Florida: Ponce Inlet Lighthouse

Our GPS is set for home, but as we say good-bye to our sweet friends in Melbourne, Florida (and thank them for opening their home to us these past few weeks), there is still a lot of country to see before we land in our beds in North Dakota.

Three girls on a road trip, so many possibilities for things to see! We started out with some searches - National Parks, historical sites, roadside marvels - and then set off on the road home.

Our first stop was Ponce Inlet Lighthouse, near Daytona Beach. This 175-foot-tall tower has the distinction of being the tallest lighthouse in Florida. The beacon's light can be seen up to 18 miles out to sea!

As soon as we saw it, we knew we definitely had to climb it. The lady who sold us our tickets promised five-year-old Bria a sticker if she made it to the top, and then we started up. There are 213 very steep steps to the top, and I'm not sure if I thought that sounded like a lot or not, but whoah! That's a lot of steps up!

We were around halfway when it started to feel like a serious project. Ella and I were both thankful for a sign we had read aloud at the bottom saying kids had to be able to make the steps (up and down) themselves and couldn't be carried - that would have been a lot of steps to lug 30 pounds up!

There were a few places along the way to stop and check out the view, catch your breath, and let people pass you going up or down (the steps are narrow and only passable by one person at a time). Once you reach the top, there is a door that leads outside, and gives a fantastic panoramic view of the beautiful little point where the lighthouse is located. We walked around it a few times, but didn't spend a lot of time, because a storm was coming, and we didn't want to be rushed down in a crowd when they closed the tower.

The trip down was, of course, much easier than the trip up, and soon we were resting on the benches outside. The lighthouse is surrounded by a small museum, which is made up of a series of buildings that once housed lighthouse employees and offices, each filled with assorted artifacts representing the 128 year history of the site. Ponce Inlet is one of 12 lighthouses in the country that have been designated as National Historic Landmarks, sitting at third tallest.

We looked into a few of them, then caught part of a movie about the lighthouse before going inside to check out the gift shop. Just as we stepped inside, an alert came over the radio that it was time to close the lighthouse down due to the impending thunder and lightning.

Pleased with our timing, we continued on our adventure. There is also a scavenger hunt available for the site (pick one up in the gift shop), but we didn't notice it until after the closure. It looked like fun, and would be a good way to engage while exploring the tower and museum.

Ponce Inlet Lighthouse is open at 10 a.m., 7 days a week. Closing time is 9 p.m. in the summer months and 6 p.m. the rest of the year. It is closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Ticket sales stop one hour before closing, to allow for ample time to visit the landmark. Admission is $6.95 for adults and $1.95 for children. Visit their website for additional details.

Read More

Florida: St. Augustine Old Town Trolley

On our way back from a side trip to retrieve a lost bag (oops), we stopped in St. Augustine. We quickly learned we could have spent the entire week in St. Augustine, but we only had one day. We decided to hop on an Old Town Trolley Tour and see as much of the city as we could in a small amount of time!

Much like the trolleys in other tourist cities, this was a great way to see lots of things without having to deal with traffic or parking, or any of that mess. Plus we had a fun guide who knows far more about the city than any of us could dream of reading in a brochure or guide book.

According to their website, the trolley highlights more than 100 historical sites (like this statue of Flagler) and has 23 stops. Your ticket is good for 3 days, so use the opportunity to hop on and off at your leisure. It's a great way to rest tired little legs, too.

Our guide told us stories of the development of St. Augustine into a beautiful tourist destination. In the late 1800s, Henry Flagler (who was John D. Rockafeller's partner in the Standard Oil business) built elaborate hotels that would become the go to winter getaway for the rich. According to our guide, "You couldn't rent a room for the night or the week, you got one for the entire season." 

Flagler was also responsible for the building of the Old Jail we visited - check out our post on that interesting piece of the town's history tomorrow. Learn more about Flagler's influence on the city here.

The trolley tour was fun - we even crashed a wedding or two. (These people were trying to take photos on a very beautiful side street, and we drove through the middle going both ways!)

One of the final stops on our tour was the "Old Senator," a live oak tree that is more than 600 years old, far older than these trees usually get. A Howard Johnson has grown up around it, but the Senator doesn't seem to mind.

At the end of the tour, the kids each got to ring the trolley bell!

