Thomas & Friends Day Out with Thomas is COMING to TOWN!

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January 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Last year we had the awesome opportunity to go to the A Day Out with Thomas tour and I can hardly wait to go again this year!! You can see tons of our photos and more about our personal experience here.  I know many of your either went or were interested in it last year so I wanted to make sure to tell you early enough this year so you could attend if it comes near you! Although we were offered tickets last year in exchange for posting about our experience it would be worth every penny if we had bought tickets. We drove a good hour and a half to get there and it was worth it – we had a blast!

This year the Day Out with Thomas tour is the GO GO Thomas Tour 2013. Events start as early as March 2nd and run through November 24th hitting states from Florida all the way to California, all the way over to New Hampshire, down to Texas and even several locations in Canada! You can view the entire 2013 schedule and locations here. Tickets cost just $18 + tax and definitely provide a day full of fun. I think we stayed last year only about 4 hours because it was SO hot we were just dripping in sweat. But there was plenty of covered tents for shade. There were toy trains to play with, blocks to build, bubble stations, coloring stations, free tattoos, videos to watch, storytelling stations, photo opps, face painting, make your own necklace stations, mini train rides, scavenger hunts and so much more. The kids even left with a little Thomas gift too! Each ticket includes one ride on Thomas – a real diesel engine and leaves every 45 minutes from 9am – 3:45pm on the day of the event. If you go this year send us a photo and we’ll post about it or you can upload it directly on to my Facebook page!

Make sure to check out the Day Out with Thomas website for more details and videos!

Here’s a little clip from the press release:

 

Day Out with Thomas: The Go Go Thomas Tour 2013 is a fun-filled event that provides children of all ages the opportunity to climb aboard and take a ride with Thomas as well as participate in Thomas & Friends themed activities.  The tour kicks off in March and is expected to welcome nearly one million passengers through November. For two back-to-back weekends, little engineers and their families are invited to take an approximate 25 minute on their favorite engine, meet Sir Topham Hatt®, Controller of the Railway and enjoy a day of Thomas & Friends and more.

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Off the Beaten Path – the Lost Towns under Lake Red Rock, Iowa

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December 2, 2012 by 5 Comments

If you are up for a fascinating and chilling read you would be interested to hear about the Lost Towns of Red Rock which is about 20 minutes from where I now live in Iowa. I will give you the condensed version and show you some incredible photos I took this morning to go along with this chilling tale.

Lake Red Rock, now the largest lake in Iowa, once had six towns there….that are still there today….under the lake. What you see here is all that is left of the town of Fifield. The lost town of Cordova is not too far away. We were out for a drive this morning and saw this dirt road that appeared to end into Lake Red Rock so we pulled over and walked down the road. We noticed that seagulls seemed to be just standing on top of the water. That’s when we realized we had found one of the lost towns.

Back in the mid 1900′s a dam was created to help re-route river waters back to neighboring towns. Things went wrong, the river flooded too fast and 6 towns were lost forever.

The dirt road that we walked down on took us to what was left of a road in one of these lost towns.

If you look carefully out over the water you can see something sticking up in a few places. Whether it’s just debris or remnants of the old town I don’t know.

It was a bit eerie but an interesting history lesson for our kids to learn this morning.

What made it even more eerie is that we had incredibly dense fog which blocked most things from our vision.

This is on the same bridge that I pictured above covered by fog. It was so weird to drive on it. We couldn’t see where the road was going and there was no one around.

So if you’re up for a good read and an interesting history lesson you should read the brochure from Marion County about the 6 lost towns under Lake Red Rock. The brochure is informative but not extensive. I would love to learn more about this tragedy and scout out the areas of the lost towns!

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Visiting Colorado – The Cave of the Winds

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November 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’m going to let you in on a little secret – I’m obsessed with rocks. It’s an obsession that has caught me for at least 20+ years and I seem to have passed it on to my children! Rocks, fossils, caves….it all falls into my obsession. So while visiting my sister in Colorado last week I was dying to go to Cave of the Winds in Manitou Springs.

