Month: May 2019

I went to a recording studio and record studio and looked around. Daddy and I recorded a song on a 1947 Voice-O-Graph. A Voice-O-Graph is a way to record your voice into a small record. The booth is the size of an old fashioned telephone box that you get inside. Voice-o-Graph used to be at fairs and other fun events and there was even one at the top of the Empire State Building in New York City! Once tape recorders started being popular, these were not really popular anymore. This one has been fixed up.

I visited a Bourbon distillery. Bourbon is a drink with alcohol in it and it is not appropriate for children. Bourbon is mostly made in Kentucky. I learned that 95% of it is made in Kentucky, actually. The tour guide explained how it is made. There is a lot of very special equipment. There is something called mash at the end and that doesn’t have any alcohol in it– I think it is the used up corn and grains. Farmers come to the distillery to pick it up and feed it to their cows. This made me worried at first because I thought that feeding them this would kill them. I don’t eat cows.

When I was a few years younger I stopped by this place that has a slide with little carts and it is called an Alpine Slide. I was too small to ride it then though, so we kept driving. But this time we went here on purpose to ride. It was so fast and fun. I rode with my Daddy. Mama rode with my sister. Mama had to really hold on to my sister because the lift up is pretty open and up high. The bar that protects you is sometimes up high or down low. Mama and my sister got a down-low bar for one ride and so she had to be extra careful. My hat flew off on my last ride and then was run over, so now my hat has markings on it.

I learned a little bit about Ramadan. My auntie explained it to me. She is part of a religion and she is a religion called Muslim.

Ramadan is a special time when Muslim people do not eat or drink all day unless the sun has set and it is dark outside. It is called fasting when someone does this.

I learned that going without anything to eat or drink each day all day for a month helps someone remember to not take things for granted and appreciate what you have. 

I learned about hydroponics and aquaponics. They are pretty much similar. Aquaponics is where water is used to make food and plant vitamins are added to the water. In hydroponics, fish make the plant vitamins and that helps the plants grow as food. I saw this inside of a pizza restaurant!! The food being grown was basil for pizzas and the fish that were giving their poop to the plants as vitamins were Japanese Koi. I had pizza with cheese that was made from nuts instead of from cow milk. Sometimes this is not so tasty but this pizza was so very, very good.

Another thing I liked here is I got to try Sweet Tea. I love tea and this is just tea with a lot of sugar in it so it is very tasty to me.

The last thing I liked was that the art on the wall was all made from pizza boxes. I love when art is made out of non art supplies.

I hiked, watched a film, worked on my Junior Ranger booklet, and earned a new badge! Mama bought us a stuffed River Otter and a baby Opossum. I saw a dam on my hike but no river otter. I wish I had seen one! What I did see on our hike was a snake in a creek I was crossing. The snake was flopping up onto the rocks and the snake had a SALAMANDER IN HER MOUTH!!! We looked at the snake examples in the Ranger Station and we are pretty sure she was a Northern Water Snake. My sister hiked without holding hands and said “hi” and “bye” to every single person we met on the hiking path. She fell several times and each time she just dusted her hands off, (we tell her “dust it!” when she falls so it gives her something to do instead of cry) but the last fall gave her some big scratches on her little knees. I felt so sad for her but she was too mad to let me kiss her. I only saw one salamander but there are many, many types here. The one salamander I did see was in that snake’s mouth!

I hiked, watched a film, worked on my Junior Ranger booklet, and earned a new badge! Mama bought us a stuffed River Otter and a baby Opossum. I saw a dam on my hike but no river otter. I wish I had seen one! What I did see on our hike was a snake in a creek I was crossing. The snake was flopping up onto the rocks and the snake had a SALAMANDER IN HER MOUTH!!! We looked at the snake examples in the Ranger Station and we are pretty sure she was a Northern Water Snake. My sister hiked without holding hands and said “hi” and “bye” to every single person we met on the hiking path. She fell several times and each time she just dusted her hands off, (we tell her “dust it!” when she falls so it gives her something to do instead of cry) but the last fall gave her some big scratches on her little knees. I felt so sad for her but she was too mad to let me kiss her. I only saw one salamander but there are many, many types here. The one salamander I did see was in that snake’s mouth!

I have been to most of the states but this was a new one for me today. North Carolina. I went to a visitor center to learn about this state.

My sister wears diapers, she does not use the toilet yet but she is at the age where if she has to poop she hides and squats and peeks at us. Inside the Visitor Center I saw her doing that and all of the ladies working there had been talking to us and saying how darling we were. I told Daddy, “She’s doing a big duke right now!” And the ladies there said “Oh my” and another one said “Wellll then!” And they seemed quite surprised. Mama was not happy that I said this. Duke is a slang term for poop but it’s not a very rude word or a “bad” word. But Mama and I discussed how talking about poop, no matter what the word, is rude in public. I also learned that people in this area might have more rules and feelings about manners or special ways to behave.

Something very funny to me is that I learned that Duke is actually a college… a very expensive one that is hard to go to if you want to go there. I saw a sign that said Duke Center and that was just SO funny to me.

I met a woman who grew up on a farm and was selling strawberries. She is going to be 86 in July! Visitors could pick their own berries or buy ones that were already picked. If picking, there are guidelines for selecting berries. For example, do not pick ones that are a little bit white or green at the top. They are not ready! These berries had gotten wet in the rain so they were not going to last too long, which is good since we ate the whole box load.

