes most of the day)
10/14 Air and Space Udvar Hazy Annex (in Virginia so the driving will take more time, $16 parking, a good one to car pool)
10/21 Arboretum (Fall foliage, free parking)
10/28 American History (Spark Lab and the new Innovation Wing) This and the Arboretum may be switched depending on timing of peak leaf color

11/2 (Monday, All Souls Day) Arlington National Cemetery (visiting my family's WWI and WWII graves and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier)
11/11 (Veterans Day) American History (Star Spangled Banner and military history)
11/18 Library of Congress
Skip Week for Thanksgiving

12/2 Botanical Gardens (holiday train exhibit)
12/9 Gingerbread Contest and Party

Plan for Adventure

A tentative plan, but here it is:

Ready for an Adventure?

There are two issues with planning field trips for the spring semester.  The first is weather: it's hard to predict nice days and blooming trees.  I'll e mail people if weather changes our plans.

The second is easy to predict: this semester is prime time for school groups and tourists at all the major museums.  The crowds make it hard to see exhibits and easy to lose kids, so I plan our big museum trips for early fall.


2/18 Ash Wednesday: Basilica of the Immaculate Conception A great way to kick off Lent!
2/25 Bureau of Engraving and Printing Watch them make money, literally!
3/4 Washington Monument I have a limited number of tickets for 10:30.
3/11 National Zoo Early Spring at the Zoo is very nice.  Many animals are more active in the cooler weather, and there are far fewer crowds.
3/18 Fort McHenry In Baltimore, free parking but $7-10 fee for adults over 18 (not sure when they are changing the rate) The site of some of our favorite field trips!
3/25 Franciscan Monastery The week before Holy Week.
3/30 MONDAY National Arboretum Magnolia Garden, dependent on bloom time.
4/8 OR 4/15 Cherry Blossoms Free parking, $1 per person for the tour tram, dependent on blossoms
4/22 National Zoo (again) Looking at the difference a month makes, seeing the other half of the zoo.
5/1 FRIDAY National Arboretum, Azalea Walk: Lovely hike, dependent on bloom time.
5/5 TUESDAY Shark Tooth Hunt (also a kid birthday for us!)
5/13 TBA, I'm open to suggestions
5/21 THURSDAY Shark Tooth Hunt

Adventurers Schedule

This is our fifth year of weekly field trip adventures, and we are still finding new places to go!  This year we are skewing a bit older (we tend to alternate older and younger years). 

If you're curious, my advice for field trips in the DC area is here.



Fall Schedule:
9/9 American History (transportation, immigration, Star Spangled Banner)
9/16 American History (US memorabilia, military history)
9/23 Natural History (Ocean Hall, Minerals)
10/2 Wednesday Apple and Pumpkin picking at Larriland ($? you pay for what you pick)
10/7 * National Archives (see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) or White House and Monuments
10/16 Wednesday Maryland Science Center ($2 a person for their home school days, usually $16!  You can also get a 45 minute class for an extra $3.50, but you'll need to sign up now to get in.)
10/21 Library of Congress (I may bail and let my older kids tour while I take my younger kids out to the Botanical gardens and the duck pond.)
10/28 National Arboretum (fall foliage)
11/4 * Capitol Building (besides needing tickets, there is an airport-level security screening to enter the building, but it's a really neat tour!)
11/11 American Indian
11/18 * Cryptologic Museum (up near Fort Meade)
Thanksgiving Break
12/2 Botanical Gardens (They will have the holiday trains and fairy houses!)
12/9 Christmas/Immaculate Conception Party  (Bring cookies!)

Spring Schedule: (These are tentative and weather-dependent; I'm just putting it out there to give you an idea of my plans)
2/24 Bureau of Printing and Engraving (this is where they print money - last time we went they were printing $100 bills, so we saw over a million dollars cash!)
3/3 The Walters Art Gallery
3/10 Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (first full week of Lent)
3/17 Baltimore Museum of Art
3/24 National Arboretum (Magnolia blossoms)
3/31 Cherry Blossoms ($1 a person to ride the tram)
4/7 Franciscan Monastery 
Holy Week/Easter Break
4/28 National Arboretum (Azalea Walk)
5/5 Shark Tooth Expedition
5/12 DC Monuments walk: FDR, MLK, and maybe Lincoln Memorial
5/19 or 5/21 Wednesday Shark Tooth Hunt

C & O Canal: Great Falls

 We went off the visit Great Falls to enjoy the turning of the leaves, and this time we tried the Maryland side. 

I had heard that the view was better from Virginia. 

Not true!  This is the area just above the falls.