In the past 6 months I think we’ve been through 3-4 different cave systems in at least 2 different states (see my post on Ruby Falls and Raccoon Mountain Caverns) and I want go more. Yes, caves all sort of look the same, but it’s just some obsession I have – don’t judge me! :)

The Cave of the Winds was a great tour – we had a fantastic tour guide that told us the entire history behind different parts of the cave and the boys who discovered it!

I will warn you – there are some tight places to walk and some steep steps to climb. It was a bit difficult with my 3 year old but my 5 year old was just fine.

I loved that there was enough lighting to get family pictures. We actually got family photos in several different locations in the cave.

And this cave even had a small waterfall which is always fun to see under the ground!

We went on the last tour of the day but there are a few things I wanted to note as of the time that I am creating this post.

Children 5 and under are FREE! That’s a big deal if you have several younger kids!

The gift shop has GREAT prices! When we went there was a 40% OFF all rocks sale – and I was in heaven! Each of my boys picked out beautiful nice sized quart crystals for about a quarter each. There were also a nice selection of fossils there too which I was drooling over! :)

It’s a STEEP road to drive up the mountain to get to the Cave of the Winds. I was in an accident recently where our car drove off the road into a steep ditch so I was terrified – just petrified on the road going up the hill. So just a note – if you have an older car that can’t handle steep inclines or if it’s icy out – be forewarned that you might want to take a different vehicle!!

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Visiting Colorado – Garden of the Gods – the Beaten Path

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November 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you’re never been to Garden of the Gods in Colorado put it on your travel list – it’s a gorgeous place to go! Not only is it amazing but it’s FREE! I’m fortunate enough that my sister lives just a few minutes away near Colorado Springs so any time that I visit her we get the chance to stop at Garden of the Gods. Basically it’s just a lot of rocks, but beautiful rocks! And there are plenty of trails around the rocks to hike through. It’s a stunning place for photos, and occasionally you can see a rock climber there!

We decided to take pictures of all of our kids there with their cousins so we hiked around for a while. If you google “Garden of the Gods” you’ll get OODLES of photos of huge rock formations, so I thought I would show you a few things you might not typically see in photos from Garden of the Gods.

But first you can see that these rocks are pretty much mountains behind such small kids!

There are a lot of trails in the park (did I mention it was free?!) – both paved and dirt. We even saw several groups riding on horseback. One path that we decided to take was actually a dried out creek bed. It was a bit rocky to walk through but really rewarding as it was just a different point of view and the kids could actually see the roots growing through the various layers of rocks.

As you can see in this photo there are different colored rocks, although most of them are red.


Along the trails you’ll also find several types of small bridges that are fun for kids and fun for photos!


Most of the rocks you are not supposed to climb on but there are a few that your kids can go crazy on!

This is one of our favorite photo spots that my sister found. It’s an old concrete tunnel sitting inside a dried up creek bed. And it definitely provided some shade for us on a sunny day so we stopped inside here for snacks and drinks!

Have you been to Garden of the Gods? It’s a great place to visit, and a great place for family pictures!

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The Covered Bridges of Madison County & 1 Room Stone Schoolhouse

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October 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

While driving through Iowa last weekend we spotted a sign off the highway that said Covered Bridges of Madison County. Although I’ve never read the book The Covered Bridges of Madison County or seen the movie, I’ve never seen a covered bridge and we thought it would be really cool to take a side trip on the way home from Omaha so we quickly pulled up these VERY easy maps from the county which labeled the local covered bridges and started our trekk down the mostly dirt roads. Since we had our younger kiddos with us who probably weren’t up to visiting all 6 of the remaining 19 covered bridges we decided on four of them which were sort of on the way home.

First we stopped here at Hogback Bridge, built in 1884.

I wasn’t expecting to be so mesmerized by a big tunnel of wood. It was rustic and simply beautiful. I can just imagine horses and wagons crossing these bridges!

