I feel like I've been here before....

So, once again, I'm off to Stone Laboratory at Put-In-Bay, Ohio. Once again, I got up way too early and got here too early to register so I had some time to burn. I dropped my stuff at the main office and headed into town for lunch and some distraction.

My distraction of choice for this trip was the Perry's Victory and International Peace Monument. Here's a picture of Commodore Perry very kindly pointing out his memorial. Did you know that the bedrock layer was only 12 feet below the surface and that the memorial column is taller than the Statue of Libety AND each block used to make the memorial weight between 2-5 tons? Call me a geek but I learned all sorts of cool stuff there.

I also got to see a muzzle-loading, flintlock gun demo by some of the park rangers. They talked about the conditions on the frontier and how the War of 1812 affected the settlers. He also talked about the uniforms and what they ate (hardtac sounds really gross). Then he and another chap did what they called a Dwayne maneuver. It involved lining your men up, getting them to all load, aim, fire (lather, rinse, repeat) at the same time. US forces could get 3 rounds set up per minute if they were good. The opposing forces could do 4 rounds. Eek! There also was a young female ranger who talked to us about what life was like for the women. Yeah, be happy you live now, Ladies.

From there, I enjoyed a lovely perch sandwich at the Put-In-Bay Brewing Company. Lovely place that used to be a dry goods store, buchery and grocery, and even a fire house at one point. Then I enjoyed a nice walk back to the office and I came back to Gibraltar Island, home of Cooke Castle.

After settling in, I came to find that my class, Local Flora for Teachers was the only week course this week and I met all 8 of my classmates. Once again, I found I knew one of them from a prior class I took at Ohio State and I also got a cool set of roomies for the week. All of whom are in my class! Sweet!

Our first session was Sunday night when we got here and we went over our sullabus and talked about what we were going to be doing this week. Besides learning to identify plants, we are also going to be collecting plants and learning how to press and dry them and then mount them properly so they can be used in a classroom setting. Also, we get to put together a lesson plan that we can take home to use with the kids we teach. And you wanna know what else? We're going to go to Pelee Island in CANANDA on Wednesday! I haven't been to Canada since I was a kid! And you wanna know what else?? Yes! There's more! Our teacher is going to treat us to a dinner on Thursday made of nothing but what edible plants are from around here. How cool is that? I wrote a paper in that prior class I was talking about that went into edible plants found around Ohio. Right up my alley, no?

To say the least, I'm excited. Can you tell? Till next time!