14 hours in the car is a long time for anyone, but for a three year old it is an eternity.  But really, Isaac did very well.  Mom planned a tiny surprise for every new state so he had something to look forward to, and we did do a lay over in Pittsburgh, but the final leg into Xenia was quite surreal.  I hadn't done that trip, from Pittsburgh to Xenia, in probably fifteen years, maybe twenty.  But the arrival was quite nice.

Isaac immediately found the raspberry bushes, almost certainly as P-Pa had planned it, and just like in Maine last August, he ate bushels of berries right from the shrub.  Here are I-man and his grandpa looking for and eating raspberries:

We munched and munched and munched until there were no ripe raspberries left. 

The next day we decided to go way back in time to the Ordovician time period.  We went to Casaer's Creek and did some fossil hunting.  At first Mom and Isaac thought Dad was crazy, but then after a few minutes they saw what I remember when I was a kid--tons of fossils.  After an hour or so we had a heaping bag full of ancient treasures.  Here is a particularly cool specimen:

How old is this little booger?  It had been a fossil for more than 130 million years when the first dinosaur showed up.  Pretty incredible. 

As fun as the first two days were, we had even more fun the next two days.  More on that next.

In the recesses of my brain there is a part dedicated to a very particular memory for when I was very young.  I remember going to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and walking into the Hall of Dinosaurs and seeing this:

It was a huge towering image of a fearsome T-Rex and right in front of it, as you can see, was a real T-Rex skeleton fully mounted and terrifying.  But I wasn't scared, I was enthralled.  I went maybe once or twice, but even now three decades later it is burned into my memory.

So when the plans for Road Trip 2013 formed, we realized we had to stop at the Carnegie Museum.  Some research showed that the Hall of Dinosaurs had been remodeled and the old mural, sadly, had been taken down (it was wildly inaccurate, among other things).  Sad, I was worried that Isaac might not be as impressed as I was when I was his age.

Boy was I wrong.

The new display is approximately 1,000 better.  I can say this because the new display is better than I remembered the old display to be, and that factors in the halcyon effects of childhood memories.  The museum was awesome, starting with this:

  

That is a shot of Isaac with Dippy, a full scale life restoration of the Carnegie's most famous (or second most famous) resident, Diplodocus Carnegii.  Inside though was the real treat.  We were greeted by hundreds of fully mounted skeletons, two T-Rexes (including the one from the original display which is the first T-Rex ever found), a Quetzalcoatlus mounted in mid flight, and hundreds of other amazing skeletons including ancient non-dinosaurs like this guy:

That is the head of Dunkleosteus, one of Isaac's favorite bathtime toys (his name is Dunk and he has a gruff New York accent).  Isaac was so impressed, running from display to display until he hit this one:

I have to admit that it was so real that even though I knew I was in a museum I was taken aback for a second.  The two massive mounted Nile Crocodiles were the two largest specimens ever found, measuring well over 24 feet.  They were positively huge.  And it was like this at every turn.  The displays were so incredible that we could have stayed in just the Hall of Dinosaurs for two days.  Before we left I-man tried his hand at looking for fossils:

It was, incredibly enough, even better than I remembered and probably the most fun I have ever had at a museum.  Not only where the displays incredible, better than all other dinosaur displays I have ever seen, but I got to see them with Isaac.  I am fairly certain that Mom, Nanna, and P-Pa weren't exactly sure who the kid was... 

For months prior to Road Trip 2013 we had been talking with Isaac about his cousins in other parts of the country.  For him, until the Road Trip, cousin=Myles or Colby.  But now he was going to meet this whole array of new people, all of whom he was related to.  First up were Mary and Abby, my cousin Libby's two daughters.  Mike and Libby were kind enough to host us (and a large portion of the extended Sculimbrene clan) for a family reunion on Sunday afternoon.  Saturday evening and Sunday morning were free and Isaac got to play with his two "girl cousins" which is much easier to say than Pennsylvania cousins.

We arrived at Mary and Abby's house around 5 and Nanna and P-Pa were already there.  The girls were wound for sound, as Isaac usually is waiting for his cousins, except Mary and Abby had never met Isaac, he was a BOY, and they waited until 5.  Nanna and P-Pa were also wound for sound.  We immediately went to the backyard and the girls were playing on their playset.  Isaac joined in as if he knew them and was swinging and sliding instantly.  I think part of it is the socialization that happens in daycare, but also Mary and Abby were incredibly sweet in general, and specifically with Isaac.  They were extra careful because he was their little cousin (Abby is 4 and Mary is a very mature 6).  They showed him around and introduced him to their dogs (two amazing Australian herding dogs).  They took Isaac downstairs to their playroom, which was, like the rest of the house, truly spectacular.  Isaac made pizza in a pretend oven while Mary scooped out ice cream and Abby did my hair.  It was a great little slice of what it would be like to have girls and I can honestly say, despite a strong boy bias, it was fantastic.  

Mary is so scary responsible that I felt like the kid (not an entirely new experience, but...) and Abby is my kind of onery.  Together they make a great pair and Isaac absolutely loved them.  If we could just collapse Central Pa into the earth, we could make the then 4 hour trip much easier.  

Sunday was a whirlwind.  Mike, Mary and Abby's dad, is the chairman of the board for National Aviary and we went there to see some amazing birds.  Of course Isaac loved the penguins (as all kids do) but it was the Stellar's Eagle that we heard about on our 14 hour trip home ("Is that big eagle a good guy or a bad guy?" and "Would that big eagle eat me?").  Here are the three cute kids on the way to the Aviary:

After the trip to the Aviary, we went to P-Pa's childhood home, now under the steadfast care of my cousin Sammy (Libby's brother).  It was glorious to see the house where I had spent so many holidays and my Dad had spent his growing years, now revived with the breath of a new family inside.  Sam's garden was especially impressive, grown on the same site that Nunni's garden was.  Isaac, Abby, and Mary all went to town, eating from inside as P-Pa did his P-Pa thing:

Here is another shot of all three rascals on the porch swing that Libby, Sam, Monica and I rested on many, many times:

After that we had a trip to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History which is, well spectacular.  I'll do a post just on that.  Then we came back and had a grand cookout with most of the Sculimbrenes worldwide.  It was amazing to see everyone and their families.  During the cookout we (me and the three rascals) played inside and using a small cart we invented a drag racing game.  Here is a cockpit view of the drag racing, which took place and Libby and Mike's very long hallway:

A thousand thanks to Libby and Mike who agreed to host us and a million thanks to their two girls who were perfect with and for the I-man.  We could not have asked for two better little hostess. I have to send a personal thanks out to Abby who introduced me to the complex world of Princessology (URL is, surprisingly, still unclaimed) and the all-important Princess Rankings.  Without this little education I would be completely unaware of this point of vigorous and almost talmudic debate.