By the time we reached the next one, the Cutler-Donahoe covered bridge you can see that it was getting pretty dark out. This one was cool because it is actually located in a city park and the kids were able to walk directly under the bridge and explore. I heard there was also a castle tower just down the road but because it was getting dark we didn’t make the trip down the road to see it.

The Cutler-Donahoe covered bridge was built in 1870 and is located in the town of Winterset. (also the birthplace of John Wayne)

Next we visited the Holliwell Bridge which I was excited to see because it’s the longest covered bridge at 122 feet long and built in 1880. This is the bridge that was featured in the movie The Bridges of Madison County.

Lastly we made our way out through the city of St. Charles to see the Imes covered bridge. As you can see it’s pitch black outside so I didn’t stay long but was also built in 1870.

Each bridge had a number inside and tons of graffiti. It was interesting to see all of the stories and sayings written on the inside of the bridge as well as the dates. It really made it seem more timeless.

One other interesting location to note that we visited on the way into Madison County is the 1 room Stone Schoolhouse built in 1874 out of native limestone.

It was closed but I was able to peek in the windows and see which was pretty cool.

You can still see the water pump outside and the outhouse that the children used! I can’t imagine having to go to the bathroom during class in the winter!! BRRR!

I hope you enjoyed a little bit of the history that we visited over the weekend!

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Visiting Omaha Children’s Museum

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October 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

We decided to use our reciprocal membership to visit the Omaha Children’s Museum since it was free for us! It was a fabulous children’s museum! One of the best I have been to for VERY kid-friendly exhibits. We first walked into the art area which was crazy and fun! The ENTIRE area was pretty trashed and full of all sorts of art materials the kids could grab. They had workers constantly cleaning the area of course but I loved that my kids could walk up to paint stations and just start grabbing paint brushes. They are a brave museum! :)

They had giant Lite Brite peg exhibits, giant Magna-Doodles, several different types of paint stations, craft stations, and below is a cool car covered in chalkboard paint that the kids could not only pretend to ride in but also chalk all over!

And if that isn’t cool enough there was a SUPERB area for kids to do their own face painting!! It was SO cool! I had never seen an exhibit like this in any other museum.

They had q-tips, small containers of water built into the desk and dried paint sticks that you rub the wet q-tips onto to get your paint. Of course both of my kids needed their faces covered in paint!

In the imagination section you could plant your own garden, milk a cow, ride a pig, climb in a fire truck, race through mazes, do water play, and plenty more!

There was also an entire ROOM of tubes that were just absolutely incredible. I couldn’t even keep up with it! You could balls in all sorts of tubes, make them fly, dump, shoot and do all sorts of other things across the room. It was crazy! We spent a lot of time in that room too!

And this chair was really cool so I wanted to make sure that I mentioned it. My son sat in the chair, and if you look at the left side of the picture where his right hand is he has his hand covered over a section hose. As he plugged the suction hose his entire chair would rise up as if it was a hot air balloon. When he left his hand go and released the suction his chair “floated” back down to it’s original position.

The Omaha Children’s Museum was a LOT of fun and I certainly wished we lived closer!! There was SO much to do there – it was like a giant creativity playground!

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Visiting the Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium in Omaha, Nebraska

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October 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Among our numerous excursions this weekend we also visited the Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium in Omaha, Nebraska. Had I known it would be absolutely FRIGID outside I might have thought twice about going! But we were only in Omaha for one day and I really wanted to see the zoo since I had heard so many fantastic things about it. I’ll be the first to tell you that it was SO cold outside we only stayed to see about half the zoo unfortunately. I would have loved to see the rest but the kids were just freezing and exhausted! There were a few things that stuck out to me right away that put Henry Doorly Zoo on my list to see -

1. It has the LARGEST indoor desert in the world.
2. It showcases America’s LARGEST indoor rainforest.
3. The aquarium and zoo were a combined visit all under one admission.

THIS is the Desert Dome - isn’t it amazing?! It was SO cold and windy outside we practically sprinted right into this warm desert!

It was certainly huge! And there were ALL types of animals inside. Everything from iguanas, bobcats, ducks, snakes, foxes, EVEN a  few hummingbird exhibits which was really awesome!

