A Day At The Fair

We spent the day at one of the local county fairs recently - one of our favorite summertime activities. There are two county fairs that are close enough to go to easily, even though our own county shut down its fair for good a few years back. One of the fairs is full of activities, animals, exhibits and entertainment, and the other one still has lots of things to see, but not nearly to the same level. So, our tradition has been to buy unlimited ride wristbands at the lighter fair because there's not as much to see, and then forego rides on the more robust fair, taking full advantage of the opportunity to experience everything that one has available (which is much more than we can do in one day, even without the rides).

The fair where we ride the rides happens first each summer, and this year we nearly missed it because June is just flying by. The unlimited ride wristbands are a good deal if you remember to buy them ahead of time, and the girls will often ride the same ride over and over and over again, so the wristbands pay for themselves within the first 20 minutes or so. It's also nice that the girls are a little older now, so they can split up and go in different directions to ride the rides they like, especially earlier in the day when it's still light outside and it is far less crowded. I felt a little sorry for K, though, because she wanted to ride so many rides and ended up doing a bunch by herself. Hopefully I remember next year to invite a friend for her so she has someone to ride with.

While I was waiting for them to finish a superman-style ride, I amused myself by taking a look at the control box the carnival worker stands at.

This very old-school control box has buttons to start and stop the ride (and for this particular ride, it has a vertical joystick that is not unlike the one on the Dumbo ride at Disneyland that makes your elephant go up and down). I assumed these rides were time-controlled, but I was surprised to see the carnival worker manually starting and stopping the ride and manually lowering the ride back down to the ground level by pushing the joystick down. This particular worker left the control box wide open when he walked away, but I guess he's not too worried about me pushing any buttons, even though they are all clearly labeled. At one other ride I noticed the worker close the lid of the box when he walked away, although he also left the control key still in the slot before he did so, just like the guy did on the ride above.

As I stared at the brilliant pink tone of the metal box and noticed how well it clashed with the bright orange panel on the front, I also noticed that not one but two power cords were dangling from the bottom of the box. One went to the ride, but where did the other one go? It turns out that it goes to a little 'foot-box' on the ground. 

Inside that box is a foot pedal and the carnival worker has to stand there with his foot inside the box and press the pedal the entire time the ride is going. What would happen if he took his foot out? I didn't ask, but for the rest of the day I watched every worker at every ride stand there with their foot half-sticking out of the box. Maybe it's an emergency shut-off switch if he has to run out and help someone. Maybe it's just making sure that he's paying attention and not nodding off. Maybe it's a way for the owners to know that he's standing there and protecting that precious pink metal control box while the children are on the ride. If you ask someone at the carnival and find out, be sure to let me know!

C and K on the Viper. K went on to ride it many more times. C was done after that first one.

It was much louder in person, but if you listen carefully you can still hear the ride squeaking and creaking as it spins. K seems to like this kind of ride. She rode several more like it throughout the day and night.

The Gravitron (aka "Thriller"). They only rode it once this time. I don't think it's quite as fun without your teenage brother inside. Last time we were at the fair they rode this ride until C could hardly stand up. I don't think she ate anything for the rest of the day after that.

I wondered just how old these rides were anyway. These were the connectors on the third tier of the Zillerator, their only real roller-coaster. The pin looks rather new, though.

C and K on the Tornado, spinning themselves silly

A in a car by herself. You can see her arm holding onto the center circle. She held onto it the whole ride so her car wouldn't spin at all, after she refused to get in a car with her sisters.

The Giant Slide and their different techniques to try to finish first.

C and K on the Ferris Wheel

Way up there

My favorite was the closeup pictures of them arguing on the Ferris Wheel. Apparently, K thought C was swinging the seats, which was scaring her. C insists she wasn't. Ah, sisters....

They were fine again within minutes

C's favorite ride was the 'Aladdin one'. I don't even know what it's really called, but it's basically a huge platform that rotates on a big arm and yet stays right-side-up all the time. She rode it SO many times, you'd think I would have gotten a picture with her on eye level.

That's her with her hand up in the air on the left, waving at me.

But of course the fair isn't only about rides. There was much more to see while we were there! In fact, we were already drawn in by something by the time we'd walked 20 feet into the first building. There was a makeup booth on the left and they were offering glitter for $1 or a full makeover for $5. I was so excited for K to finally have the makeover she wanted! The ladies were so sweet, giving her a full pampering session complete with moisturizer, tinted lotion, eye shadow, glitter, mascara, blush and colored lip gloss. It was perfect!

Glitter only

 The finished look

She was thrilled!