Well, this was an interesting food to try! I sure liked it. My sister did not.

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I visited the Castle Clinton National Monument and earned a Junior Ranger badge. While I was doing this with Daddy, my sister walked around with Mama looking for birds.

It was an old fort to defend. Later on, it was used as an immigration center like Ellis Island, then later on gardens, an opera house, and an aquarium. Now it’s close to where people buy their tickets for taking the ferry to Liberty Island or Ellis Island.

It used to be connected to Manhattan by a bridge but then the water area was all filled in with land and so now it is a part of a park called Battery Park.

The day I was going to Liberty Island, the ranger would not give me a Junior Ranger booklet because she didn’t think I would be able to finish it if I were going to see the Statue of Liberty. So I went back the next day and got one and completed it and the same Ranger was there.

Afterwards, I had a conversation with my parents and learned what the word personable means. Not everyone is personable. Rangers are usually personable.

A while ago, I read a book about some people surviving the World Trade Center bombings in September 2001. I know a lot about it. Today I visited the World Trade Center memorial. A memorial is a place where people go to remember someone or something. This memorial is in the place where one of the very tall World Trade Center buildings used to be. It is a square shaped (just like the buildings) fountain wall going down deep into another square almost like a box. No matter where someone stands they cannot see to the bottom of it. The names of the people who died are in metal and if the person who died is having their birthday, a white Rose is placed at their name. This place felt sad. It was easy to share for a long while. 

I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. This bridge was built 136 years ago. The man who built it got his foot crushed and his toes had to be removed. This sounds horrible but then his body got sick from an infection in his blood and he ended up dying. After he died, his son took over the bridge building work but he got very, very sick from working on the columns that go under water and he was no longer able to do the work. So his wife studied architecture and math and took it over!

I visited my friend who teaches at a boarding school. A boarding school is where students live at the school. My friend teaches Physics. I know about inertia and momentum so I think that is what physics is about. This boarding school did not have students in it when I took my tour because they all went home.

I earned my Junior Ranger badge for the sand dunes in Indiana. I learned a little bit about the animals here- mink, raccoons, and small foxes.

I like finding different plants from different places when I travel. The trees and moss here are different than at my home.

I swam inside of a crater filled with water. It was warm water and I liked that a lot but what I did not care for was wearing a life jacket because free swimming is not allowed. Every single person has to wear a life jacket.

I learned that the water was around 90 or maybe 95 degrees and it is naturally there, not filled up by people. The water gets heated by the earth’s insides, where a lot of heat is trapped. The walls and ceiling are made by minerals building up a little bit at a time for a very long time. I think it was 10,000 years. There is a hole in the top and I could see the sky. About 25 years ago or so, people used to get into the crater through the top! But now there’s a tunnel to go through the side.

I got mixed up in my mind about this at first. I thought that all craters were created by meteors and that’s just not true!

I found a beautiful area near the gas station where there were cotton tails. I took the fluff out and it was so windy it all flew into our car and Mama screamed with surprise. Mama got back in the car and just let me do this for a while. I loved it. This was a really fun stop to let all this fluff blow around.

Population means how many people live someplace. This place used to have a family that lived here but they moved. You can’t exactly buy a town but a businessman from Vietnam bought everything in this town and a man who was in a war in Vietnam was actually the caretaker of the area for him. I have not been to Vietnam but my Grandpa has because he was in a war there. Mama told me that this businessman bought the general store and sold his Vietnamese coffee at the general store and so we wanted to buy some but the general store is permanently closed so we could not!!

I visited a special rose garden where rose water and rose oil are produced. I got to help stuff the container used for distilling the roses and making oil.

It was just glorious to smell the enchanting scents and I spritzed rose water on myself and my sister and Mama.

I learned that to harvest the roses for rose oil, it is so expansive. Each pound of roses creates about one drop of rose oil!!! This is why it is very special.

I went to Mel Gould’s Buryville. Mama says there is a documentary about him so we will watch that soon. He was born in 1929 or 1930 or so, in California. He moved to this area in 1955 and has filled his property yard area with metal sculptures from vehicles and machines. There is a lot of wind here and wind is included in all of the sculptures, meaning they move on springs or twirl with the wind. They were really nice to look at. His underground workshop is an old school bus, camper, grain solo and a 55,000 gallon gas tank that he buried!! It would have been very interesting to look at. We all also hoped he was home and well enough to come out to maybe offer us a tour but we didn’t see anyone at all. I learned that Mel Gould helped the artist, Christo with some engineering of art before. Christo has made very big art and is very well known. I saw pictures of a fence made a long time ago by that artist. We put $3 in the donation box.

I learned all about people traveling from the East part of the United States to the West part. People who traveled by covered wagon had a really hard time. They had to leave behind their belongings on the route because sometimes they had to push their wagons up hill. This meant they left items behind like a piano. I know if you are moving you would want to bring your piano but it seems very difficult to take a piano on a journey like that. So many people had to leave behind their books that it was called “the prairie library” which sounds a little bit silly. I also learned about the Pony Express where mail was sent on horseback. Also I listened to audio about the Reed and Donner groups who had a VERY hard time. The gold rush brought a lot of people west also. When cars were very big and gas for the cars was inexpensive, people also traveled the same ways. This museum was in an arch shape and went over an entire freeway!

Found some ants. I do not think they were fire ants.