For one thing, the Maryland side has the C & O Canal.  This canal, the brainchild of George Washington, was intended as a boat route from the Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio river (which flows into the Mississippi and down to New Orleans). 


Now, the Great Falls part is staffed by historical reenactors! 

They let you pet their mules.

And look around on their boats.

Plus they show you how they work the locks!

We would have gotten a ride on the boat through the locks, but the water level of the river (and therefore the canal) was too low.

You also can hike (or bike) the tow path where the mules who pulled the barges walked.

Things we were learned: The canal, 184 miles long, 60 feet wide and 6 feet deep, was entirely dug by hand!! It took 22 years.

Kids and families lived and worked on the boats because each trip took 7 days each way.  They took off when the canal was frozen (3 months) and went to school.

A short walk down the towpath leads to a bridge to an Olmstead Island, a rocky patch in the middle of the river, overlooking the falls.

Actually, it's sort of in the middle of the falls.

 And the island itself is riven with fantastic rocky gorges which must be waterfalls when the water level is higher.

Through a geologic anomaly, the Great Falls part of the river has a water level that fluctuates by 100 feet or more.

The island is covered by a rocky forest, carefully protected by a fenced path.  Many signs warned us that it was a fragile and rare ecosystem and that we must  stay on the path.

Well, I didn't want to be the one to step on the butterfly, so we stayed on the path!

The view of Great Falls is fantastic!

And the viewing platform has a giant boulder coming up through the middle, perfect for climbing.



Interestingly, the boulder has many circular hollows, obviously carved by water - interesting because we are some 70 feet above the current water level!

Some of the hollows were large enough to fit a couple of kids, making it ideal for hide and seek.

It was a great outing, and we'll try again when the water levels are higher.  I really want to try the boat ride!

Mount Vernon

 We loved Mount Vernon!  It was totally worth the substantial amount of money!

Here we are in front of George Washington's actual house.  You can see a bit beyond the house, that it's sitting on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River - very beautiful.

We got a full tour of the house (no photos allowed) and it is set up exactly as it was at the time of Washington's death, right down to the shades of paint.

The location is really beautiful, and we spent quite a bit of time wandering through the gardens and outbuildings.  This is the view from the back lawn.

The kids had fun with the adventure maps provided to them at the outset.  It was Talk Like a Pirate Day (Did you notice the eye patch?  I didn't at the time.), and it took us a while to realize that they do these maps all the time.

 We had spent several hours there before we realized that there was a separate museum (I mean really?  The whole place is a museum!).  That was partly because they built the museum part underground so that you could still see Mount Vernon as George Washington saw it.

I must say, we see a lot of museums, and theirs was fantastic!  It was every bit the equal of a Smithsonian.  It also had a 4D theater with real fog and snow (snow!) and so forth.

And they had a children's section with dress ups, games, head cut outs, crafts and all sorts of great things for 8 and under.

The whole thing was very, very well done, and we loved it!

Air and Space

 I finally got around to downloading photos from my phone, and I am seeing just how much I forgot to blog about!

We went to Air and Space a few weeks ago...

It was one of the first weeks of September, and the museum was as empty as it ever is.  We visited How Things Fly, one of our favorite exhibits because it is wall to wall hands on science experiments! They now have an online How Things Fly exhibit here.

Besides all the those, we usually manage to catch one of their interactive presentations.  This time it was a presentation on the International Space Station (ISS).  They asked for volunteers - we can provide those!  

Zorg and Leena demonstrated how far apart the Earth and Moon are, and the relative distance of the ISS.  The Earth was the size of a basketball, the moon a tennis ball, and they were about 30 feet apart.  The ISS within that scale appears to be lying directly on the Earth.  He said it was closer than New York City to us (in DC). Wow!  

Then Klenda was selected to demonstrate adaptability.  She wore distorting glasses (modeled here by Mxyl) and relearned how to catch and throw a ball.  The glasses, besides making your eyes look cartoony,  make what you see doubled and off center.

Lastly, Choclo got to model the different layers in a space suit, a job he loved!

I'm not sure the presenter realized he had chosen every single volunteer from the same family. 

We had been exploring independently before the show started, so we showed up at different times and in different places in the audience.

Apple Picking, Almost

With the return of the cool weather, we made our semi annual trip up to Larriland to pick apples.

Mea culpa, I didn't check before hand, and the apple picking wasn't starting until the next day...

So, we (The Emperor, the Zoomlians and I) had a lovely time picking raspberries. It was a picture perfect day: warm sun, cool breeze, blue skies and surrounded by sweet jewels of fruit.

That's a day that I want to always remember... Which I will have to do myself since I forgot my camera. Fortunately, The Queen Mum (The Emperor's mom) had brought her camera. Unfortunately, it was out of batteries... sometimes you just have to enjoy the moment, I guess!

