June 12, 2013

We waited at my brothers for the morning hoping Oscar’s GPS tag we had mailed to us would arrive. No luck. We’ll have to have it sent to us up ahead as a general delivery somewhere. Guess I will have to figure out where we’ll be in a few days…

We took some time to clean up and put away all the clothes we had washed. Luckily most of the rain coats were now dry both inside and out. Legoboy’s, not so much. Guess that is what happens when you basically climb into Niagara Falls. Flyer looks better than ever as we have finished a few more projects and I have been able to get the last of the items put away that made up Mt. Everest when the kids were “helping load”. Day four and I am starting to feel more settled.

We headed out towards Cleveland around 3. When we stopped just up the road from my brothers for gas Sparky said, “huh, I guess I left the gas cap somewhere”. Wal-mart was within sight and the guy in the automotive section said if we drove around back to the oil and lube bays we could take caps out to Flyer to try to see what would fit her. A dozen dollars later we had a new cap and some antifreeze and were soon on our way.

Two late nights in a row the kids were so tired they all zonked out as we drove towards Ohio.

Legoboy fell asleep in the front and then stumbled back to his bed

Sister Bear crashed on the couch with Oscar

and Carboy snuggled deep into his bunk.

 

We decided we’d head over to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

It is opened until 10pm on Wednesdays and we are ASTC members so we get free admission. Parking! Arg, parking! What a bear! There was an event going on in the park across from the museum so every spot was full in the lot and on the streets there were no spots that we could even remotely squeeze into. Round and round we go, where we stop, no one knows. Oh, there, nope no parking anytime. There, nope no parking from 9-6. WAIT, it is after 6… Too late, gone! After about 30 minutes, no joke, we finally found a place that wasn’t too far from the museum where we could park on a tree lined street hidden at the base of the bank below the Museum of Art.

We toured the Natural History Museum. It was amazing to practically have the whole museum to ourselves. The kids really enjoyed the animals by US region and country.

the dinosaurs,

largest sharks

and the hands on discovery section about space, soil, and earthquakes.

Little Bear really liked the gems section and knew her MeMe would like that too, especially the Tiffany necklaces.

We toured the “native to Ohio” section and saw animals, plants, trees etc. I thought this leaf display was beautiful and would love it as a wall in my living room.

When we got to Flyer it was already 10:30 so we put the kids down to sleep and as we sat to check into the storm coming across Indiana that was producing tornado warnings in that area both of our cell phone’s alarmed for the National Weather Alert System (I didn’t even know our phones had that feature). The alert notified us that we were within an area with an active tornado warning and we needed to take immediate cover or find low ground. Hmmm, where to park a 33′ Winnebago to wait out a tornado. Now that’s a quandary!

Not too far from us I had seen (on one of our many trips around the block and side roads here) a concrete maintenance type building. We decided we would back down towards that as it was nestled low below the bank and with a cover of trees and the road to the south also being higher than we were. This was as low ground as we could find and we were going to stay put. There we also a number of 10-12′ concrete culverts on the ground nearby, maybe for an upcoming construction project, which could serve as a backup plan to Flyer if a tornado did come. We sat there for nearly an hour until the warning was lifted. From the noaa satellite feed we could see the weather was clear on the road ahead of us for at least an hour. We decided to move on and not stay and wait for the storm to come to us.