Next, we headed over to the textiles and artist area, which was right next door. I was so excited to find out that the quilting ladies had planned a scavenger hunt for the kids ("find a quilt with 6 dragons", "find a red bunny on a red circle", etc). We all went up and down every row looking for the quilts with rubber duckies, folded kimonos, and strawberries, and in the meantime I got to see and (briefly) enjoy every single one of them. Thank you to the brilliant person who thought of that!!

My favorite quilt

The photography, drawing and painting area was a little easier for me to see because it's right next door to the jungle animal area. K ran off immediately and later returned to retrieve C. A stuck it out with me for most of the time and we enjoyed the truly weird and wonderful works of art there before joining the other two in the jungle animal area. It doesn't change much from year to year, but it's cool enough to see again and again. I guess my girls really are spoiled when seeing a 10 foot constrictor, holding a scorpion and a hedgehog, and watching a spider monkey crawl all over the guy next to you are 'been-there, done-that' moments. The group did add an alligator to the exhibit, though. And a pair of kookaburras.

We walked through the rest of the exhibit rooms, too - ogling the desserts, marveling at the creativity of the exhibitors, "aww"ing at the close-up photos of animals, and having plenty of "I could do that" moments, followed by "let's do that" moments. Dragons made out of twisted tin foil? A duct tape jacket? A S'mores Chocolate Cake with marshmallow creme layers and caramelized marshmallows on top? A huge castle made of painted cardboard pieces? An adorable pink fleece bathrobe in A's size? Ya, we could totally do all those!

This Minecraft Lego structure caught the girls' eyes

The cake A wants me to make for her birthday. I'm not so sure about this.

We watched the 4-H kids wrangle sheep and pigs, listened to some good (and some not-so-good) musicians playing on the stages outside, attempted to guess the weight of a steer in a 4-H raffle, and ate some slices of cake for their fundraiser. And then sometime in the early evening I actually pulled out my fair schedule and saw that there was supposed to be a Chinese acrobat/gymnastics show at 7pm. I set the alarm on my phone, making sure to leave enough time to get back there from the ride area we seemed to keep ending up at. We got there a little early and saw a dance performance by a studio in San Francisco. I think someone might want to tell them that having three teenage boys clogging/tap dancing to "Bad Boys" (the theme song from COPS) while wearing police outfits is not necessarily good advertising for their studio. 

But when all the parents of the dancing kids got up and left, we got front row seats for the acrobat show. It was amazing! The kids were stunned and loved every single second of it. I was really glad we didn't miss this one.

My timing was off, but this was four rings stacked on top of each other (you can see the other guy standing there holding the rings). They jumped off the stage only, with no springboards or anything. It was crazy!

Pretty good jump-roping. This was the only video I got, but at one point they had 4 ropes going at once and they were flipping and rolling around all over the place!

Balancing only on their shoulders and necks alone.

I giggle every time I hear the girls' commentary in this video.

 Higher

 And higher

 And crazier

 that was amazing!

the whole crew

And of course, no trip to the county fair would be complete without a hundred trips to the petting zoo. C took so many pictures I could make a coffee table book out of them. I'll post a few of my favorites, but if any of you are thinking about drawing a duck sometime, I've got photos of their heads and bodies from dozens of angles here for you. ;)

One of the wallabies in his (or her) "pouch"

Some very fuzzy baby goat/sheep-type animal that the girls would be very upset if I left out. The thing deserves a little credit too as his head was dragged up while he was still asleep so they could get a picture of the thing.

The duck that looks a lot like Hersheys (the duck C owned when we fostered ducklings last year)

the duck saying "Quit taking my picture already, kid!"

One of the two deer, which are a huge hit with the kids, and a huge pain for the petting zoo owners. For those who don't know, deer are ridiculously aggressive and obnoxiously persistent, and their deer spend quite a bit of their day in 'time out'. You think goats like to chew on everything and headbutt you in a petting zoo? Just wait till you see a deer!

Donkey

The only goat they took a picture of (and there were lots of pictures of him).

A llama

Pot-bellied pig

Chicken

the wallabies

 

another duck

he woke up!

Well, that's about it for our day at the fair. I guess we did more than I thought. No wonder I was so tired!

A Little Bit of Map Love

I just finished reading the book Maphead by Ken Jennings (you know, the guy who won Jeopardy! a million times...). He wrote the book to give all of us a look into the secret lives of map-lovers. I love to look at a map as much as anyone, but clearly the people Jennings interviews are on a completely different level (a level Jennings resides on as well). Reading this book was excellent timing, considering our recent extreme road trip.

