Month: November 2011

St Louis, the arch & #edcampkc

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Another long drive from Cincinnati to St Louis and then trouble finding the motel which was down on the riverfront in what looked like a very rundown area.

Spent the next morning at the Gateway Arch. Watched a video about Lewis and Clerk’s journey across USA  following the Missouri River to its source. Then up in the archway via little rooms shaped like a clothes dryer. Check out the fantastic views from the top of the arch. Back down with a family who, to me looked like Mennonites but, were actually German Anabaptists from New York state.

Last night, Miss W heard on Twitter that there was going to be an #edcampkc at a high school near Kansas City on Saturday. So we booked ahead to make sure we had accommodation. It was a long drive to Kansas City, after leaving St Louis about lunchtime.

At#edcampkc, Miss W met many educators from the states around Kansas. She looked at the conference schedule and decided she could run one of the sessions explaining about the student and teacher blogging challenges as well as about my blog. It seemed to go over well but very few of those attending the session actually had their own or class blogs. Maybe some will start the teacher challenges with other teachers from their school.

You might have also noticed on the images used on my blog now, there are some little dots you can hover over. I can add links to the images. Wonder how Miss W could use this on her class blog? We learnt about this from a session we attended called Thinglink.

We also went to another session looking at saving schools money by using online resources. This is now a Google document Miss W can use back at school next year. Overall a great time was had at #edcampkc and lots of interesting conversations about education in general. Many want to come teach in Australia so they can also get long service leave like Miss W has for this holiday we are on.

Relaxing day on Sunday, catching up with blogs, comments and writing posts for the student challenge.

Has your teacher ever attended an edcamp, tweetup or online conference? What did they learn from attending and did they tell you about it?

 

Time in Cincinnati

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After an uneventful drive from Zanesville, we arrived in Cincinnati early afternoon so as the car was due another service, found a Firestone near the motel. Luckily we did, as they found a nail in one of the tyres and fixed it for us.A bit of a hassle though, as Alamo could only give me paper work for about a 6 week period even though I have the car booked for 11 weeks. So Firestone had to do some ringing up to check that Alamo would pay the bill.

Miss W rang her chatroom friend Peggy, and before we knew it, she was at our hotel and we headed out for tea at Smoky Bones. Miss W had a lovely Pacific Salmon with broccoli (yes Miss W’s mum – she is eating vegetables when she can) and corn. Peggy then took us for a drive out to the town of Oxford which is a university town. It was interesting to see the fraternity houses with their Greek symbols on the front of them – seen it in the movies but don’t think we have fraternity houses at the uni in Tasmania. On our way back to the motel, we nearly hit a big deer that was standing in the middle of the road. Luckily it moved in the opposite direction.

What to do next day? Let’s head to the zoo. We don’t have a zoo in Tasmania, so we went hoping to see some of my relatives. Check out the animoto to see the animals and some of the plants from Krohn’s Conservatory.

 

Back to the motel to do some washing and catch up on blogging – haha. Looked at Google maps and decided to head to St Louis the next day, so said farewell to Peggy that morning when she arrived before we were ready for breakfast.

 

 

Touring Gettysburg

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No snow coming down today so off we headed to Gettysburg. A fellow traveller took the snow off the windscreen with his snow shovel. Driving along the highway, many cars had snow on their rooves and occasionally a large piece would fall off onto the road.

Arrived in Gettysburg in time to watch a 20 minute video on “A New Birth to Freedom” then straight in to view the cyclorama. A very interesting piece of artwork around the inside of a room but it also included a narration and lights and sounds. An hour or so to visit the museum, telling the story of Gettysburg – before, during and after the battle. But the highlight of the trip was the bus ride.

Davo on the cannon

Miss W could have done a car audio tour, but decided with the snow still on the ground, we would do a narrated bus tour instead. The tour guide was fantastic – extremely knowledgeable. Lots of little stops to check out the three days of battle. But the most amazing part of the tour was all the memorials around the roads in Gettysburg. Each regiment that took part in the battle has had the chance to put up a memorial to represent their fellow soldiers who took part in the Civil War.

The other amazing part about the historic park is that the National Park Service is gradually buying or leasing the land and restoring it to what it looked like back in the days before the battle. The reason they can do this is they have so many historical artifacts like diaries and maps explaining what was happening and where. They are removing trees from areas that were not treed and planting trees where they were originally. It will look fabulous once it is finished. Miss W took lots of photos around Gettysburg so remember to check out the photostream.

We moved onto Chambersburg for the night where the next morning frost was all over the windows of the car. Very cold part of the Appalachian Mountains.

Up hill and down into the valleys for the next couple of hours. We were well and truly in the Appalachians. Still lots of great fall foliage but now surrounded with snow. Looks like it will be a while before some of the snow melts in these cold valleys.

We planned to get onto the major highway to head to Zanesville for the night, but again we missed the turnoff and decided to carry on highway 30. Suddenly there was a turnoff to Flight 93 Memorial Park. We would have missed this totally if on the interstate. They are developing a memorial for those people killed on Flight 93 where the passengers and crew stopped the hijackers flying to the intended target.

It was a  quiet trip into the area only 25mph then a lovely walk to a wall where all passengers and crew are named. They have restored the area where the plane went down and that is at the back of the wall. They are still developing the visitors centre and carpark but once it is done, it will be a very contemplative place to visit.