I especially love the petroglyphs that were on some of the rock walls.
Then we walked over to the HUGE indoor insect exhibit and butterfly pavilion. It was enormous and by far the best butterfly exhibit I’ve ever seen. In fact the zoo breeds and hatches their own specimens and exhibits it so you can see it! There were just rows and rows of chrysalids which were neatly displayed by species – it was SO awesome!

Another really neat part of the zoo was the Lied Jungle – America’s largest indoor rainforest. I can’t even begin to describe the vastness of this area – we must have wandered around for an hour. There were SO many different levels, plants, species – just wow! I saw HUGE soft shelled turtles, tapirs, hippos, gators, monkeys of all kinds, and SO many more animals. One that my husband IMMEDIATELY spotted and just swooned over was the arapaima.

Ok – I said the same thing – HUH?!?! My husband is an absolute NUT about the TV series River Monsters. These fish, arapaima, are featured on one of the segments in the Amazon and are the largest known freshwater fish reaching to 10 feet in size and over 400 pounds!

Next we walked over to the aquarium as we were basically viewing everything indoors since it was so cold outside.

There was PLENTY of things to see inside the aquarium section. One thing I had never even heard of before were “Upside Down Jellyfish”. They are just what they sound like – jellyfish that live upside down!

The displays were just fantastic and considering that it is included in the admission to the zoo I was thrilled.

And of course our favorites were the plethora of sting rays and sharks since we miss our “native” animals in Florida!

Next we headed to another HUGE section of the zoo – the nocturnal animals. You have to travel through a very dimly lit cave where all of the nocturnal animals are held. Naked mole rats. HUGE HUGE caves with at least hundreds of bats flying around, a massive area that looks just like the bayou in Louisiana filled with gators, beavers and other animals, and one other animal that I had never seen other than online or in books:

an Aardvark! I thought it was pretty cool that I saw SO many new animal species at this zoo in Omaha that I had never before seen in my life! If you are ever in the Omaha area I HIGHLY recommend the Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium. It was SUPER awesome. Plus we received 50% OFF with our reciprocal zoo passes from our zoo in Iowa. Hopefully someday we can go back and explore the rest of the zoo!

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Visiting the Science Center of Iowa in Des Moines

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October 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I told you we’ve been pretty busy this week! Not only have we been to the Blank Park Zoo, Stone State Park and Dorothy Pecaut Nature Center, and the Scarecrow Farm but we ALSO visited the Science Center of Iowa in Des Moines. Although it was fairly small I was impressed at how kid-friendly and well done this science center way! The exhibits were just perfect! Kid-friendly, incredibly hands-on and interactive enough that you can easily spend at least a few hours there. Not to mention that they also have educational demonstrations going on throughout the day! We went to one with dry ice and liquid nitrogen experiments that was of course a huge “wow” factor for the kids! We didn’t get to explore quite everything but I know there is also an IMAX there as well.

I loved this huge “pin” wall where you could press your body up against it to form your own creation!

There was also an entire “Bubble Bay” section – check out those HUGE containers of bubbles!! It was really neat and there were plenty of different type of bubble wands to try out!

This wing of the science museum was really neat. There was a cave to crawl through, rubbings to create, plenty of live animals to see (snakes, frogs, fish, etc.) as well as an area where kids could create their own “news” station which actually played live on the local news station every day!

Where we spent most of our time was in the building area. My son & I built our own LEGO cars to race together. I was pretty impressed that his car beat mine every time!

Then I had never seen the next thing we did before -it was SO cool! They had these big fake eggs in a box that you were supposed to wrap up with scraps of foam strips and straps to hold it together. Once you think your egg was padded enough you put it on the gigantic TALL conveyor belt shown below which would carry your packaged “egg” to the top near the ceiling then drop it down to the floor. The point of course was to ensure that after the “egg” dropped it was still neatly packaged.

I thought this was a FANTASTIC hands-on learning opportunity for my son who is just 5 years old. He was able to experiment with different ways to wrap his “egg” and make predictions on what he thought would happen to his egg based on how he wrapped it. We must have sent 10 eggs up neatly wrapped before he moved on to another area.

