Cleopatra at the Science Center

I'm so glad we made this trip! Yes, it's a 130 miles away. Yes, we had to get up early. It had some costs, that's for sure. But it was SO worth it. I forgot how much I love the California Science Center.

It's a three hour drive from our house and we needed to make some stops along the way; gas, breakfast burgers at Carl's Jr. Carl's has fallen from Tom's grace because they messed up the burgers. Jake just ate it anyway but Tom was furious. It's the principle of the thing. He learned that old adage, "They F. you in the drive thru." Hard lesson for one so young. :))

The rest of the drive was filled with the Beatles. It took three and a half albums to get there! On the way there were many discussions. Politics, economics, future plans, the difference between love and lust. These are the topics my sons bring up in the car.

We got there at 11:15, so we missed the morning showing of Cleopatra at the IMAX, but there was a Hubble 3D one at 12:30, so we went inside to play for a bit and then went to see that.

I remembered why we used to go to the Natural History Museum in the morning and then the Science Center in the afternoon. School groups. Hoards of kids in the same color shirts. It's just insane. I seriously wonder how any of those children survive that. It would have made me crazy as a kid. I got to watch my sons in action though and that made it worth it.

Discovering Wright's Airplane

Wing Lift

The boys both love machines. And they love figuring out those machines. The point of a science center like this is to have experiments out that you can mess around with and see how they work and how they don't. Tom and Jake both take their time. They test each piece methodically and watch each other do the same thing. They take turns (not always patiently, but they are working on it) and use the knowledge they gained watching others work on it. But with a long line of oscillating kids beside them they really don't have the time to really experiment with it like they want to. The school group kids have it even worse. They are all so busy and rushed that they zoom through. They pick it up and try it. If it works they don't know why, only that it did something and someone else frantically wants to try it before the group moves on. If it doesn't work, they drop it and walk away. There is no time or peace for discovery. It's a little sad to watch.

Air flow over a vehicle

But one to what we were doing! The boys had a great time going through the Transportation and Building parts of the museum. It's the best part to them. This museum has a lot to offer, so coming in at 2pm and spending a couple hours in one section is the best way. Come back another day and do another section. It has special rooms in each section for kids under 7. And they could spend the entire day in each of those and not explore their little hearts out. I loved this when the boys were little.

Designing a car

Infrared Camera Entertainment

Yes they are dancing.

Jake's explaining to me what he would use this for. 

Tom and sound. We could have been here all day.

The Hubble 3D movie! Wow! Completely awe inspiring. It's like you are traveling through space or standing on the space shuttle working on the telescope with the earth looming below. Just wow. The boys were amazed! Great to hear them go on and on about how beautiful it was and all the things they didn't know were out in space. It was inspiring just to listen them talk about it.

They weren't tall enough for this the last time we came.

I wish this picture were clearer, but look at the joy on his face. 

On to the Cleopatra exhibit. We entered this as a group with a bunch of other homeschoolers. Getting us to line up and enter at the same time, that was entertaining. One of them was at the Grand Canyon on the same day that we were! That is the third person! The exhibit was beautifully done. So much to look at and it was done in a way that entertained Jake and I as well as Tom. Tom spent about an hour more on it than Jake and I. We waited outside and looked at other things while we waited. Tom came out saying he was sorry it took so long but there was too much to read. Damn kids! Funny.

Jake in awe of pretty presentation. That's my boy!

Shifting Sans Under Water

I loved the coins and maps. Jake wasn't super interested. He was excited to learn that Cleopatra was of Greek ancestry, so he looked for Greek looking things. Made him happy. Tom just looks like he is gathering information and filing it away for future processing. It's crazy. It doesn't matter what the subject is. He reads, listens, watches and five years from now it will relate to something else and he will sound like he's studied it for years, which he actually has. I wish I had a brain like that kid. Jake's different. He likes to watch. He sees the whole picture at once instead of little pieces. It's really fascinating.

We left there at 5pm....from LA...on a weekday. Traffic. It wasn't too bad though. We stopped at In-And-Out for dinner. Talked about a ton of things on the way home while listening to Michael Jackson. I love our long drive conversations. Let's see, kings, ancient civilizations, schools, races, poor/rich, why do some people join gangs, or do drugs, why to Mexicans come here, what is puberty, why do more boys play video games than girls, and on and on and on. It took three hours to get home, so it was pretty in depth.

