For as long as I can remember there has always been the Jaycee Fair.  I remember being little and getting to go to the fair.  When we are children things can seem so big, there were so many lights and what appeared to be hundreds of rides and games.  We would go home with the fair fish in the bag.  The fairgrounds seemed so huge-   The dusty gravel crunching under our feet as we made our way in and out of the crowd, all the faces, the carnival workers it seemed as if it took the whole evening to navigate through the rides and food carts – the smell of hot sugar and grease filled the air-cotton candy, elephant ears, funnel cakes, fair fries, corn dogs.  These smells even to this day bring me back to the warm spring nights.  The lights of the carnival swirling around.   Every now and then the smell of chlorine would float over from the pool and intermingle with the other sweet scents.

Ah late Spring, first the Memorial Day Parade, second the bittersweet ending of the school year, next the Jaycee Fair, really the beginning of summer which always seemed so long.   It was about this time the lightning bugs would start appearing in the evening.   This meant evening games of tag and catching the lightning bugs sticking them in jars, covering the jars with plastic and punching holes in the top so they could breathe.  Every now and then curled up in bed looking at my jar of the little golden flashing lights beside me- I would think “they need to be free”, and so they would become free in my room.  The glow of the little lights and the soft evening breeze coming in the windows would create such wonderful dreams.

I am past this phase of my life-now the fair seems so tiny compared to the big eyes of my youth.  My girls are past this phase.  Now our Grandson is entering this phase-eyes big with excitement, his little head all sweaty from the hot evenings and all the great questions he has.  So the cycle starts all over again.

In May of 2013 we were returning from the Limberlost-you can read about that in my prior Ramblings- and we made many stops along the way.  One stop was to eat at a Frisch’s Big Boy in Dayton, Ohio, of course Steve and I are going to eat at any restaurant that has some kind of giant or quirky thing in front of it-especially if it is holding food!   Prior to this was a little detour to the Wegerzyn Gardens which are part of the Dayton metro park system.  It was a great place to stretch our legs and of course for me to snap some images.  The park had this web of vines that reminded me of an enormous beehive hairdo that you could walk through.  I loved it, made me feel like a kid again, I only wish I could grow something that cool in my backyard, but alas no green thumb here.  I would highly recommend stopping at these gardens they were quirky and also had a children’s garden –an interactive garden for the whole family.

Moving on down the road we headed into Marion, Ohio and what did we find?  A giant steam shovel, should we stop?  Why of course we should.  We parked the old motorhome and hopped on out and into the shovel.  The funny thing about this stop was the odd circle that only showed up in the forward images of the shovel and in no other images on this trip.  Both before and after cleaning the lens-weird?  Also no flash, and only in the shovel in front of Steve and behind me-  Dare I say orb.  Who knows?  That is the mystery of the shovel.  So after a few minutes of climbing in, out and on top of the shovel, we discovered another treat-trains!

Bonus for this stop it was the Marion Union Station, it was not open at the time but it is a great place to spot trains.  I did get some train images and talked together about how excited our Grandson would be to see the trains and the giant shovel!  He gets excited as us about the kind of things we visit, his attention span is just a bit shorter than ours. 

As we continued on through Marion we came upon the Warren G. Harding Memorial.  This is a very impressive structure, and of course another place to stretch our legs.  We did not tour the home on this trip, but really enjoyed the Tomb, I know how often do you say “Wow really enjoyed that tomb” but this stop was one of those.  As impressive as Warren G. Harding’s tomb is-if you are a tomb lover and find yourself in Canton, Ohio check out the McKinley Monument, also very impressive.

At the beginning of our return trip from Richmond, Virginia. In February of 2012 we stopped by to visit Maria and our Grandson,  our son-in-law was at work so it was just the four of us.  We spent a little time in Smithfield, Virginia.  We visited a beautiful park there Windsor Castle Park.  The park is pretty spectacular and quite large,  with nice walking paths and interesting structures.  We had lunch in Smithfield with them-Smithfield is known as the ham capitol of the world.  They have a great museum there.  I will have to do some ramblings just on Smithfield another time. 

We left there to continue on home meandering and stretching our legs a lot since I had a pretty bad fall a few days before this trip and had a pretty uncomfortable pelvis with a hairline fracture –so pain medicine and a lot of breaks in the trip were helpful. 

Another of our stops was the Durham, North Carolina Tobacco Historic District.  This area caught my eye with it’s impressive Lucky Strike smoke stack and water tower.  The factory was remodeled with different shops all around it.  I was disappointed the light wasn’t better this trip, but we all know weather is weather –at least those of us from Ohio know how that is.  I definitely want to get back to this area.   We had very little time to spend at any one place on this trip.  That being said I think at some point we need to head down to Durham with hopefully warmer weather, better health and better light.