The Road Trip! ~ Part 1

Last week, The Kids, Nani K, and I took a road trip aaaallllll the way up to Columbus, OH to visit my aunt. It's quite a long drive, but we broke it in half by stopping in St. Louis to visit my brother, Uncle E. He had to work on the evening that we got there, but the rest of us went up into the arch. The Kids and I have been to St. Louis three times and this was the first time we had gotten to do that, so it was pretty neat. They seemed to like the view.

This picture is somewhat like a Sasquatch sighting because it PROVES that my mom, who doesn't like heights, has indeed been up in the arch!


On Monday we met with Uncle E. for breakfast and a trip to the Turtle Park before we had to hit the second leg of our trip. Luckily, nobody got maimed, but I had a close call!












We got to Ohio on Monday evening and my Aunt Linda had dinner waiting for us. Let me tell you, food has never tasted so good before!!
Gosh, we did SOOOO much stuff in Ohio! We went and ate at the first Wendy's and to visit several parks, as well as the State House. The weather was fantastic and fall-ish, something I've been craving and the trees were all decked out in bee-yoo-ti-ful fall foliage!

One thing that we got to do was go on a tour of a replica of the Santa Maria, which was really interesting. I'm amazed at how small the ship was! There were 40 guys on there and I'll bet they felt like sardines. And this picture? Anyone want to guess what it is?

It's Christopher Columbus toilet paper! They'd step onto a ledge on the outside of the ship, hang onto a rope, let fly, finish up with THIS, and then drop it back into the water to clean it up. (Obviously it was attached to a rope!) Now, they say that women weren't allowed on a ship because it was considered bad luck, but I think it was because they couldn't find a woman to sign up for the rope TP!!

The center picture gives you a pretty good perspective of the size of the ship. You can see the right side of the ship behind my aunt and the left side of the ship was maybe 5 feet behind Deco. The picture on the right is of The Kids sitting on Christopher Columbus's bed! (OK, it wasn't really his actual bed! But it looks like his bed would have looked!)

I'll have to make some other entries for our trip to Amish country up in Berlin, OH and for our apple picking excursion. We had such a fantastic time the whole week! My aunt has such a gift for hospitality and made wonderful food for us and carted us around and made us feel sooo welcomed! It was a great vacation!