Thursday, July 8

Forgot to mention that after everyone left Tuesday evening, we decided to make a trip to the WDCS. On the way out, we noticed that a group of Hooters girls was sitting in the back of a bass boat. They were there to serve food to the college guys who are here for a bass tournament. I took advantage of the situation and snapped a couple of pictures of the young, buxom beauties. Hubbie stayed in the van, though I'm sure his view wasn't a bit obstructed. Of course, all the young ladies are the age of some of our granddaughters, and even younger.

We were awakened before 6 a.m. this morning by someone talking on a loudspeaker, and the revving motor noises of fishing boats. Got up to see boats racing upriver and downriver, as the college bass fishing tournament got off to a start. Two ESPN boats recorded the action...one boat had floodlights, and in the other was a man standing up with a video camera on his shoulder. I couldn't see how, but there must have been some sort of device on the boat that held the cameraman up. Otherwise, he would have been tossed into the drink on the boats' wakes.



After breakfast, Hubbie and I shopped at the WDCS, mainly to pick up heavy duty foil to wrap the corn that Son and Daughter-in-Law brought us from their garden. We have several ears in the freezer, now.



Then Hubbie and I went into town to catch the trolley for a tour of parts of the cities on both sides of the river. The trolleys are beautiful...very colorfully painted on the outside, and featuring highly polished oak and cherry woods on the interior walls and seats.



The ride lasted about thirty-five minutes and took us through historic neighborhoods and business districts, and over the bridge connecting the two cities. Our driver was Hispanic and a comedian. He was a highly entertaining and informative tour guide. He was also very accommodating, offering to use folks' cameras to take snapshots of them. He took one of Hubbie and me, standing in the aisle, so that the beautiful interior shows.

At this point, we had arrived at the end of the line...a dead end. I wondered if we would have to ride backwards for the return trip. I knew that the trolley was equipped so the operator moved from back to front to access the mechanisms, but what about the riders? Turns out there is a brass handle on each seat, used for flipping the seats over so they are facing in the other direction.

We were back at camp well before lunch. I had learned that the trolley is equipped with a wheelchair lift, and we offered to take Mother to ride on it later, but she said she was in no mood to get out today.

After lunch, we were off to the museum. Today, the kids made foil lenses for the covers to oatmeal boxes, so they could take pinhole photographs. The kids found it fascinating that they could get photographic images with nothing but an oatmeal box...no sophisticated lenses.

I assigned exposure times to each kid, and Hubbie took the group outside to expose the photographic paper in each box. Four of the eight kids got good images, and by this we were able to determine a good exposure time. So after break time, we loaded the cameras again, and off they went. This time, everyone got an image.

This is a slow process, since the kids came into the darkroom one at a time to get their boxes loaded, and then one at a time again to develop their film. So we used the whole three and a half hours for this project.

Back at camp, we had a supper of ham, sweet potatoes, corn-on-the-cob (fresh from Son's and Daughter-in-Law's garden...yum!), coleslaw, and slices of tomato/cheese/herb bread.

Later, near dusk, we went to The Big Old Bridge, where I took pictures of the pylons that feature red, white, and blue revolving colors. I talked Mother into going with us on this excursion, though she stayed in the van while I took pictures.

Before we left to go to the bridge and after we came back, we played a couple of games of Skipbo. Hubbie won both games.

Note: the museum loses no opportunity to teach kids: in the ladies bathroom, there is a sign that says, "Tinkle, tinkle, little star; you produce eight cups of urine a day; your kidneys wash your blood; now you wash your hands.