Friday, September 25

We were up early to get ready to tour the new Heifer International building, and hands-on exhibits. Today, once again, there were buses and buses of school children...this time unloading them onto the grounds of the facility, where tents and booths were set up in celebration of International Day.

We nearly despaired of being able to access the parking lot of the Heifer International building. A lady who was directing traffic advised of a route to the parking lot, and we followed her directions, which brought us right back to our starting point. This time, though, another person directing traffic waved us through to the street leading to the parking lot.

We found a handicapped space, but it was some distance from the building we wanted to visit. With Mother in the wheelchair, though, we had no problem walking to the building. Attendants outside the building ushered us right in, past waiting kids and teachers.

We enjoyed the many exhibits that explained how the organization operates to provide, with the help of monetary donations, animals and training to help families in poverty build sustainable livelihoods. As a condition of receiving animals and training, these families agree to share animals with other families in need, as a "pass it on" way of helping combat poverty.

One of the docents gathered a group of adults for a tour of the office building, which is one of the "greenest" buildings in the nation. It uses less than half of the energy of other buildings its size. The layout of the building allows for natural light, and LED lights are used in places like elevators. Restored wetlands around the building collect rainwater for irrigation.

The flooring in the building is of quick-growing bamboo, which is a rapid renewable resource, unlike slow-growing trees. The carpeting in halls is of recyclable materials, and is laid down in squares that can be removed and replaced as necessary one at a time.

The building itself is constructed in such a way that it can reflect or deflect sunlight for lighting, heating, and cooling the structure. Mechanical systems are under the floor and easy to access.

Once we had completed our tour, we returned to camp for lunch. After lunch, we went to a bicycle/pedestrian bridge, touted as the longest of its kind in the world, and the only one built into a dam. The bridge connects 14 miles of trails, and rises nearly seven stories above the river. It is lighted at night, but we failed to go back and see it while we were camped.

Today, though, we walked halfway across, to the center of the span. Hubbie pushed Mother in the wheelchair, since a good bit of the first part of the bridge is uphill. The day was warm, with a spectacular blue sky, and the river was gorgeous viewed from the center of the bridge.

Along the north and south side of the bridge stand huge concrete monoliths. These were cut from the dam when the bridge was constructed. Rather than being discarded, they were placed on the plaza as artistic reminders of the story of the bridge.

Somehow, we walked right past these monoliths without noticing them, and had to search for them upon reading about them on a plaque.

"I remember seeing some concrete blocks somewhere," I said.

"Maybe they're part of the bridge," Sis said, scanning the structure for clues.

"Aren't those tall things behind you the monoliths?" Mother asked.

We turned around, and sure enough, there stood six giant triangular shaped blocks. I suppose the blocks I thought I saw were the ones on the other side of the river. We had a good laugh about this, and then Mother, Sis, and I stood in front of one of the monoliths while Hubbie snapped our photo.

After we left the bridge, we stopped by a national historic site visitor center to see exhibits about the struggle for civil rights in the 1950s. Sis was only a child in those days, but I was in high school, and Mother and Hubbie were adults. So the three of us remember television reports of the crisis, segments of which were played on TVs throughout the exhibit.

Visitor center closing time was 4:30, so we left just a few minutes before that to go back to the campground.

Tonight, we had whole wheat pancakes, scrambled egg substitute, and a choice of turkey bacon or link sausages. I opted out of the sausages, of course. Later, we played Skipbo again, with basically the same results. I won the first game, but snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the rest. Just as I'd get down to within one or two cards of winning, one of the other card sharks would swoop in for a victory. Oh, well.