The Old Town Trolley starts at $25.74 for adults, $10.30 for kids 6-12, and is free for those 5 and under. You can build your own package, adding on discount tickets to other St. Augustine attractions, as well. We added the Old Jail and Potter's Wax Museum. It also includes free parking.

Read More

Iowa: The Bridges of Madison County

A short drive from Des Moines, Madison County is in south-central Iowa.

Our first stop was at the Visitor’s Center, where a sweet local woman stocked us with some directions, some historical information, and a map. It sits across from a huge, beautiful county courthouse, the kind that dots the landscape throughout this lush state.

Once we had placed the obligatory pins in the center's visitor map, we checked out a small collection of gifts and goodies, including some photos of the bridges taken by a local photographer dating backing to the 70s. The 1995 movie starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep which made the area famous played on a screen near the bathrooms, and the shelves contained a dutiful number of copies of the Robert James Waller book.

If you want to plan your route ahead of time, or happen to visit while the Visitor’s Center is closed, a map of the bridges is available on the Madison County website here.

There were originally around 100 covered wooden bridges in Iowa – 19 in Madison County – but only six remain. The sun was low on the horizon, so we chose to visit four of them.

While the romance of the Trip + Leisure version of these beautiful landmarks was lost on our five-year-old, it was still a beautiful place to visit and a great history lesson (with a bit of nature thrown in).

We started with the Cutler-Donahue Bridge has been relocated to the Winterset city park, which is a pretty little park with lots of green spaces to spread out in, and a few neat little features, like a maze and stone tower. Cutler-Donahue is 79 feet long, and was built in 1871 by Eli Cox, making it the oldest of the bridges we visited. (Imes Bridge, which is east of St. Charles, was built in 1870.)

A short trek to the west (about 4 miles – just over half of it was gravel road), we visited the Holliwell Covered Bridge, the longest of the Madison County bridges at 122 feet. Bria loved this one because it is not sealed as tightly as some of the others, so she could see the river through the small gaps between the planks. She spent a good chunk of time “helping” the trees to grow by dropping their seeds into the river!

Next we visited Cedar Bridge, which is 3 miles north of Winterset. The original Cedar Bridge was built in 1883, but it was destroyed by arson in 2002. It has since been rebuilt, and we visited the replica north of Winterset. The bridge is 75 feet long, and was built to the same plans as the original bridge, using authentic materials and techniques. We actually didn’t realize it was a replica until we got to the next bridge and were reading the map!

Finally we stopped at Hogback Bridge on our way back to Cedar Rapids. It is located about 5 miles north of town, on a quiet side road.

One thing that was interesting about Hogback Bridge was its proximity to the newer bridge that traffic now follows. We sat and watched the river swallows swoop from their tiny mud nests on the sides and bottom of the new bridge to the river below. This was an excellent spot for bird watching.

The rich history of these bridges includes marks left behind by the many visitors over the years - we loved the way layer upon layer of traveler could be seen in the weathered boards of the bridge walls. The deeper you look, the more you see.

Our visit on a May afternoon meant we had the places basically to ourselves, but if you are interested in being a part of a bigger event, the community of Winterset celebrates the bridges with a festival the second full weekend of October.

Want to learn more? Check out the World Guide to Covered Bridges
and the Encyclopedia Britanica article on the engineering of these bridges.

Read More

Nevada: Fleischmann Planetarium

Today we visited the Fleischmann Planetarium on the University of Nevada - Reno campus. The planetarium is small (only around 60 seats), but it was the first in the world to project full-dome movies.  

We saw the show "We Choose Space," a full-dome show funded by NASA and produced by the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Home Run Pictures and Tietronix, with scientific oversight by Rice University. It included a tour of the International Space Station (Did you know the International Space Station is now the second brightest object in the night sky, after the Moon?), along with some great futuristic ideas about living in space. 

The show was $7 for adults and $5 for children. There is an educator's guide available for the movie here, and information on current showings here.

In addition to the dome, there is a small science center with exhibits about space. 

For us, this was a ideal way to get out of the heat and enjoy an educational stop that wouldn't consume an entire day. Bria loved being able to sit in the reclining seats and check out the movie on the globe above her, and enjoyed the hands-on exhibits afterward. Definitely a great pit stop!

Read More