We made the trip across WV, and most of OH today and landed just outside of Cincinnati. On the way, we dropped by a little cake/decorating shop that Michelle was interested in. She said it was a nice shop, but the staff kind of had that "if it weren't for all of these darned customers, my job would easy..." attitude, so she was a little disappointed, but still found some stuff she can't find easily anywhere else.

Our campground is another state-park type campground, and after one of the most irritating check in procedures I've ever seen, we found the campsite, and it's quite nice, but electric only, so we're on the trailer pump for water. Mid week and late in the season, we have the campground basically to ourselves, and the water is for the most part hot in the shower house, so I think we'll do fine.

We just found out that John McCain and Sarah Palin will both be doing a rally about 30 minutes from our campground, so we decided we might as well go to round out the political stuff, especially with McCain there. We'll get the tickets tomorrow, and the rally is Wednesday.

Tuesday Update:

Today was a fun day...we went down to Kentucky and visited the Creation Museum. It sounds like a long trip, but when you're in Cincinnati, you can go through several states in a matter of a 1/2 hour, so we were in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, all on the same drive.

The Creation Museum is a place that uses Biblical truths to explain the origins of the Earth and Universe. There is obviously a lot of controversy in our time about teaching of evolution, an intelligent designer, Creation, etc. The Creation Museum provides information based on the truths in the Bible, and as a Christian family, we found it quite educational and it really brought the information we've studied all of our lives to life.

I was pretty impressed with the overall quality of the museum, from the architecture to the displays and the multimedia experience. They even have what I call Disney quality 4d shows and animatronic characters. I was worried that this might fall into the "Christian knockoff" category we often see attempted, but no way, this is a very quality museum on par with any that we've seen. We really enjoyed our visit.

Wednesday Update:

Today was a very full day. We started out by heading down to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in downtown Cincinnati. We were really impressed with this museum. Although there was a ton of information to share, we loved that they had a very good balance between text, visual aids, and multimedia. We felt that the way they presented the information made it enjoyable and informative. The center traced the Underground Railroad as it assisted thousands of slaves as they escaped slavery to Mexico, Florida, and Canada. My favorite part was the multimedia presentation that put you right in the action and gave you a first-person experience of what it might have been like being on the run and getting assistance from the "conductors" of the Underground Railroad.

The 2nd half of the day was spent at the McCain/Palin rally. Being our second rally in a week, we pretty much knew how things would go, although this one was quite a bit longer than the Palin one, and it seemed that they were running a bit behind, which meant we stood around for a long time waiting for things to get going.

After a few local politicians, Gretchen Wilson, country star, performed one song. Seemed like a lot of effort for one song, but I think they were running behind schedule, so they cut her set short.

It was fun to see the planes fly in (we were in a hangar, so right at the airport), and they did a good job of building excitement. We ended up with great spots (it was standing room only), only about 20 feet from the stage. It was fun to see Sarah and Todd Palin as well as John and Cindy McCain. Mrs. Palin did basically the same speech as the last one we saw, and McCain did his "straight-talk" speech. It's a fun experience to be in, and with all of the people so excited for their candidate. I'm really glad we took part in the events, it really gave all of us a better sense of the whole process.

On the way to St. Louis for a few days.

Faith's blog:
Yesterday we went to the Creation Musuem. It was real cool. It was all about how different beliefs think differently about how the earth was created. I loved it!

Kenzie's blog:
We got to see McCain AND Palin at a rally! It was cool! That’s other than the fact that we waited for 2 hours to see them. And finally, when we were there, we couldn’t see a thing! We also got to see the Creation Museum. It was really cool! The coolest part was the ark exhibit. It was cool!

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Cincinnati, OH

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