The City of Brotherly Love...and melting heat...and ridiculous traffic!

Well, having finally arrived in fabulous Philadelphia, we decided to take Monday and head downtown and do some exploring. However, this particular day came close to tying the record for the hottest ever on June 8 (it was about 99 degrees), so we weren't exactly anxious to take a stroll through the old city.




Instead, we headed to the Franklin Institute of Science, a way cool hands on museum founded and built in honor of ole Ben himself. There were lots of cool exhibits, like a two story heart that you can walk through as if you were a blood cell making its way through the heart. A whole section on electricity, including similar experiments to those Ben did, and actual morse code telegraphs the kids could practice on. There was a whole wing devoted to flight, where we could design and try out paper airplanes as well as climb inside the cockpit of a fighter, and also try our hand at flying a simulated glider like the Wright brothers.

There was a floor dedicated to space flight, a planetarium where we watched a cool film on cosmic collisions and the forces that work in the universe (with a family meeting afterward about the difference between theory and fact, and the involvement of God in the formation of our universe). Also a full size locomotive and one passenger car that we could walk around and in. It even moved a few feet there within the exhibit!

There was much to do, see, touch and manipulate. We had a good time roaming its AIR CONDITIONED halls (I much prefer a climate controlled 73 to the natural air temp of 99).






Afterward, we stepped out onto the front steps to see the view and admire the front of the building. We had to get our picture taken in this spot! You may be saying, "Uh, nice globe and fountain. Just had to be there, huh?" What you
are missing is that this locale is integral to the plot of National Treasure, one of the girls' favorite movies! Right where we are seated is the spot where Riley sits while he sends the young school kid in to the Franklin Institute to retrieve the specific alphabet letters from Franklin's Silence DoGood letters, a key point in all of them finding the treasure!! Don't you feel silly that you didn't recognize the spot?

Let's just say that going away without a picture
in this spot was NOT an option. So Karen stood
on the steps of the Institute and we posed in
Riley's tableau.

Once we finished our time in the museum, we headed back on to the blessed Philly freeways to try and get back to our hotel. Now, I must pause here for a moment and explain the, uh, how shall I put this?...particularly unique design of Philly's interstates. The is only one highway running from the suburban area where we stayed into downtown Philadelphia. One. And this one highway is four lanes...total. That means two lanes in each direction. And Philly is not a small city, mind you. It's HUGE! With one artery running from this suburb to downtown and back. So, as you might imagine, there was always traffic, and it was usually stopped or moving at a snail's pace. So while we were 22 miles away, each trip there or back took over an hour, sometimes up to an hour and a half.

Joyous.

When we did finally make it back to the hotel, we decided to cool off with a little pool time. The place we stayed was great for us. We had an enormous room with two queen beds and a
pull out sofa, a small kitchen with full size fridge,
microwave and stove top, plus breakfast each morning and dinner each evening included! It was wonderful!

On Tues and Wed, I was at the conference most of the day. Karen and the girls hung out at the pool and hotel one day, and went to the King Of Prussia Mall the other (second in size only to Mall of America in MN; they were worn out after walking that monster).







On Thursday, I skipped the conference because that day was EMILY'S BIRTHDAY!!!! We started the day singing Happy Birthday as she blew out the candles on her birthday bagels. Emily, like her parents, really likes Panera, so we got up early and retrieved a couple of carbolicious treats for her. It was a spendiferous start to our day, which continued with another journey into Philly, this time for the historic stuff.

And for that, you'll have to wait for another day. Keep checking in! :)

"Breaking" News

We interrupt our broadcast of the summer travel saga to bring you this bulletin:

Anya has broken her arm!

It happened just before noon today. She was heading downstairs to the basement, and was attempting to jump down the last few steps by leaping over the side. She tripped, and instead of landing as she intended, she pretty much face-planted into a Barbie VW Van, managing to catch herself with her right hand (or as she says, "I really just kind of landed on it).