Back onto the interstate at Somerset and a straight run through to Zanesville. We crossed the border just before Wheeling. This was an interesting town as part of it is on an island in the middle of the river and one of the entrances to the bridge to get on the island is through a tunnel.

Into Zanesville which a week before had been in the national news. A wild life preserve owner  had let loose all his wild animals including Bengal tigers, lions, grizzly bears and then killed himself.

In U.S.A. there are many National Parks or National Historic Sites. Which ones have you been to? Which did you enjoy the most?

 

An unusual nor’easter

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Spent an excellent day with Mrs Tina Schmidt, her class and many other classes at her school. Lots of questions again, but Tina’s class showed lots of excitement when they had the afternoon on the netbooks checking out my photostream on flickr. Lots of oohs and ahs about the animals and the car going through the tree. Tina had organized a small party for the last 15 minutes of school so I could taste typical food from the Philadelphia area, such as soft pretzel, hoagies and TastyKakes.

Hershey kisses as light

Left Yardley that evening after a great afternoon and supper with Tina’s family. Followed the Pennsylvania Turnpike the next day and spent the night in Shillington near Reading. This area of Pennsylvania, Lancaster County, is also known for having many Amish families. Spent the next day touring the area -along the Benjamin Franklin Highway visiting Hershey, where the chocolates are made, then across to Middletown to follow the Susquehanna River. It was along here that we found 3 Mile Island which was a nuclear plant which had a bad accident many years ago.

Onto Strasburg, but again we missed the turnoff and ended up in NE Lancaster so continued home through Smokeytown where we saw many Amish driving their carriages but with tourists in them. Unusual town names in this are. Check the photostream to find them.

An hour after the snow began

Plan is to go to Gettysburg tomorrow, but nature changes our plans. That night all the weather was mentioning a snow storm in the north east of the country starting about 12 noon. We woke to snow already coming down by 9am. This meant we needed to stay another night at the motel as we didn’t have snow tyres for the car and the news channels were saying if you don’t have to go out then stay indoors.

The next day - at least 5 inches thick on top of car and windscreen

It snowed all day – check out the images – the staff at the motel were amused that Miss W only had thongs or flip flops for her feet. But this was a record snowfall for the area since 1925 with about 5 inches or 10 centimetres falling in less than 10 hours. It was thick and wet flakes which meant it would melt quickly once the sun started shining the next day. Many people living in the hills above the motel also came down and booked in because they had lost power as many tree branches, heavy with snow on leaves that had not yet dropped, fell down over the power lines. Luckily our hotel had power the whole time.

One of the other people at the hotel saw Miss W trying to remove the snow on the windscreen using a water bottle and very kindly used his car snow shovel to remove it so we could drive to Gettysburg. It took an hour before the last snow off the roof fell off onto the road.

Have you ever been caught in some bad weather? What was it? How did you prepare and survive it?

 

Connecticut through New York City

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A day at the New Bedford Whaling national historic site. Fantastic museum with movies, models of whaling boats, skeletons of many whales and plenty of other whaling paraphanalia to look at. The site includes lots of buildings and a boat at the wharf. Not what we are used to as a national park.

Left New Bedford to head towards Wallingford to meet Paul Bogush and his classes.  Not a very long distance but we had a couple of stops to make in between.  We tried to stay off the main highway and take some of the minor roads instead.

We went to the Bellevue Road area of Newport to check out the summer “cottages” of the New York families such as the Vanderbilts, whose home, called “The Breakers”, had 33 bathrooms let alone other normal rooms in a house. Many of these houses are now open to the public but at $25 per adult Miss W felt it was too much.
Across the bridge at Jamestown and down the coastline to Narragansett with its beautiful beaches and park areas. Saw a sign to an Audubon Wildlife Refuge so followed the directions but was very disappointed. Didn’t mind the small narrow gravel road but sign at entrance said no parking so on we went. Then another sign saying no cars beyond here. Problem then to find somewhere to turn around. No animals seen while on the refuge.
Past Old Lyme and headed northwest through some lovely woodland with lots of rock walls to Wallingford. Went to the school and signed in at the office. A call was put into Paul, who said I should come up to his room – his students yelling they wanted me to come up straight away as well as the next day. Organized times with Paul for the next day – three classes and lunch. Students had lots of interesting questions including about government as that is part of their social studies program in grade 8.

Next decision – should Miss W drive through New York City down to Trenton in New Jersey ? Paul said many people don’t like driving on the 95 highway so we headed down the Merritt Parkway. Wow! Avenue after avenue of beautiful trees in their fall colours. Not sure which road to take once we met the 95 near New Rochelle so followed a sign saying Central Ave. Past signs saying Bronx Zoo then we spotted a sign saying Trenton, New Jersey highway 1. We knew this was where we had to go so not sure how close to the real New York we were, we followed the signs. It took us over the George Washington Bridge. This was the first time we had seen homeless people on the ramps heading to the bridge. There are 14 lanes of traffic on two levels on the bridge and I had to keep very quiet while Miss W manoeuvred into the correct lanes and through tunnels.

Once over the river, we followed the New Jersey turnpike down the coast to Trenton area. Not a very nice sight down the turnpike – lots of polluting factories and swamp type land. But I think Miss W was just thankful we had made it out of at least part of New York City.

McDonalds, with its free wifi, is coming in very handy when Miss W is not quite sure which road to follow. We needed it again to get to our accommodation on the other side of the river at Trenton. Tomorrow we visit another school at Yardley.

Have you ever been over a very congested bridge? If you could go to New York City, what would you like to visit and why?