Jennings talks in the book about the kids who compete in the National Geographic Bee (similar to the Spelling Bee, but ridiculously more interesting!). We walked past the theatre in DC several times where the Bee is held each year, but we missed the throng of contestants by a few weeks. From ancient to modern, his book covers map lovers, map writers, and map interpreters throughout the centuries. For example, contrast the Travellers Club in London in 1819, who limited its membership to men who had travelled at least 500 miles from their city, with the modern Travelers' Century Club, founded in Southern California in 1954, which includes more than 2,000 members who have each visited at least 100 different countries in their lifetime. While many members are much older than I am, the youngest member ever to join this club was only 2 1/2 when she qualified, and at 37, Charles Veley became the first member to finish the entire club's checklist, visiting all 319 'countries' on the approved list.

I don't think I'm ready for that kind of commitment, but I felt endeared to many of the other 'clubs' in the book. Jack Longacre founded the Highpointers Club, a group of people who try to visit the highest point in each of the 50 states. And in case you're scared of heights, you might like to know that Delaware's highest point is in a trailer park. Ohio's is a school flagpole, and the highest point in Florida is only 345 feet above sea level (at a rest stop) - lower than many of the skyscrapers in the state. Apparently only five states require climbing skills, and at one point the most difficult height to scale wasn't Mt McKinley (at 20,000 feet) but the 800-ft hill in Rhode Island that lay on the property of a cranky old man who would not grant access. He died in 2001, allowing members access at last. When Longacre died of cancer in 2002, members of the club scattered his ashes on the top of all 50 high points.

Looking for something more personalized? You could join Peter Holden, who has eaten at 12,000 McDonald's restaurants, or Rafael Lozano, who has been to all but 20 of the 8,500 Starbucks in North America. One man has made a checklist of his checklists, visiting "every site in the national park system, all eleven parishes of Barbados, all 30 'historic houses of worship' in Philadelphia, all 51 weather stations in Thailand, and every US Presidential birthplace". You could make up just about any list, just to check it off. Tempting. 

Or maybe you're one of the people who drive the roads every day, looking at signs, checking directions, and correcting mistakes, like the "roadgeeks" in Chapter 9. If you knew that Hwy 99 used to run from the Canadian border all the way to Mexico, maybe you are a roadgeek. Most of highway 99 was abandoned when I-5 was completed in 1968. The roadgeek in the book has a customized plate that says MAPPER, with a frame that says "I'm not lost. I'm a cartographer."

I'm not sure who would be surprised that I may entertain joining one of the above groups someday. I'm not ready for that kind of commitment right now, but I am truly intrigued (and I have a little bit of a headstart on visiting many things in the US). However, there was one thing in the book I am ready to dive in and try - Jim Sinclair's annual St. Valentine's Day Massacre map navigating contest. It's a contest done by US mail and has been going for more than 40 years. Contestants receive a map in the mail with a complicated list of instructions and an answer sheet with multiple choice options. I'm a little nervous that Jennings was only able to complete half of the map himself (an option that's available to first-timers), but I'm hoping Jaimee will agree to do it with me and we can help each other figure out the answers ;)

There are also chapters on map collectors, geocachers, make-believe map creators, early explorers, the creation and beginning of Google Earth, and the mappers who mark streets on OpenStreetMap. And while the characters in the book are interesting and thoroughly entertaining in their topophilia, what I really loved most about the book was the obsessive way he inserted gobs of obscure trivia into each chapter. If you're going to read the book, (which I highly recommend), don't worry. This is just a small percentage of the trivia in the book, so go ahead and enjoy it. But I just had to share some of this nerdy trivia with all of you. It gave me lots of things to look up on Wikipedia and read about, and I am planning to buy the book myself, if for nothing more than the 16 pages of referenced books, articles and online resources in the back. Here's some of my favorite trivia.

- Weirton, West Virginia is the only town in the US that borders two different states on opposite sides - it's in that tiny little stick we drove through on our trip.

- Victoria Island in Nunavut, Canada is the world's largest "triple island" (an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island). There are others, but this is the biggest.

- Bir Tawil is a little piece of desert between Egypt and Sudan that neither nation can claim because of some strange international treaty, making it one of the last little pieces of land on Earth that belongs to no one at all.

- The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress has 8,500 cases of maps with 5 drawers each, nearly two entire football fields worth, including maps hand-drawn by Stonewall Jackson, Magellan, Lewis and Clark, and George Washington.

- The USGS began creating a series of topographic maps just after WWII in 1:24,000 detail (each mile is 3"). They didn't finish the project until 1992, and the map is so big that if you pulled out the blank blue maps of the Great Salt Lake it would be 783 feet by 383 feet (about 3 city blocks).

