Our weekend in Hocking Hills.

No more Kentucky days! I’m kinda bummed about that since last year I briefly met a mom I had been chatting with since I was bout 5 months pregnant with Devin. Nevertheless, after going there for six years we’ve moved on to another location, with no complaints from me! Kathy found us a great cabin in 80 acres of woods in Nelsonville, Ohio, more specifically, the Hocking Hills area fifty miles southeast of Columbus. Both Tim and my brother in law Jeff know this area for hunting and both wish their schedules had been different so they could have joined us. With five kids and five adults, we were already a full cabin!

Before leaving I had printed out online directions to our cabin in the woods. The page was full of turn after turn on roads I felt I’d get lost on. I asked Tim if I could borrow one of the two GPS systems his company owns, but he was taking one to N.D., and someone was taking the other. I was fine with that. I had the directions and my cell phone; we’d make it one way or the other. Then Tim came home and thanked me for patching up his favorite hunting jacket that a mouse had made a path through with my own Tom Tom brand GPS! I quickly got familiar with it and chose a male voice called Richard to help me get to Nelsonville. Soon I was referring to this piece of technology as him or Richard.

He got us there with no problems at all. Once we arrived at the two track to the cabin the blue arrow on Richard’s screen that represented the GPS unit in my van floated off into nothing, but the cabin was easy to find once on that rugged road. The boys and I arrived about the same time as my parents. After waiting a few minutes for the owners to come and give us the right key (parents had already stopped at their house and were given the wrong one) we followed the leaf covered two track to the cabin. Sister Jennifer arrived about an hour or so later and Karyn and the kids arrived the next morning.

Even though we had seen each other in July, every meeting we have is like a reunion. I get family withdrawals living in Ohio with no family around. (Another hint to those who want to start new…just in case you’re feeling dense.  ) We didn’t have a lot planned, but what we did schedule was going to be fun!

Karyn and the kids got there in time to unpack before we had lunch and then headed to the train station. Devin got to ride a real train! After about a 30 minute delay the whistle blew and we were off. We sat together in an open car with a roof. At first I thought the wind was going to be cold, but it was perfect. When I heard the entire adventure was three hours long, I thought choosing to sit in the open with Bryce was going to be a problem, but Bryce loved the train ride. When we started moving he settled back in my lap and watched the scenery go by.

We passed some wide open spaces and saw some deer, but we also clanked and bounced through some dilapidated looking neighborhoods. There were houses that were only ten feet or so away from the track! Thank goodness the only train that used those tracks was the passenger train we had tickets for. I bet naps in the houses on our path weren’t scheduled around a baby’s routine, but also the whistle blowing train as well!

Our tour started off in one direction and then stopped and reversed back the way we had come. It was annoying at first until the people on the other side of our bench agreed to switch seats. On the way back we went past the train station and on to a remake of an 1800’s village on the property of a college. We leisurely strolled through weathered cabins where the children walked on stilts, rang a school house bell and made their own wax candles which ended up looking like ginger roots.

The next field trip was to COSI. Take a look at the link and see the pictures taken there for a narrative of what we did. Richard (my GPS) let us down a little. The COSI he took us to was actually a branch of the science museum at the Columbus Museum of Art. We were only about a mile away, but we had to park and ask for directions. (Can you guess how much I detest city driving??)

We read that with our age group (children, not the adults!) it was estimated that our trip there would be about two and a half to three hours. We arrived at about 12:30 and left as they were closing at 6:00! With five kids there was plenty for us to do and linger at. It was a great time.

The next morning Richard took us to Sears where we had the first appointment at the portrait studio there. Like last year the children were well behaved and we were quickly done. It may have helped that we had gummy worms and Blue’s Clue’s on a portable DVD player that kept the attention of the younger ones!

When we weren’t out and about we were in the cabin enjoying each others company. We played adult and kid games, decorated an edible haunted house, turned orange craft foam and real pumpkins into Jack O’ Lanterns. The cabin came with a trail we estimated to be about half a mile long. We walked that together and the children just had a lot of fun playing in the small front yard with the leaves, stones and dirt. Oh – the cabin also came with a hot tub and a fire pit, although we didn’t use the latter.

I probably missed something in there that you might learn about later amongst all the pictures I have yet to post. Hope I was able to convey to you, Tiffany, what you missed and am looking forward to you being there next October. 