Here's the location of the disaster:

As you can see, it may not have been the best decision to try and leap from that particular position.

Here's the remains of the Barbie Van, after it's impact with Anya's giant face (giant being a relative term).

Karen took her to the Instacare this afternoon and she got a splint, along with the sling you saw. Her arm is broken just above the wrist; it's called a buckle break -- the bone kind of bulges out, or bends like elastic in one place. We go to her regular doc on Tues or Wed and they'll put on a hard cast, probably for about a month. Then she should be good as new.

And now, back to regular programing...

Through Ilinois, Indiana, Ohio...

Part 3 of the continuing saga of our summer adventure:

We left St. Louis Saturday morning, after a delicious breakfast, courtesy Honey Karen and Andi, of Oatmeal pancakes, bacon, and strawberries. What a great way to start the day!

We headed across the plains of Illinois, planning on getting to Western PA by evening time. God had other plans for us though. You might remember I mentioned the big storm that hit St. Louis while we were in the City Museum? Well, that storm headed west across Illinois and into Indiana, dropping much rain in its wake. You know all the flooding in the midwest? It began with this storm.

So we make it almost to Indiana, and suddenly the traffic on I-70 is at a standstill. Not moving. At all. We finally start to creep along. 1 hour and 15 minutes later, we've traveled 3 miles and have made it to the exit where they are diverting traffic off the highway, due to water covering the road, we discovered later. So we take a detour on some small roads for 30 miles or so and get back on I-70 about 14 miles closer to Indiana.

Okay, so we're behind schedule, but it's okay, right? We're trying to get to Western PA, because the following morning, I have tickets to tour Frank Lloyd Wright's FallingWater house. I've read about Wright for years, have admired his architecture, and have, since college, dreamed of one day seeing this amazing home he designed in the Western Pennsylvania hills.

So, we're trying to make it to our hotel in Belle Vernon, PA so I can make my 10am reservation to tour the house the next morning.

We cross the border into Indiana, and just as we hit Terre Haute, traffic is stalled again. Once again, we sit for over an hour and creep along 2-3 miles. This time, when we get to the place they're diverting traffic, they road block opens up and they let us through. Yippee!! Let's burn rubber! Here's the girls at some point along this slow driving day:
Twenty miles later, we are stopped again. This time, we're the third car in line at the road block in the middle of the interstate, and as we look past the police cars blocking our way, we see several feet of water covering the highway, and a semi overturned in it. Whoa.

We sit for a while; the police send us all back, via the u-turn area, back towards Terre Haute, telling us to spend the night there. Well, we stop at the first exit we come to, and at the gas station there, a local couple tells us that we can get to Indianapolis, just not on I-70. We have to drive through this small town, take the back roads, and we can hit Hwy 40 and head east on that.

We took their advice, and soon were headed east again. However, by the time we got back on I-70 in Indianapolis, we were now 4 hours behind schedule. There was no way to get to Belle Vernon at a decent hour. So we spent the night in Columbus, OH. The next day we headed out for the Philly area. Alas, we could not get to FallingWater by 10 am. I think we passed the exit around 1:30pm. So, my dream will have to wait...perhaps another twenty years? :) At least we stayed safe, and didn't end up overturned in flood waters. Yahoo!

We got to the Philly area, a northwest suburb called Audubon, in the early eve and met our good friend Ellen Dykas for dinner. Wonder of wonders, one of our favorite restaurants, Panera Bread, was across from our hotel! SCORE! We don't have Panera here in Utah, so we were very excited to have one right by us for the week.
We had a super-dee-duper visit with Ellie D; she came back to the hotel so we could visit while the girls swam. We had hoped it would be longer than one night, but the week we came to Philly for a conference, she left Philly to go to a conference in Texas! Oh, the inhumanity of it all! But we were way happy to have the short time we had together. So good to hear what God is doing in other parts of the country and in good friends' lives!

