Capital City Trip, Day Four

Day four: Wednesday, July 2: We had a restless night. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. Mother said she slept fitfully all night, as did Hubbie. We finally got up at 7 a.m. After breakfast, Hubbie and I rode bikes again. Today, we met another couple riding bikes. The lady had a wire basket with wire lid attached to her handle bars. In the basket was a cute Yorkie dog. Of course, we spent several minutes, then, discussing our spoiled, but super intelligent pets, trading stories of the cute things they do.

While riding our bikes around the circle near our campsite, we discovered the largest stand of poison ivy growing up between three pine trees. Hubbie reported the poison ivy to park authorities, who said they want to destroy it.

Back at camp, Hubbie decided to try once again to close the rider's side door on the truck. But he discovered that he had left the key in the turned on in the ignition overnight, and the battery was dead. So he rode my bike (everyone seems to prefer riding my medium-sized, pink, girls' bike best) to the campsite of the couple we met earlier. The man came back with Hubbie and used our jumper cables to boost the truck's battery. Once the truck started, miracle of miracles, the window rolled up. But we haven't rolled it down since, and won't until we have it fixed.

Sis came about 10 a.m. and stayed with Mother for the day.

At the photo session, the kids used inexpensive dollar store cameras to take black and white portraits in the park across the alley from the museum. After the break, the kids were each issued a one-time-use camera, loaded with color film, and we went back to the park to shoot pictures of shapes and compositions. This was an exercise in "seeing."

The unruly boy wasn't with us today. Staff members said he'd gotten hard to deal with in other sessions and was sent home for a "time out."

After our photo safari outing, I played a photography instructional video for the kids. We had to bring our own small TV/VCR to the museum in order to watch videos, since the facility only has a DVD player now, despite the fact that they have a library of VHS tapes. VCRs are definitely on the way out, if any are even available for sale anymore.

I might have this video converted to DVD, because it is so well suited to children. It's about a family visiting and snapping photos at Sea World. The video gets a lot of information across in an entertaining way, and the kids thoroughly enjoyed it.

We got back to camp at our usual 5 p.m. hour. After supper, we all, including Sis, went to the big, new worldwide discount chain store, mainly so that I could leave the black and white film and the one-time-use cameras to be developed one hour. But, phooey, we were told the one-hour service at this store develops only digital photos. Film takes two days. This wouldn't work, since I needed the photos for the following day's class.

Since Sis needed to accomplish a few things at the store inside the WDCS that she manages, we briefly toured the grocery section, where we found several bargains on fresh fruit. We loaded up on those. Hubbie made a trip to fill the truck with diesel while Mother and I waited for Sis. When she was able to break free, we went to another WDCS, only a few miles from camp, and dropped off the film. By now, it was 7:30 p.m., and the one-hour guy said it'd be tomorrow before we could pick the film up. I insisted he at least develop the black and white ones, and he consented, since the shop didn't close until 9 p.m.

It was 9:30 p.m. before we got back to camp. Sis left right away, saying she needed to return to her store again to help out because one of the other employees failed to show up for work. Bummer for her.

By this time, we'd had all the day we wanted, and made ready to hit the sack.