It was a long day but well worth it!

History and Disney Movies

My all time favorite Disney movie from my childhood is Cinderella. I've seen it a million times and even as an adult I can quote most of the movie and songs by heart. Too bad I didn't use this amazing skill for memorizing movie lines for history!

Tomorrow, we're going on with a group to see the Cleopatra exhibit at the California Science Center. The group ticket was just the excuse I needed to drive down to LA to see one of my favorite places. The mom that is organizing it forwarded the "Educator Packet" from the museum and I started reading it yesterday. I know! It's for the students! :)) That's me. I'm the one that wanted to go the museum, the boys are just along for the ride...as usual. It's part of the plan people.

So reading along, I think, "Hey! I should watch the Cleopatra movie on Netflix." I've had it on there forever. Turn it on. The screenplay is based on Plutarch's histories. Tom yells "Plutarch! I know that name." It's a character in "The Hunger Games". Conversation begins about why that character was named that. Don't know. Have to look into it more. Continue the movie. The boys are not watching, they are playing Minecraft. They have learned some thing called "creating/editing texture packs". This is computer game stuff that makes me yawn just listening to descriptions, but they've been working on it forever and much excitement has been related to it. The movie! They keep interrupting and telling me about Roman things like government, and word origins. And relating things in the Roman Republic that are similar to our government, arguments in the movie that are similar to things they read in the paper or watch on TV today. I'm trying to watch a movie! I didn't finish it. I'm working on it more today but it's going on in much the same manner. But I am getting another sock knitted fairly quickly.

Today I'm reading more of the study guide for tomorrow's event. Ok, here's the link to Cinderella. Jack brings her another mouse, she says "I'll call you Octavian, but for short, we'll call you Gus." Why? Because! Octavian was the great nephew of Julius Caesar that took over after Julius Caesar was murdered. He took over slowly and was named Emperor, creating the Roman Empire out of the Roman Republic. He changed his name to Augustus. Octavian = Gus. Not sure why you would want to name a sweet plump little mouse Octavian, he didn't seem like a very upstanding noble guy, but what the heck.

Oh! And Octavian/Augustus ruled during the time Jesus was with us on earth. So the change between Republic to Empire was happening during that time. Didn't know that.

This is how learning happens people. Millions of little links formed by constant influx of information, little by little the web of knowledge is built. If only I had started earlier, my web could be so much more intricate. But my sons...they probably already have twice the hooks and connections that I have. Can you imagine where they will be in 20 years?! Look out world!

We're home!

You were worried there for a minute, huh?! We got home and I got involved with the house and lost track of blogging time.

The ride home was hot! Coming across the desert in the RV without a good air conditioner makes it seem not so hot when you get home. We stopped for gas in 29 Palms and it was 95, nice and cool comparatively. After 29, it got really windy suddenly and Dan was happy to be home and not have to drive in that anymore.

It was a great trip. We had to cut it short though. I think it was just too hot to be outside much when we got back to Kingman and we wanted to be in our nice swamp cooled house. We are looking forward to another trip though, maybe even spend some real time on the road. We shall see!

Goodbye, Kingman!

Don't these yuccas look like a Monsters Inc. character?

Wasteland...way off down there is the Colorado River though.

So we're home, getting back into the swing of things, dreaming of the next road trip. Man that was fun!

Day Ten

We stayed in Kingman today and took a look around. We left early to beat the heat driving around town. This place is pretty nice. There are a lot more stores than in Yucca Valley. Close to the freeway so you can go anywhere quick. We found some nice areas up the hill a bit that had some great property. Then we went for a beautiful steak n' egg breakfast at Kingman Co. Steakhouse. It was soooo good!

This is Jake...I'm not sure what he's doing.

Cool rocks.

Town Hall. How neat is that?!

We went to Big 5 and Jake got some new boots and Dan bought them all new knives (like they needed another one). And we spent the rest of the day in the pool swimming or playing pool in the game room.

I think we will get an early start tomorrow and head for home. It's hot and we grow weary. I think next time, I'd like to head for cooler pastures. :)

Day Nine

Headed back to Kingman! We have reservations for two nights. I think we are growing weary of travel. Too many stops and too much time in the RV. Jake says he's torn because he wants to keep going, but he is getting home sick.

Geronimo! There were a bunch of signs for this place and we just had to stop. It was great! Tom got an awesome sand art in a glass thing, Jake got another pin, and I got an awesome tortoise that loves me! 