Next post: our visits to the sights and history of Philly!

Travelogue continued

More from the saga of our cross country journey...

After we left Oklahoma, we made a stop in Springfield, MO, to see my Aunt, Uncle and cousins. We had a quick but fun visit with them (thanks guys for the upstairs "suite" and Andy's frozen custard!), ate our favorite pizza (do you get the sense that we're really into food?), and headed to St. Louis the next morn.

We got to St. Louis around noon, drove by and the girls marveled at the Arch, then went straight to the City Museum. (click to go to their website). This was a most unique and amazing place. It is housed in an old office/warehouse, that is several stories high. Right now, they use four of the floors, and everything in it is made out of recycled materials; some are intact materials that are used for other purposes, some are recylced material that have been fashioned into new things.

It is like a kids' giant wonderland. The entire front of the building on the outside is a 4 story play structure, fashioned from ribar, other found metal, ropes, gratings, etc., and two old airplanes. Here we are in the midst of climbing; you can see part of Jenna at the right of the pic climbing through a ribar tube; Anya and I are at center.

Above us is one of the planes. As we continued to climb up, we ended up out on one wing, ready to climb down another way.

This thing was just huge! We stayed out there and climbed around, but eventually had to head inside due to rain. Inside, there was a cave, complete with "fossils" and "dino bones" that had tunnels running the entire heighth and probably 1/3 the floor area of the building. There was also a kind of skate park on the top floor, but instead of being on wheels, you simply slid and swung in your shoes.

Jenna here is perched atop one of the many slide pits, and there were multiple others, shaped more like ramps that you could run, jump and slide on. There was also swinging ropes, so the girls made like Tarzan, or I should say they made like Jane.There were also more climbing tubes inside the building, and Anya tackled a lot of them.

The adults didn't explore the tubes. We, uh, supervised.

There was also a giant barrel. What it had been used for previously, I haven't a notion. But it was turned on it's side and set on rollers, so it was like a giant hamster wheel for humans. The girls and I climbed in while Karen snapped us.However, it is remarkably hard to keep going in a giant hamster wheel. You feel very disoriented, and start to roll backwards, because the only way to keep going is to try to climb the curved wall in front of you, but that feels wrong because it's moving under you and so eventually you end up like this:We laughed a lot, and had a lot of people watching laughing with us.

This is the girls inside of some kind of formed ocean-like creature (also made from recycled materials). This opening was one of the many entrances to the cave.

It was a fascinating place. During part of our visit to the museum, a funnel cloud was spotted near downtown, where the museum is, so they had everybody go down to the first floor (where presumably we would be safe. I just kept thinking we were setting ourselves up to be human pancakes under all the above floors). After about 20 minutes, the tornado warning was lifted and we re-explored the museum.

Great place...if you ever get to St. Louis, don't miss it!

That night, we stayed with "Honey Karen", G'pa's sister. We all call her Honey Karen, because my neice and nephew needed a way to distinguish between their Aunt Karen (as in Karen Smith) and their great Aunt Karen (as in Karen Lebb). So they started calling her Honey Karen, and now the rest of us have joined in.

We had a great visit with her and her daughter Andi; they cooked us a fabulous meal of Chinese cuisine and delectible ice cream pie -- one of my favorites from childhood. It's a rice krispie and chocolate crust with ice cream inside. Simple, but heavens-to-mergatroid it's tasty! G'pa's dad and his wife Marilyn also came over, so we had a fun evening catching up with everyone. Joe, Karen's hubby, who always keeps us entertained with his wry humor, alas, had to work that eve. We missed him, but ate much in his honor. (Did I mention we kind of like food? The first night at the Grimes house, we all agreed that if there are two kinds of people, those who eat to live and those who live to eat, we're definitely live-to-eaters. There's just too much good stuff to enjoy!)