- When the Defense Department came to the Library of Congress after September 11th for a map of Afghanistan they could use, the Library had one because it had purchased it the year before in the equivalent of a garage sale that a vault in Arizona held while trying to clear out items they didn't want anymore.

- You can get a Reader ID (library card for the Library of Congress) and look at maps in the Reading Room (you can't check them out, though). <This is definitely on my list of things to do!>

- New Moore Island in the Bay of Bengal was a hotly disputed piece of land between India and Bangladesh, until it disappeared under the water due to rising sea levels.

- But the island of Ferdinandea (a submerged volcano) occasionally rises out of the Mediterranean and then subsides or erodes again. It last surfaced in 1831, where it was swarmed by tourists and argued over by diplomats before it went under again. The US accidentally bombed the island in 1986, thinking it was a Libyan submarine. Oops.

- Censored or altered maps still exist today. For example, while Google Earth shows a US military area on the Korean Peninsula clearly, the most popular South Korean site (Naver) had covered the area with a barren wilderness, literally erasing everything in the area.

- President Eisenhower made the cross-country trip I did in 1919 (he was an army officer then), heading to California to visit family, except he did it without paved roads in many areas. It took him 62 days (an average speed of 6 mph) and the convoy lost nine vehicles and 21 men were injured in the 230 accidents on the trip. In 1956, when he was President, he signed the Interstate Highway System into law, "the greatest peacetime public works project in history", using enough cement to build 80 Hoover Dams. Thanks, Eisenhower!

- Rand McNally predated Google StreetView Maps by about 100 years. When the company first started in 1907, they didn't have maps, but had a series of "Photo-Auto Guides", which were dashboard photos with a driver's eye view of landmarks and intersections and little arrows that showed where to turn. Roads weren't consistently numbered or labeled, so drivers had to use landmarks to get around.

- It was actually Rand McNally that initiated the labeling of our roads and highways shortly thereafter. Instead of figuring out how to get more photos, they changed everything. They created a numbering system and decided to drive all over the country, labeling every single road and route by hand. By 1922, they had labeled 50,000 miles of roads. Luckily for them, state and federal agencies pitched in with their own efforts to get the job done.

- Some geocaches are so extreme, they've never been found, although I think the one left by a Russian Mir submersible at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is cheating, considering people have actually been able to retrieve the one that was dropped by helicopter on top of a 70' tall pylon in the middle of the Potomac River in West Virginia, as well as the one at the bottom of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. There is also an unclaimed geocache on one of the highest peaks of the Nepalese Himalayas, if you're interested.

- Because land is so hotly debated, Google is constantly involved in diplomatic issues, negotiating with governments and sending its own representatives to the UN committee on place-names. This diplomacy has caused them to make concessions, such as making the border of a particular country appear different to viewers from each of the two countries - actually moving the borderline to that particular country's believed area to avoid conflict.

- Google has added a Street View snowmobile for snow trails, a tricycle for narrow roads, a trolley for indoor imagery (like museums), and a Trekker (like a backpack) for areas only accessible by foot (first used in the Grand Canyon).

- Many things have been discovered on aerial photos like Google Earth that no one had seen before. Examples include the ruins of a lost Amazonian city in Parma, and the 'forest swastika' - a group of trees planted in Brandenburg that make a visible swastika during a few weeks of spring and autumn when the leaves turn yellow. The trees were cut down in 2000. Or how about the fact that a team of German scientists discovered in 2008 that grazing cattle orient themselves almost entirely north to south, prompting further studies on animals and their sensitivity to magnetic fields. 

- Google Maps and Google Earth both list the West Lancashire town of Argleton. A place that does not exist in real life.

- The current marker of the Four Corners - where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet - is actually 1,807 feet east of the real place where the four states connect.

- Tired of geocaches? Maybe you should hunt for convergence lines (where latitude and longitude meet - a perfect 0,0,0). From any point on Earth, you are never more than 49 miles from one of these spots - even closer together the nearer you get to the poles (although many are underwater). Want to see photos of these completely uninteresting places? Visit the Degree Confluence Project, maintained by convergence hunters seeking all of these points on the earth. There's still some that haven't been visited.

- Want to do something even weirder? Join the group who is trying to make a 'sandwich' of the Earth. It's nearly impossible in the US, because we don't have many antipodes (an-tip-uh-deez), or diametrically opposite points (on the other side of the world) that isn't water, and that would make the bread soggy. All you have to do is find two points that are on the opposite side of the world, find someone on the other side of the Earth who is willing to lay a piece of bread on the ground, and voila! an Earth sandwich! (two brothers  laid half a baguette on the hills of Southern Spain while someone else did in Auckland, New Zealand to make the first deliberate Earth sandwich in 2006, although I suppose it's possible one was accidentally made before that.)

