G18

After a bit of debate, Duke and I decided to take our talents to Cincinnati for the Fourth
of July. It’s about an hour drive, so we watched a few episodes of How I Met Your
Mother* this morning and got to Cincinnati around lunchtime.

*In case you’re wondering, we’re now on season six, which is the last one on Netflix.

After eating lunch downtown, we travelled to the Cincinnati Museum Center. The
Museum Center is the old train station, which now contains several museums. We
purchased tickets to all the museums, but ended up spending all day in the museum
of science and natural history. The exhibits in the museum were actually extremely
unimpressive, but we found plenty of ways to entertain ourselves.

First, we explored the cave exhibit. The exhibit is set up like an actual cave, with narrow
winding passageways covered with fake rock and stalactites. There were two options
for this exhibit: the beginners’ path, or the advanced path. We chose the advanced path
because we’re badasses. There were a few tunnels for kids to play in, so of course I
crawled through them.

There was also an ice age exhibit. This exhibit had several interactive touch screen games
for kids. One let you create an ice age creature by picking from the skeleton parts of a
few different extinct animals. Another was a quiz about things you learned in the exhibit.
I took the quiz and got a perfect score, but Duke refused to take it because he knew he
couldn’t match my accomplishment. There was also a game in which you were supposed
to “find” the glacier, but the glacier in the game was actually impossible to find.

Finally (and most importantly), there was a dinosaur exhibit. There were a few dinosaur
skeletons and things, but I spent most of my time there playing with the little plastic
dinosaurs.** While we were in the dinosaur exhibit, a pterodactyl attacked Duke. This
was probably the high point of my day. You should ask him about it.

**I’m pretty sure Duke will be posting pictures.

After we finished in the museum, we spent a while playing in the gift shop. They were
selling little plastic guns that lit up and made laser noises, so obviously Duke and I got
into a gunfight in the middle of the store. A random guy even grabbed a gun and joined
in. The gunfight lasted until I found the plastic T-Rex head with a handle that moved the
jaw so you could grab things. I spent the next ten minutes trying to steal Duke’s hat off
his head with the T-Rex mouth. Unfortunately I wasn’t successful.

After tiring of the gift shop, we ate ice cream in the conveniently located ice cream shop.
It was almost five, and there was a movie showing in the IMAX theater at five, so we got
tickets. The movie was about arctic animals, mostly polar bears. It was kind of short, but
it was fairly interesting, and the polar bears were awesome.

We had some time to kill after the movie, so we drove across the river and explored the
town in Kentucky that’s just across from Cincinnati. There was an aquarium there, but it

was going to close in half an hour and tickets were a bit pricey, so we couldn’t go.

After dinner, we found a free outdoor music show downtown. It was some reggae
group. We watched that for a while, and then walked down to the river to see fireworks.
Cincinnati’s fireworks are set off from a few of the bridges, so you can sit in the park on
the riverside and watch the fireworks over the river. It was a pretty good way to watch
things blow up.

Neither of us had high expectations for Cincinnati, but we both had a lot of fun, and
we’re already planning our next trip down there.

I hope this is the longest blog post I ever write.