Also on the back wall was this awesome “Ball Wall”. I wish I had taken a video for you to see but you put the balls in the yellow cone-shaped baskets. The air would suck the balls through the tubs, across the wall and they would shoot out in different areas. So so incredibly fun! We were on a bit of a time crunch when we visited the museum but there were also areas to build bridges, create electricity from water flow, shoot little cannons, etc. that we didn’t get a chance to do. Overall it was a neat science museum. The exhibits were well planned and well thought out. I’m glad we have a membership there now and am looking forward to going back for another visit!

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Visiting the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa

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October 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

On yet another one of our educational excursions this week we decided to head into Des Moines and check out the Blank Park Zoo. We knew we were headed to Nebraska this weekend so I actually went to the zoo to purchase a membership for our family so that we would get a discount on the zoo we were visiting in Nebraska. I was very interested to check out the zoo since we’ve just moved to Iowa and we were really missing our Florida zoos and theme parks!

We bought a family pass to the zoo AND to the science center for under $160 for a year which I didn’t think was too horrible. It will definitely give our kids something to do when we have to head to Des Moines to do our shopping.

There was a really cool enclosed area where we walked on the path and there must have been at least 10 kangaroos in there. One even hopped right in front of us and stopped! This kangaroo photo spot looks like a real animal!! Although the zoo is crazy small compared to what we are used to it is a VERY nice zoo and plenty of spots for the kids to touch, crawl, take photos, etc.

Here is the “kids” area and petting zoo. I was a little sad to notice that the kids couldn’t actually go in with the animals but you could feed the goats from a little cutout section in the fence.

Then there was an indoor area with this neat swinging rope bridge! The Discovery Center had lots of awesome animals and exhibits to look at and is nicely built. There is a bat cave to crawl in with geodes built into the walls. Places to sit “inside” the fish tank. Waterfalls, birds freely flying/walking around, etc. The sea lions had a nice and large exhibit. And the prairie dogs had a cool exhibit even though we didn’t see any animals. There was a tunnel that took the kids into the middle of the prairie dog exhibit in a small glass room where they could pretend they were also prairie dogs in the exhibit.

And this was my absolute favorite part of the zoo during our first trip there. This particular otter and my friends became good friends! I’m not even sure how they got started but my son would run from one side of the tank to the other side and the otter would follow him! They spent a LOT of time racing each other – it was SO incredibly cool! In fact it was so fun we went back 3 different times during our trip that day to play with this otter and every time he would race with my son back and forth across his tank! It definitely gave both my son and the otter plenty of exercise!! :)

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Visiting Scarecrow Farm near Sioux City, Iowa

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October 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Yesterday after we visited Stone State Park in Sioux City, Iowa we stopped by the Scarecrow Farm. Their website looked cute and I needed an activity that would take us a few hours until my husband got out of his job trainings and the Scarecrow Farm proved to be a great choice!

One of my boys favorite things to do is play in the corn pits! I was thrilled to see such a HUGE corn pit here as this is where my boys spent the majority of their time!

And of course every pumpkin farm needs it’s own pumpkin patch. They also offered train rides, trike rides, and hayrides all included in the admission cost.

There was a small hay bale kiddie maze as well as a pretty good corn maze too! It was my very first corn maze believe it or not!

They also had a small petting zoo in off to the side, a spooky ghost stories area set up, and these SUPER awesome hay bale swings!!

They were plenty big enough for both of my boys to swing on! Have you ever seen these types of swings before? I thought it was pretty creative as I hadn’t seen this idea before.

Let me tell you that the corn pits are an AWESOME sensory experience for kids! I won’t lie – I was in the corn pit too!! My boys LOVE to be almost completely covered in the corn pit. :) We had a great time together here. Visiting a pumpkin farm is a must do on my list every fall for our family and the Scarecrow Farm was a good choice! It was extremely kid friendly and looked like it was family owned which I love supporting!

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