We were up early today to complete our drive through the mountains into West Virginia. We are back in cooler temperatures. It feels like Fall here. The leaves, while still vibrant green, are just starting to take on a yellowish tint.
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| Our day started out rainy and foggy. We drove through the clouds into the forest covered mountains. |
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| We went through two mountain tunnels. At least we didn’t have to drive over the mountains to see what we could see. |
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| Country roads, take me home… |
We visited Lost World Caverns, a show cave down a windy gravel road through rolling hills. This cave featured absolutely huge stalactites and stalagmites. It also had cool lights to make some neat photos of the cave formations.
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| We are wearing sweaters for the first time in months! That cave was 11 degrees Celsius. |
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| The natural entrance way up high. |
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| They used the natural entrance as a garbage chute for years! The early 1900s was a crazy time. Imagine finding a hole in the ground and deciding that it was a fantastic idea to chuck all your trash and animal carcasses down it. Nuts. |
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| The garbage pit. It took them two years to remove all the trash. |
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| This ladder allowed them to climb down 13 stories from the natural entrance to the garbage pile at the bottom. |
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| This is a pretty nuts thing to attempt but if you managed to make it that long, wouldn’t you stay the extra 44 minutes to make it an even 16 days sitting atop a stalagmite?! |
After our visit to the cave, we drove through Monongahela National Forest where we stopped for lunch at a lovely picnic table surrounded by autumn wild flowers.
It is so green here. We are feeling very at home surrounded by all the trees, barns and farm animals.
We stopped at a roadside farm stand to pick up fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans and a watermelon. Farm fresh is absolutely the best and something we have missed on this trip.
A visit to the Green Bank Science Centre and Observatory occupied our afternoon. We toured the enormous radio wave telescopes but had to put our phones in a Faraday box so they did not interfere with the equipment, so no photos of the tour.
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| This is a model but we saw the real thing. The surface area of the parabolic disk was 2.3 acres. That is bigger than our whole farm! |
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| There were heaps of interactive activities for the boys. The exhibits were very accessible and broke down some pretty complicated science into understandable lessons. |
We learned all about pulsars. It was incredibly interesting. I didn’t know much about them at all and ended up learning a ton. Envisioning a pulsar like a rotating lighthouse light helped us visualize that we can only “hear” them (that is, detect the radio waves they emit) when the lighthouse “beam” is facing us. The exhibit then played the sounds of several different pulsars when their “beams” faced us so we could “hear” them, some had many beams per second so made sounds ranging from repeating beeps to static. It was very cool.
We read about the major discoveries that have come about through research using radio wave telescopes. The most fascinating were the discovery of black holes and confirming the existence of dark matter. No discoveries relating to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) yet though, at least that they were willing to share.
Our campground was very close to the Observatory so we were able to spend the whole evening relaxing at our campsite. We cooked an amazing dinner on the BBQ, had a campfire with s’mores for the first time in ages, played cards and the boys played catch. It was some great family downtime. It was beautiful to see the boys playing baseball outside together. That never happens at home as they are so preoccupied with screens, so it was wonderful to see. I am not looking forward to the return of screen time upon our return home. We are truly living the good life here in West Virginia.