Enough for now. Next post: the dreaded traffic messes on I-70, my near miss in fulfilling a dream of over 20 years, and finally arriving in the city of brotherly love!

We're Ba-ack!

Over 3000 miles in 3 weeks, we've finally made our way back to Utah! It was a glorious trip, filled with friends, history, family, fun, a little arguing (after all we were in the van together for a total of about 100 hours) and many memories. The above pic was the only one we took of all of us on the whole trip, I think. It was at the City Museum in St. Louis...more on that later.

Three weeks is obviously too much for one blog, so I'll try to break up the fun over the next few posts, for your sanity, but more for mine. I don't think I can post it all at once. Besides, my body is still trying to figure out what time zone I'm in; I'm still waiting for a normal night's sleep...very elusive at this point.

So we left the beautiful Wasatch front on Saturday May 31 and headed for our first stop, Boulder, CO. On the way, about three hours into the trip, Karen looks back at Jenna and sees she has large splotches of green paint all over her shirt, as well as multiple speckles of red. "What happened?!?" Karen cried. Jenna and Emily explained that they had decided to pack their paint pens (water based paint in a tube that you squeeze out into a brush at the end of the tube). When Jenn opened the cap, the paint had pooled and and subsequently splooshed all over her shirt. The red one had paint in the cap and when she closed it, the paint sprayed her.

No, we didn't get a picture of it. We were both kicking ourselves later. It was hilarious. (Well, for the first few minutes it wasn't hilarious, but after a breath or two, we were all giggling about it). We, as I'm sure you are, were wondering why exactly they packed paint pens for a car trip. "We thought they'd be fun to use". Makes perfect sense.

The miracle? Karen managed to get the paint out of the shirt WHILE WE WERE IN THE CAR!!! She pulled out baby wipes, rubbing alcohol, even a stain remover wipe, and kept working at it. By the time we arrived in Boulder, the shirt was dry and you couldn't even tell the stains had been there.

Still can't believe we neglected the pic...it was a classic.

We arrived in Boulder for a fabulous evening with our friends the Grimes. Jeff is a coach for the Univ of Colo football team. He and Sheri and their kids were a involved in our church here while he was a coach at BYU, and they moved to CO last year. We had a great time catching up with them, and being stuffed with simply awesome food. Here's one snap of the girls playing with the Grimes oldest, Bailey.

We had such fun...it was a great first night of our three week adventure! Thanks, Grimes, for the encouragement, good talks, and the yum-o food. I'd try to describe the coffee cake Sheri made for us the next morn, but I'm afraid I'd start drooling on the keyboard.

Next stop was Mannford, Oklahoma, our old stompin' grounds and the girls' first home. But along the way we grabbed dinner at a Subway in Salina, KS. And out in front of the Salina Subway. A "statue" of a cowboy. We had to pose with it.

I know...totally random.

Upon our arrival at the stateline of OK, we were greeted with a custom painted sunset. We considered it God's welcome back!

In Mannford, we stayed with our great friends, the Bushyheads; well actually, they're more like family. The girls call them Aunt LeAnne and Uncle Dow. They, along with their boys Caleb and Sky, spoiled us rotten. We had such fun, laughing, seeing movies together, swimming, watching the boys play ball, and of course, eating! Here's the girls in the Bushyhead backyard pool.

What a wonderful time we had there! They say you can't go home, and to a point that's true. Mannford definitely didn't feel like home in any way. But spending time with those deep, long-time friends most assuredly felt like home to our hearts! It was such fun, so refreshing physically, emotionally and spiritually. Here's a snap of the girls with the Bushy Boys after Caleb's game:

By the way, Emily and Anya are holding the pieces of the bat that Caleb broke on his first at bat of the game. They were pretty impressed that he did that!

Okay, enough for the first post. More to come, including the exciting City Museum in St. Louis and the multiple hours sitting still on I-70 in Illinois and Indiana. Keep checking in!