On the road again...

(Flowers in Amish country)

Since the RV purchase in February, we'd yet to take a trip together with Michael's parents. We used it in April and they used it in July but the Timms family had not made their first trip altogether. After a few tentative plans and changes, we settled on a September trip to Kentucky & Ohio. Our original destination was an RC airplane event but that even got changed and we would up with an alternate itinerary. Still, it was a fun little getaway and we saw some places and things that we hadn't seen before-- and we added a few more 'states visited' to our list!!

Here's a summary of the week's adventures:

We left right after Co-Op and took the back roads (and a borderline dirt road-- thanks to TomTom!) out of Georgia toward Tennessee. Our goal was to get close to Knoxville and 'boondock' at a Flying J (for all of you non-RV-ers, boondocking is essentially free camping overnight in a parking lot-- you drive in late and leave out early--no need to spend $$ on a campground just to get some sleep).

We got up before the sun and continued driving toward Lexington, KY. Our first stop was the Old Friends farm. They are a retirement home for thoroughbred racehorses. The total earnings of the 53 horses on the farm was some outrageous number like close to a billion dollars. Unfortunately, when the horses are no longer money makers, their fate is often the slaughterhouse. This facility allows them to live out their days roaming freely in their pastures.

(Emma with Sunshine Forever)

Our next stop was the Kentucky Horse Park & Campground. We set up the RV here and then surprised the girls with a 'trail ride'. Emma was over the moon because this was the first time she's gotten to ride a horse outside of the ring. She was so excited to be in control of the horse all by herself.

The horse park has a super nice campground and we enjoyed the cool weather and cooking out on the grill.

The next morning after making breakfast, we were back on the road driving north to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY (just on the Ohio/KY border). We were looking forward to this stop after hearing good things from friends who had visited. The girls are also studying the time period of "Creation to the Greeks" in history this year so I felt like they would really enjoy this. My absolute favorite part of the visit was the planetarium show-- it gave a small glimpse of the vastness of our universe and how small we really are... a speck of dust... and yet the spot that God chose to place his special creation and ultimately send His son. I left the theater with tears in my eyes...

After our time at the museum, we headed toward Cincinnati and revealed a surprise to the girls-- we were going to be spending the night at the Great Wolf Lodge-- a lovely hotel that has a full-scale water park inside!! This was great fun-- after the girls got over their water slide apprehension! We climbed stairs and toted inner tubes for several hours until we were all exhausted and waterlogged. We ate dinner at Red Robin and came back and crashed in our suite.

On Friday morning, we had another big day of driving-- about 200 miles-- toward northeastern Ohio. Our destination was Holmes county-- the site of the largest Amish population in Ohio. On the way, we passed acres and acres of farms planted with corn. It reminded me a lot of driving through Kansas last summer (except that it was corn instead of wheat in the fields). We arrived in time to visit a cheese-making company and got to see them making cheese from local organic milk. They also had samples of all of their cheeses which was very enjoyable (except to Grandma who is not a cheese lover!!).

(What goes good with cheese samples? Why ice cream, of course!!)

After the cheese tour, we drove through some of the back roads of the area and saw so many beautiful farms, lots of horses and buggies and just got a really nice feel for what the Amish country really looks like. We stopped at a hardware store that caters to the local community (wood stoves, propane refrigerators, etc.) and saw an interesting film about the Amish culture. While I think that many of their beliefs/practices are kind of 'legalistic' interpretations of Scripture, I do think that they have many good ideas-- focus on family time, training their children to be hard-working, productive members of society, etc. It was so interesting to see this lifestyle up close.

On Saturday, we visited an Amish farm and toured the homes and barn and schoolhouse on the property. The girls loved all the animals. We even took a buggy ride (which was surprisingly a pretty comfortable ride!). This was one of the highlights of our trip.

We began our drive home Saturday afternoon. A stop for Abbie's birthday dinner at an Outback in West Virginia will be an unfortunate memory (long story short-- we paid $14 for our entire meal there which included dessert and appetizers if that gives you any idea of how bad it was!). We boondocked at another Flying J in Virginia (after taking the scenic route to get there-- thanks again, TomTom!!) and finished driving home on Sunday.

All in all, it was a neat trip-- kind of a mix of unusual destinations but we all really enjoyed it!