WFRV

We all wake up around the same time and decide it would be fun to go to a
nearby diner for breakfast. (We have pretty much stopped cooking in the RV
except for breakfast for three reasons: we are on the road quite often, we
are extremely tired of eating the same four things all the time, and I am
just tired of cooking. Although I get help I'm still doing most of the
meal-planning and grocery lists. Also I miss my well-equipped
kitchen.) As we leave the RV we're confronted with fog so thick you can't
see more than a tenth of a mile in front of you, not even headlights. It's
quite an experience driving to the diner. The people in the diner, mostly
local farmer types, look at us like we're from Mars but the breakfast is
simple and tasty. By the time we leave the fog has burned off and it's
another beautiful day.

We're spending another day in Cincinnati and first we go to the National
Underground Railroad Freedom Center. This is an amazing museum which just
opened a few years ago and whose content is easily guessed from its name.
It has a great deal of information, movies, a slave house moved intact from
Kentucky, art, and interactive exhibits all dealing with slavery from Africa
to the Emancipation Proclamation. In the 1800's the Ohio River was the
border between Free and Slave States and many of the "conductors" on the
Underground Railroad lived in Ohio near the river so this is the right place
for the Center. It's a wonderful place to visit, very well-done and very
moving, a must-see for anyone, really. One thing I'd never really grasped
before is how much the entire nation profited from slavery, even the Free
States. Cotton was a huge economy and there were many businesses such as
transportation and clothing that profited indirectly. The Center is one of
those places where you walk through just shaking your head, in dismay, in
disbelief, in disgust, and then your eyes water up.

Moving on.... Next we go to the Museum Center which is comprised of three
museums and the one we want to see is the Natural History and Science
museum. We don't have much time (we spent way longer than expected at the
Freedom Center) but it's definitely worth the visit. They have many
displays you can walk through including a dank dark cavern complete with
dripping walls and an ice age glacier with saber-tooth tigers, mastadons,
and a giant sloth (as large as a grizzly!). There are many helpful guides
throughout who will tell you everything you need to know, which would be
great except that we have tickets to an IMAX movie and are practically
jogging through the exhibits. We get to see most of the museum except the
health exhibit (which Sam accidentally went through alone while we searched
for her elsewhere, and we couldn't have paid Ben to see - he's had enough of
the entire topic after 7th Grade Health Class) and still make it to
the IMAX film "Beavers". They are the only mammals besides humans to
manipulate their environment, and manipulate it they do. A single pair can
cut down up to 400 trees a year and flood a huge amount of meadow.
Eventually the dam will break and the lake will revert to land which will be
quite fertile thanks to the time spent underwater. The Circle of Life,
baby. It's been another great day and we head home to get ready for our
long drive to Gettysburg tomorrow.

PS - I just finished reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and highly
recommend it.

# posted by LDW @ 11:15 AM