Seeing More of the Whole Wide World

We were immersed in geography this past weekend and we were able to continue our license plate game while we traveled. We saw three new plates this week, but only one was from a state that we hadn’t spotted yet – Nevada. We also saw a foreign plate that we believe to be from Poland. Along with that, we saw a couple of plates around the D.C area that we couldn’t identify, but when we got home, we saw that they are plates that the U.S. government issues to foreign diplomats. The ones that we saw didn’t have “diplomat” printed on the red strip at the top. I’m not sure if that is something that they’re changing or if it was issued in a particular case. I didn’t think to pay attention to the letters at the start of the plate, but they evidently indicate the country that the diplomat is from. I’ll have to pay more attention next time if we ever get back go the D.C. area. The example picture is from Wikipedia commons. This leaves us with three state plates left to find – New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming. Interestingly, we’ve found at least two plates from every other state in the nation – even Hawaii.

After our quick overnight in a very stormy D.C., we flew on to Michigan. One of my goals in life is to see all 50 states. Tornado Boy is getting dragged into this goal, somewhat by default. Thankfully he seems to love to travel as much as I do. This past weekend we flew to Michigan to attend my cousin’s wedding. While we were there, we took a side trip into Canada to have dinner – simply because we could! This trip brought the number of states that Tornado Boy has visited to 12 – they’re shown in green on this map. The trip to Canada brought his total countries visited to 3 – Bahamas, The United States and Canada.

We didn’t do any “formal” schooling while we were gone, but we definitely learned and saw a lot of different things. Tornado Boy got to learn about passports and the process involved in leaving and re-entering the country while we crossed the border into Canada. We were on a cruise ship for the Bahamas trip and it was long enough ago that he didn’t seem to remember much about it. Canada didn’t look much different than the U.S. – the first thing that we saw when we crossed the border was a McDonald’s! We selected a restaurant for dinner that looked kid-friendly. Not much was different there except that we saw that the bottles of ketchup and the like on the table were labeled in English and French rather than English and Spanish like we’re used to. We were in Ontario, but I explained to Tornado Boy that a large number of people in Canada, particularly in Quebec speak French.

I wanted Tornado Boy to be able to see what Canadian Money looked like, so I asked our server to show him a Canadian dollar bill. She told me that she couldn’t. I haven’t been to Canada in about 20 years and I didn’t realize that they had done away with the dollar bill in the interim. She did show him five and ten dollar bills, though. He was able to see that unlike U.S. money, Canada uses different colors on their bills. We also learned that they have $1 coins that they call “Loonies” and $2 coins that are called “Toonies”. Money has some interesting copyright issues, so rather than including pictures, you can see photos of Canadian coins here and Canadian bills here.

This was the first wedding that Tornado Boy has attended. Ironically, I was also five when I attended my first wedding, and it was the parents of the bride for this wedding. I have no good pictures of my son in his suit at all. I know that my Mom took some and I’m hoping that they’ll be decent. As much as I enjoyed going and seeing my family, it was stressful having a very high energy boy at an elegant wedding. Thankfully the Leapster helped occupy him for part of the time. I was disappointed that we didn’t get to dance, but it got too late and we had to leave before Tornado Boy turned into a pumpkin. Tornado Boy really enjoyed himself and he kept saying that he loved Lauren (my cousin, the bride) and that she was so pretty – which she was!

The day after the wedding we drove up to Ann Arbor with my parents and visited the Exhibit Museum of Natural History. This place was pretty impressive. They have a great collection of fossils including these huge Mastodons at the left. They also had many dinosaurs, including the Edmontosaurus above. The rest of the fossils were in glass cases depending on the classification of the plant or animal that had been fossilized. The upper levels of the museum had a huge collection of Michigan wildlife – stuffed and mounted fish, birds and animals. There was also a section on geology and anthropology. I could have spent a lot more time looking at the exhibits, but someone was getting restless after a couple of hours!

One of Tornado Boy’s favorite exhibits was this one on DNA. Try to bring that topic down to a five year olds level! I think he was fascinated mostly by the helix pattern.

We got a real surprise after we left the museum. We saw a herd of buffalo on the side of the highway! I had to look that one up when we got back because that just didn’t seem like a random occurrence. Evidently they are on the property of the Domino’s Pizza headquarters along with a petting zoo. You can take a hay ride out to see them – or you can nearly cause an accident driving down the road! LOL I was really excited. I don’t think I had ever seen a live buffalo before.

After the buffalo sighting we drove out to get some of the best gluten-free pizza that we’ve ever had at Buddy’s Pizza. I really wish that it wasn’t so darn far away! The crust is so light and fluffy – unlike any other gluten-free crust we’ve had. Tornado Boy was in pizza heaven. They say that the dough is made of a combination of potato, rice and tapioca flours. I’d love to know how they make it. It was so delicious!

Overall we had a fun trip to D.C., Canada and Michigan. I really wish that we could just snap our fingers and travel anywhere. I love to do it, but that return day of driving, buses, flying and then driving some more to get home is always so exhausting!