October 09, 2003

Road Trip - Day 5: Wright Brothers/Ohio

We've established our morning routine: the kids and I have breakfast in the room while Joel goes for a walk. The kids work on their schoolwork, then we reorganize our packing and load the car. This morning, however, we really seemed to streamline things quite a bit. (We'll really have this down to an art form by the time we get home!) Then we reloaded the van and were on our way once again.

We drove into the city of Dayton to the Aviation Museum at the air base. As it turns out, the Wright brothers lived and worked in this area, taking some of their first flights just a few miles from where the museum stands.

Zach was pretty fascinated by all the planes inside the museum. They have quite a collection of them at this location, beginning with one of the original planes built by the Wright brothers. They also had a stealth bomber there--and just about everything in between. In the photo above, we got to go inside one of the planes they use to transport vehicles and soldiers. A little earlier, Joel and Jenna went on a simulator, which she thoroughly enjoyed of course.

After going through most of the museum, we did a little shopping in the souvenir shop, then drove over to the Wright brothers monument at a pretty little park overlooking a valley. Socrates had a wonderful time marking everything he could lift his little leg on. :-) By this time it was after 2 pm and we were all pretty hungry. We looked for a decent restaurant, but didn't see anything until we were well outside of Dayton.

We were headed for Cleveland, our end-stop for the day. We made a quick pass through Columbus, stopping only for "necessary" breaks.

The drive between Columbus and Cleveland was quite pretty...lots of rolling hills covered with hosts of multicolored trees. The further north we go, the more color we are seeing.

The weather has been perfect; high temperatures in the 70's and 80's (yesterday) and not a drop of rain--so far--even though today has been mostly overcast.

Joel did our read-alouds while I drove this afternoon. School on the road isn't so bad! The kids do a little work in the room in the morning, we do our field trips during the day, and on long drives we accomplish our reading aloud. Today we read more about Abraham Lincoln, we started Across Five Aprils, and began learning The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

We passed the 1,200 mile mark today, and we marked off over 24 hours of driving time. So far this trip has gone incredibly fast. We are just about to complete our fourth state (not counting Oklahoma). At this rate we'll be home before we know it!

Tonight, we're just a street away from Lake Erie. It was dark when we drove in, so we'll see it tomorrow. We're all looking forward to taking a walk on the beach!

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(A note to my Mom...I'm feeling much better, and Jenna is surviving her cold pretty well with all the vitamin C and other supplements... No need to worry.) :-)