Camping at the Creek

This Father's day weekend was dedicated to a camping adventure with the Painter crew at McCormick's Creek SP.  It had been far too long since we had busted out the tent.  Just 3 Hackneys on this trip as Aaron has his own job and schedule now.  Still, the car was packed to the gills with supplies for the weekend trek.  (Not sure how we managed to pack everything in our old car with 4 people!)  The forecast was calling for highs in the 90's, but no rain....we will manage.  It definitely was a hot one, but the evenings cooled down a bit and the creek and waterfall where we spent quite a bit of time were refreshing. 

Rachel and Hayden spent their time pulling fish out of the creek.

And there was plenty of time for this type of activity!

Hanging out at our own personal movie theater 

All in all (in Dusty's words) a successful camping trip. Which by his definition was not a lot of bugs, not getting cold while sleeping and no major injuries!

Caching Cousins

Last year we had taken Makenna and Carson geocaching with us and proceeded to grab most of the caches in Flora.  They both had a great time so I promised them that sometime Aunt Heidi would take them out caching again.  This trip to Illinois was a great time to take them so we put "Geocaching Adventure with Aunt Heidi" on the schedule.  On the way to Flora we swung by the Moonshine store for a Moonburger.  I had heard people raving about them so we decided to see what the fuss was all about.  It did not disappoint.  A pretty good burger!

The original intention was to geocache some back roads from Moonshine to Flora but that proved to be problematic!  It took several attempts to even get over to a main highway

We decided not to press our luck, but our new route took us past the "Mug Tree".  Rachel and I had struck out finding the geocache located here earlier.  Today we were vindicated.

On to Flora.  Milo the puppy is a growing ball of fur.  He loved all the attention Rachel gave him.

Our day with the cousins started out with a run to some of the local Little Free Libraries.  We restocked them with some of Makenna and Carson's books.  Good deed is done for the day!

After lunch, off to geocaching.  We started with a series that was located along the old abandoned highway along US 50.

We were 3 for 3 but then had to leave the last 2 of the series for later due to some bridge construction.

The rest of the caches took us along backroads into Noble.

We then headed to Olney to reward the crew with some ice cream

After a successful day of caching we took in Carson's ballgame.  Carson declared that geocaching was more fun than TV.  I consider that a win!

Geowoodstock XVI

Geocaching has been a fun hobby for our family for a couple years.  Since Geowoodstock (the large annual gathering for geocachers) was being held in Cincinnati this year and it was free we jumped in the car and headed out to join in the fun.  I didn't really know what we were going to get into but we are always up for an adventure.

We hit a line of traffic backed up at our exit.  We started seeing cars with Geocaching flags and knew we were in the right place.  We parked and started walking toward the park.  I had only ever seen a car with a trackable code once before.  Now about every other vehicle was sporting a travel bug decal.  We started snapping a few pics to log them later.

We had to log in on the official Geowoodstock log...which was this sign

There were trackable cars, trackable shirts, trackable tattoos and even a trackable dog

All in all a fun time.  I picked up a travel bug to take to Europe this summer.  We logged in several lab caches.  We also determined that there are quite a few people who are WAY more into their geocaching than we are.  HA!

Happy 13th Birthday Rachel

Rachel's 13th Birthday and the last day of 7th grade all rolled into one day.  There was plenty to celebrate today.

The present for today was a much-needed bike upgrade.  We followed up our Chick-fil-a dinner and cake with some disc golf and bike riding.

It's also Wannaporn's 13th birthday.  Happy birthday all the way to Thailand!  We love you!

The rest of the trip

 In addition to hunting down Mr. Rogers paraphernalia, we found a lot of fun things to do.  We had to keep our plans fluid since the weather really wasn't cooperating.  Our first day in Pittsburgh was the best day we had, weatherwise.

We had planned to drive out to Shanksville and see the Flight 93 Memorial, but freezing rain deterred us.  So we ended up back in Pittsburgh at the National Aviary.  Most of it was indoors so we enjoyed the birds and stayed out of the rain.

Faced with another day of bad weather we switched it up and headed to Cincinnati for our last day of the trip.  After a morning at IKEA and Jungle Jim's we went to the American Sign Museum.  It was a really interesting place full of old signs, including a bunch of neon.  

And of course, no trip is complete without some geocaching!

Spring (sort of) Break Trippin' - Visiting the Neighborhood

Spring break time...even if the weather wasn't very "springy".  We took out for a short road trip (minus Aaron who had to work) to Pittsburgh.  Ahhh Pittsburgh, such a tropical location!  My goal was to take in all things Mr. Rogers.  With the 50th anniversary of the show this year there has been a renewed interest in the neighborhood.  I grew up watching Mr. Rogers so there was no small amount of nostalgia involved. 

Our first stop was the Heinz History Center.  A fun and interesting museum with the added bonus of a small exhibit of items from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood including a part of the original set, X the Owl's tree and King Friday's castle

A collection of puppets from the show

After our visit to the museum, we spent some time walking along the river and grabbing some geocaches.  The next day we headed to Latrobe, PA - Fred Rogers' hometown.  We headed to the Fred Rogers Center on the campus of St. Vincent University where there was another exhibit of items from the show.

Puppets

Mr. Rogers' sweaters...hand knit by his mother.

Daniel Striped Tiger's clock

The building also housed the archives from the show.  Although they were not open to the public, windows had been placed so that visitors could look in.  There were rows and rows of boxes filled with production notes, fan mail, and paperwork as well as puppets, set pieces, and all types of memorabilia.  

After our visit, we drove a few miles to Unity Cemetary to Mr. Roger's grave.  It was a small family mausoleum up on a hill at the back of the cemetery.

Our final stop on the "Mr. Rogers" tour was in downtown Latrobe to drop by the statue of Mr. Rogers in a small downtown park.  It was cold and rainy but we couldn't pass up a quick photo-op.

Such a fun nostalgia-filled time finding stuff from the show.  We could use a little more Mr. Rogers in our world today!