We stopped in Flagstaff on the way and got gas. We tried to find Sunset Crater National Park to stop and have lunch but our directions were wrong so we gave up and kept going west. There were two rest stops on the map, but they were closed. Grr...Then we finally pulled off in Ash Fork because it said there was a museum and a visitor center. We didn't find it. Grr..again. So we stopped in a park and had some lunch in the RV.

Made it to Kingman! It's hot here. It was so cool up in the mountains so it's a bit of a shock to be hot again. But we have air conditioning! Swimming, laundry, showers. Sloppy Joes for dinner. All is well. We will see what tomorrow will bring!

Here are some pictures that Tom took on the road. Enjoy!

This is me sad because the rest stop is closed.

Dust devil in action.

Jake the entire way to Kingman.

The cool camera man himself.

Day Eight

You know these are the photos you want to see!

Left Walmart and went to the Walnut Canyon National Monument. There we some cliff dwellings there that we needed to see. They had a nice walk to view them and pretty visitor center that looks just like all the other “National” stuff. Kinda tired of being preached at about how great the indians were. Ugg. I'm not going to go into it. Vacation! It was a pretty canyon!

Just like bears!

My men contemplating the canyon.
Actually, I think they were thinking they were happy I didn't want to walk down there. 

Then we went to Meteor Crater which was wickedly cool! They have a great museum about all the space stuff and meteor and meteorites, and space travel and science! We spent a couple hours there and took the tour of the rim, which was totally worth the walk and the heat. Watched a movie too, on which Jake commented that all the stuff in the movie was what we just read in the museum, which led to a discussion about the way different people learn. Tom and Jake got new hats at the gift shop!

Tom fondling the meteor. He was really excited about this much to the entertainment of the docents.

On the tour!

A rare family shot.

Tom found this awesome lizard!

Stopped in Winslow for some pictures “On the Corner”! 

Then drove on to Show Low, which we found out is mostly retired people. Every place we looked to stay at was 55 and up only! 

Another reason we won't be buying property here.

So we stayed at another Walmart, had dinner at Wendy's, and bedded down for the night. This was a fun one because we had some neighbors that included Walmart trucks and the hospital was next door with Medi-Vac Helicopter!

Goodnight Walmart!

Day Seven

Grand Canyon! I'm glad we got there early. I heard a guy at the Plane Museum saying that he was surprised how crowded the parking was the day he went and I was worried. When we left at 3pm, it was totally full, parking lot sharks everywhere.

We watched a few shows about the park. Watched a couple movie things, which was cool because just the day before the word “extrapolate” came up in “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” and there were some perfect examples here. Looked at a lot of displays. Browsed the bookshop for anything not propaganda, found a book by John Wesley Powell called “The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons”, very nice. I've been reading it ever since. It was very hard to find anything written older than the last few years or any first hand accounts of anything.

The canyon was gorgeous. It looks like a backdrop painted and hanging to hide the real world. We speculate that there really isn't anything there because it's hiding some big government conspiracy or alien world. :))

We took the very crowded shuttle around to other parts of the rim and saw a couple other visitor centers. We all liked the pieces you could see closer up. Staring out across it, it just doesn't seem real. And its hazy and unclear. But it is awe inspiring to see the layers in the rocks closer to you.

Here something weird. At the visitor center, there was a large crew of maybe 20 people planting things and running water pipes to everything to keep it growing. The Grand Canyon gets no water and has to pipe in water from a spring on a reservation miles away. Now. If the park is supposed to be preserved as nature grows it, why would we plant things and keep them looking nicer than they really would be if we just left it alone? Why not just make some roped off paths so that people won't trample it to death and then let thing along to grow as they do naturally. Yep, it certainly wouldn't be as pretty, but it would be real.

All in all, we all liked seeing it, but felt like we had to get out of there. The crowds, ick. And really you can only stare a the hole for so long and from so many angles. Unless you are backpacker or a river rafter, or maybe an artist, there isn't much to do but stare at it and wonder what it is, how it got there. That's fine if you are alone and meditating, but when you've got two little boys...well, we left. On to other “attractions”.

We headed to Flagstaff and found it to be crowded and busy too. We stayed at a Walmart parking lot. Yes! I called and asked permission! I rock! We had the best steak dinner ever at the Outback next door and then bedded down for the night.