We picked 7 pounds of raspberries and went home to the unheard of indulgence of having as many raspberries as we liked! I don't believe I've ever had that pleasure before!

Jam was a possibility, of course, but we instead ate half as raspberry shortcake, and half as (just) raspberries with whipped cream. Bliss!

We did pick broccoli, too. The main problem with picking broccoli is that every Zoomlian wants to pick a large head for themselves, and while fresh broccoli is lovely, I couldn't see us eating fifteen pounds of it with whipped cream, for example.

We did buy a half bushel of mixed apples at "The Big Red Barn."

And we bought my favorite squash! It's called Banana Squash, although to me it doesn't say "banana," possibly because it's 3 feet long and pinkish. I bought one more or less accidently one year and found it made the best "pumpkin" pie I'd ever had. I cooked it down today and got 18 cups: 9 pies! (I don't make them all at once, I freeze it in portions)

Realistically, it was a perfect trip: we got to see a working farm in action, we got to see how food grows in a tended field, and we got to see that when we don't get what we plan for, we can still have a wonderful time.

Besides, would you rather eat an apple or a bowl of raspberries?

Apple Mania!

We went apple picking with Grammy last week and discovered this formula: 6 Zoomlians + Larriland Farms + 10 minutes = 38 lbs of apples.

That's a lot of apples! The kids informed me that the next day would be Apple Day and thoughtfully provided me with a list of activities.

After a quick look, I went for "Apple Week," instead. I can only bake (or eat!) so many apples in one day!

Here is their list (with what we've done so far in bold):
Apple pie
Apple dumplings
Apple fritters
Bobbing for apples
Apple dippers
Applesauce
Apple butter
Caramel apples
Apple upside down cake
Just eating apples

Apple sauce and apple butter are always the last things since that's what we do with the left over apples when we are tired of them!

Zorg also told me about the Apple Game. I am supposed to get 6 colors of ribbons. I tie a ribbon onto an apple stem and hide the apple. I then tie a matching ribbon to the small present which is awarded to whomever finds the apple. He also told me solemnly that everyone should stop after they found an apple so that everything would be fair.

Incidentally, we also picked pumpkins and broccoli.

The pumpkins were fun, although I need to rethink my standing rule that you can't pick a pumpkin too heavy for you to carry. It turns out a remarkable number of Zoomlians can carry really remarkably large pumpkins at this point!

The broccoli picking turned out to be a thrilling hunt to find large heads to slice off. Choclo became very fond of the broccoli and carried a (severed) head (of broccoli) around with him for the rest of the day. Quite the Halloween experience!

We also picked up some beautiful squash and a few warty gourds at the barn there.

One for the Road (Trip)

Blue Streak does not have a DVD player (let alone 6 DVD players), but do we fear road trips? No!

We know one of the secrets of the universe: before there were DVDs, there was... TV.

Does Blue Streak have a TV? No! (And if he did, it wouldn't be digital enabled). Do our hearts falter? No!

Before there was TV, there was... radio! And, since all of these inventions came along, we have... the Internet!! And the Internet is brimming over with... Free Old Time Radio Shows!

We are listening to Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, The Lone ranger, Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, The Green Hornet, Superman, Batman, The Fantastic 4, You are There, Family Theater, and (my personal favorite) Adventures in Research.

My favorite sources:

www.archive.org/details/oldtimeradio

www.radiolovers.com/

www.otr.net/

www.oldtimeradiofans.com

www.oldradioworld.com

And if that's not enough to keep your ears busy (my goodness, where are you driving?), try Florida's fabulous free Lit to Go. Books, poems and short stories, what's not to like? Our favorites so far have been Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling and The Light Princess by George McDonald.

Happy Birthday, Choclo!

Guess who got a family membership to the B & O Railroad Museum for his birthday?



His favorite part may have been the Thomas the Tank Engine built out of Legos.








Or the wooden train he got to play on.



Or the exquisite model train set up in an antique passenger car.

Or it could have been the ride on the actual train. That one is hard to tell since he actually hollered through almost all of it that he wanted to get off (5 out of 6 Zoomlians enjoyed the train ride very much).

Naturally, that night, he proclaimed it his very favorite part and he wanted to do it again.

But I think his very favorite was playing in the real locomotive with a great (loud) soundtrack of the train starting, then picking up speed, whistles sounding.





And he liked the cake back home!



Happy, happy birthday, Choclo!






And why did this picture come out sideways, anyway?

We Went Broccoli Picking!

OK, so we picked apples and pumpkins, too, but I had never picked broccoli before. It's fun! And it really does taste better than the store stuff...





