Morning came early for us at Caesar Creek State Park just east of Cincinnati. It started raining punctually at 6 AM, and the shower lasted just long enough to wake us up and get our tent wet. That was annoying, but at least we didn't have to eat breakfast in the rain.
The rain shower meant that fossil hunting was out, so instead, we visited Serpent Mound. Serpent Mound is an earth monument constructed on the order of a thousand years ago by one of the early Native American cultures, but there is still a great deal of uncertainty as to which one. [Elizabeth sidebar: or *when* - there's about a 3000 year window of time which it may have been constructed] Parts of the mound align with the locations where the sun rises and sets at the solstices and equinoxes. It is beautiful, and it is a marvel of engineering that it has remained intact for so long.
We then set out for Cleveland to visit one of Christina's friends. We met him at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
Parking there required some ingenuity. Elizabeth's bike has been riding on a bike rack on the back of her car. When we would stop for the night, she would either bring it into the hotel room or cable lock it to one of the wheels of her car. Obviously, neither of these options would work in a parking garage, and there were no bike racks to be found. What to do?
Christina hit on an idea. Elizabeth could back into the space and then we would cable-lock the bike to the railing of the parking garage! Genius! THIS sort of thinking is why we're at Harvard! Better not forget to remove the cable lock before we tried to drive away, though... [Elizabeth sidebar: we didn't forget... and the bike, car, fence, and lock are still quite happy]
The museum was small but excellent, and my friend was a real trooper for following us around the museum while we did some hardcore nerding out. It was also gratifying to look at the fossil exhibits and realize the number of formations which generated these important finds which we had been able to visit in their native habitat. Cleveland is famous for its Devonian fishes and, in particular, its Dunkleosteus, so of course we spent a lot of time there. [Elizabeth sidebar: the museum, while utterly fantastic, was severely lacking in docents, which I was surprised about. Having been to a number of museums, and even worked at some, I know that docents are an incredibly important part of the museum educational and outreach model, so I was rather surprised to have absolutely no one in uniform on the floors. There weren't even random security people wandering around.]
Later that evening, we all went down to the beach on Lake Erie for sunset. Elizabeth gave us all a physical oceanography lesson about waves, we discovered the most amazing bench swing, and in general it was very, very pretty.
No comments:
Post a Comment