Find your antipodes

I learned how to crochet yesterday, and I'm having a blast! A has already asked for this scarf, but hopefully I'll make more things soon. I have another lesson next week and then next month I hope to take a knitting class as well.

How cool is that?

A Day At The Spa

Today the girls decided to pamper themselves with a day at the spa. They mixed 'herbs' of all kinds (leaves and grass - although I kept hearing "rosemary") in a plastic tub of water with some juice from an orange to soak their feet in. When C complained about the water being too cold, K decided to trek warm water out from the kitchen sink. After about a dozen trips, I mentioned she might want to use the teakettle which helped her finish filling the tubs quickly for both of her sisters.

When she came to ask me if she could cut up a cucumber for them, I hesitated a minute but decided to let her go ahead. When I walked outside to see what she'd been working on, this is what I saw.

 

K excitedly told me that she was going to start her own spa and start charging people. Then when someone asked her where she had made all of her money, she would say, "My spa!"

 

Even though she said she wouldn't charge people she knew to come to her spa, A offered to pay her a dollar for the experience. When the two of them rolled over and K kneeled between them and scratched their backs, A proclaimed it 'the best spa ever' and offered to pay her two dollars. (Made an even better spa experience because she got to eat the cucumbers when she was done - one of A's favorite veggies).

 

In the car, both A and K said they wanted to sit next to the best spa person ever, so all three climbed in the back seat. And then it went nutty.

 

C decided she was going to stay up all night and plan for the world opening of K's spa tomorrow. A got involved, and of course the two of them decided that it should actually be a pet wash instead of a spa for people. And soon the whole thing had deteriorated into an Ed Debevic's-style pet wash, where they would insult people and their pets when they came in. They practiced their insults in funny foreign accents and laughed hysterically.

 

K wasn't interested in any of that and decided to kick them both out of her spa plans. If she opens a spa in the future, I'll be sure to let you all know!

Day 33 - Home at Last

Total Miles Driven: 8061
Total States Visited: 25 + the District of Columbia
Totally Exhausted People: 4

The actual route we took across the country

I'm pretty sure today was the longest 6 hours of my entire life. We must have stopped for 'a break' a dozen times on the way home today. We actually woke up pretty early and enjoyed the hotel's free breakfast one last time. I was amazed at how beautiful the property was here. Too bad it was so late in our trip because the girls would have loved to play in the big, grassy quad around the swimming pool. But exhaustion had set in, and after breakfast we just sat in our room and watched TV until they kicked us out at noon.

We talked briefly this morning about visiting Disneyland while we were here. We're only about 20 minutes away and parking and entrance tickets would be free, but the votes were split with A saying she wanted to go, C saying she didn't, and K bouncing back and forth. I, personally, could go to Disneyland anytime and love it, but this was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and the park was packed. I also had to take into consideration the likelihood that once I got into the park, I wouldn't want to leave, and the thought of a midnight or 1am arrival back home was not a pleasant one. In the end, I decided to be sensible and skip the park today. C had the most passionate opinion anyway, and it was probably for the best. She actually picked up everyone's clothes, packed up the entire room, and helped carry stuff to the car. Anyone who knows her knows that that is highly unusual behavior for her, and I just didn't have the heart to argue with that kind of passion to get home.

As the day wore on, I realized that we had made the right choice indeed, as the girls' (and my) exhaustion became too intense to imagine enjoying a day in the park today. I must admit that I also considered the possibility of buying another hat in Disneyland, but I guess I'll just have to order it online, like the Information Desk clerk suggested back in Florida.

We were literally on the home stretch now, and although I accidentally got on Hwy 99 instead of Hwy 5 at some point, I managed to cut back over and make my way north towards home. (It was a dead giveaway that there were flowers and bushes near the side of the road. I thought, "vegetation? scenery? this doesn't look like highway 5!")

As we got really close to our home, I remembered thinking how strange it was to realize that we hadn't been in the Bay Area, much less California, for more than a month. I suddenly felt like we'd only gone away for a weekend trip and were just heading back home.

Mike had hung decorations on the house to welcome us home, although I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that saw them.

The girls rushed inside to greet Ginger and Kamea, whom they had missed greatly.

 C with Ginger

A with Kamea

We had a wonderful adventure, but it's good to be home. We have lots of adventures here, too, and we'll try to share them with you as often as we can!

Thanks for joining us on our road trip! :)