We had a great time! Choclo was in tractor heaven.



Anyway, a toddler, a preschooler and 30 lbs of apples were enough for me to carry, so I asked Mxyl and Klenda to handle the camera. All these were their shots. No broccoli pics, alas.

What to do with 30 + pounds of apples? We've made apple butter, apple sauce (twice), apple fritters (twice), apple pies, and gone bobbing for apples. Oh yes, we've also just plain eaten a lot of apples!


If you're wondering about that last one, no, my children were not so scarred by a day at the farm that they all curled up in a fetal position. They were trying to look like pumpkins.

Butterflies!

Our butterfly garden has been doing very well lately: we just saw the first of the monarchs on our milkweed!

Last year Klenda and I planted a butterfly garden. We got the plants in 2 days before Oob arrived! If you are interested, the best place to get plants and advice is Butterfly Bushes.com although they can only ship to certain states. Based on the prices, I was sure the plants would be tiny, barely rooted slips, but they were actually husky fellows which took off with minimal attention (very good since Oob spent a while in the NICU!).

We tried to have a balance of host and nectar plants so that the butterflies would stay and lay eggs. We have rue, artemesia, fennel, and milkweed for host plants; and we have butterfly bushes, cone flowers, snapdragons, bee balm, hibiscus, and milkweed for nectar.

All that milkweed worked! We got monarchs! We watched the cycle from butterfly to egg to caterpillar to lovely chrysalis (monarch chrysalises are the color of jade studded with gold. I have no idea what compound a butterfly could make that would look quite so convincing, but it really looks like gold) to new butterfly. That was at the end of the season, so when "our" monarch flew off to the south, we knew he was heading for Mexico!

Today we visited Wings of Fancy again and came home with an idea for making a permanent puddle for the butterflies to drink (and form the bachelor "puddle club"), while not providing a spot for mosquito breeding. It basically involves digging a hole, pouring in concrete to make a shallow depression (hopefully making a mosaic around the edges) and then adding wet sand after the concrete dries. We shall see how it goes!

The trip should be its own post: Oob made "b-i!" (butterfly!) his sixth word. Choclo was entranced. Picture a large glass conservatory filled with low growing flowers, a few trees, a box of hatching chrysalises, and more than 1000 butterflies from 3 continents. They fly around at toddler level and like to land on your head. Come to think of it, we were all entranced! I do wish I had brought my camera! This butterfly was my favorite (picture from flickr): the Blue Clipper from Malaysia.

In case you are looking for butterflies in the garden picture, they took off while I was getting the camera...

Airplane Week

Or at least half a week of airplanes!

We dropped off the Emperor at BWI on Tuesday and then hung around at the observation deck watching the planes take off and land.

If you live near BWI and haven't been there, go just for the observation deck! They have a mini museum with (among other things) a real cut apart plane and cool climbing toys for younger kids.

We continued the theme with library books, the Bill Nye and Brain Pop videos on flight and a visit to the fabulous College Park Aviator Museum. Tons of hands on exhibits with a heavy dose of fun (aviator jackets, caps, goggles, and scarves!). Plenty of crafts and a goody bag to take home. This is a nearly ideal museum, one that will amuse and inform from 2 to adult and only $2 for kids!

After we got home we played with gliders paper airplanes and bubbles (air pressure), and discussed Bernoulli.

Fossil/Gem/Mineral Show

We had a great time at the Fossil/Gem/Mineral Show yesterday. This is the 3rd or 4th time we've gone (we go every other year) and we get more out of it each time. These are the folks who got us into collecting fossil shark teeth.

If you don't live near the Chesapeake Bay (Delaware, Maryland and Virginia) you may not know that you can scoop up a handful of sand on any of the western beaches and find fossil shark teeth, ray plates and other fossils. Maybe not every handful on every beach, but at least one fossil in ten handfuls. They are all from the Miocene era, about 30 million years old. If you're ever in the area, don't miss it!

This time at the show, Mxyl and Klenda were big enough to use large, dangerous looking machines to shape and polish stones. We saw all kinds of cool displays, collected a bunch of free samples and showed off the Devonian fossils (400 million years ago!) which we found a year and a half ago in West Virginia. That was our first non shark tooth expedition. It was fun, aside from the ticks, but that's another story...

The show also had a huge dealers room and we bought some lovely fossils for our collection: a split and polished ammonite (like the first picture here), a perfect free (not in stone) trilobite, petrified wood and, my personal favorite, fossilized squids!

Zorg also bought a large piece of leaded glass cut as a solitaire diamond. Quite dazzling, really. He's been using it as a top and as a prism.