Traveling Downtown (38°15′15″N 85°45′37″W)

Prospect has hot dry summers and cold winters. This is the view from my bedroom window after a heavy spring rain.

    In the spring of every year, the residents of Louisville join to celebrate the Derby Festival. The Kentucky Derby and the Kentucky Derby Festival  are both important aspects in the culture of this city.  They are not only what our city is known for, but are also tourist attractions and are good for the local economy. Since the Derby has come and gone and I haven't written anything on this blog about my hometown, I decided that it would be good to give you, the reader, something to compare and contrast with my travels.  I live in the city of Prospect, but most of my daily activities happen in the suburbs of Louisville. The states that border Kentucky are Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and Ohio. Louisville lies on the Ohio River. Many large cities sit beside rivers because rivers made the transportation of goods easier when the cities were first founded. They also provided a source of food and water. Even today, the Louisville water supply comes from the Ohio River. This is a natural resource for Louisville. The Ohio River does all this and is the site for Thunder Over Louisville, a huge fireworks and air show that is part of the Derby Festival. I live in Prospect, but I traveled to downtown Louisville for this occasion.

This is the view after last winter's snow storm.

     Prospect has some very large areas of forested land. It also has a few horse farms. Here, there is lots of land and and there are no really large buildings like there are in Louisville. The city is mainly made up of residential subdivisions and shops. The climate for both Louisville and Prospect is the same. We have cold winters and hot summers. Last winter we had a substantial amount of snow and we have only just recently come out of a long system of rain storms. You must travel west from Prospect in order to get to Louisville. The trip takes about ten to fifteen minutes. The show was stunning. My favorite part of the display is when fireworks are launched off the bridge and it looks like there is a fireworks waterfall flowing into the Ohio River. It may have been a gray and chilly day, but the wait was worth it.

Washington D.C (38°53′22.″N 77°2′7″W)

Washington D.C, our nations capitol, is a beautiful city with no shortage of history and monuments. My cousins live in the nearby county of Fairfax, VA. Because we have family in the area, we visit the area frequently. The District of Columbia is bordered by Maryland and Virginia. The Potomac river flows through the district. There was so much to see and do that we only just barely got to see everything we wanted to see in our visit. I mainly visited monuments and museums. They were all beautiful and I found my self taking a myriad of pictures where ever I went. The city is a melting pot for different cultures; therefore, I could sample cuisine from all around to the world. My tour of our capitol was lots of fun and also a great learning experience. There seemed to be history where ever I went and visits to Washington D.C. remind me just how proud I am to be an American.
      Some of the museums I saw were the Smithsonian Air and Space, the International Spy museum, the Newseum, and the Natural History museum. They were all fantastic and I especially enjoyed the Natural History museum because at the time it had an exhibit on the Hope Diamond. It was beautiful. I also got to see various live animals. There was a museum employee who was taking small animals, like lizards,  out of their cages so that people who passed by could hold them. The Newseum was my overall favorite museum. It had an archive of every state's newspapers that was updated daily. I was able to see a copy of the day's Courier Journal all the way in Washington. It also had rather large pieces of the Berlin Wall that had graffiti all over them. We also visited the Holocaust Museum. The actual building was beautiful, but what was inside left me in tears. Besides the museums we saw various monuments like the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. This trip also marked the first time I have ever ridden on a subway train. It was terrifying!

Chicago part 3

   Finding parking in Chicago is a hassle; ergo, we did a lot of walking. This gave us an opportunity to see much of the city. My grandma, who was traveling with us, has undergone a knee surgery so we did hail a few cabs, but we mainly walked. There is an amazing mixture of old and contemporary architecture. This sparked a new interest for architecture in me and I got some amazing shots of the urban landscape in Chicago. We also saw lots of contemporary art galleries and statues. It seemed like Louisville times twenty in terms of size and things to see. Maybe I think this because I've lived in Louisville for most of my life and it can get, well, kind of boring. The big city did have its disadvantages though. It was always noisy and the public crowds were immensely greater than Louisville's. It was a nice change, though, to stay in a big city for a few days and have a large selection of restaurants.

    On the second day my uncle invited us to a restaurant in Chicago's theater district. It was in walking distance and the weather was nice so we decided to take a walk. Street performers and people waiting to hail cabs waited at the edge of sidewalks. We saw everything from old churches to buildings that had curvy and unusual shapes to them. I was able to identify some Corinthian columns in some of the stone buildings thanks to Mrs. Shoulta's fifth grade class. We crossed street after street until our surroundings were littered with old theaters and restaurants. Its amazing how many cars honk even when they stop at a red light. It got kind of annoying. That night we ate dinner with my uncle and earlier in the trip we went to Lou Malnati's Pizzeria for their deep dish pizza. The meal was very satisfying and I'm sure we all gained a few pounds from the visit.

While walking we saw an eternal flame for men and women who have served in the armed forces. The plaque is featured below.

Chicago part 2

We arrived in Chicago at around twelve o’clock. We were all ready to get some sleep, especially my dad, who had been driving the whole time. We were staying in a Westin hotel that was two blocks from Michigan Avenue. My mom and I had planned to do some serious shopping. In Chicago I ended up experiencing things that I never had in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville seemed like a postage stamp compared to Chicago. It was a huge city and certainly had plenty to do. There were so many restaurants and shops that we weren’t able to do everything we wanted in our brief visit. Chicago also provided an opportunity for me to some spectacular pictures. Some of my best shots were from the John Hancock Center on Michigan Avenue. Of course downtown Chicago was not thickly forested, but it was not lacking in natural beauty. The city sits right next to Lake Michigan .                          

            We woke up early the next morning so we could make a full use of our time in the Windy City. I didn’t realize this when we arrived because it was so dark, but there were many canals that flow from Lake Michigan through the city of Chicago. There are many bridges for cars as well as pedestrians. This is a form of HEI. Humans needed a way to connect two parts of the city so they built bridges over the canals. In this way, nature helped shape the way the city was planned. After walking a few blocks and crossing a canal we reached Michigan Avenue. The sight of such an urban area was a stark contrast to the farmland that we had been driving through only a day before. Shopping till we dropped was an understatement. My mom and I practically went crazy at the sight of so many of our favorite stores all in one place. After I had done a ton of shopping my brother began to get extremely bored, so we decided to go to the John Hancock Center to see an entire view of Chicago. There were over ninety stories in this historic building. On the elevator ride to the top, my ears were popping. As soon as we stepped out of the elevator, my breath was taken away by the view. At first I felt dizzy staring down into the vast city, but after a little while I got used to it. From one side of the building all you could see was Lake Michigan, which looked more like a sea than a lake. This was only the first day of our adventure.

 One of the many pictures that I took from the John Hancock Center

Chicago part 1 (41°52′55″N 87°37′40″W)

The video is kind of blurry because I was in the car, but you can make out the shapes of the wind turbines.

 During spring break my family drove to Chicago. This was my first trip to Chicago and it was a lot of fun. Of course we drove because of my family's enthusiasm for road trips. This time the drive wasn't horrible. We were also taking my friend's family to Chicago with us. My friend and I chatted away while my brother tried to tune us out by listening to music on his iPod. We watched movies and talked about what we were going to do. On this trip I was armed with a camera and was determined to get some great shots. I wasn't disappointed. There were not only spectacular views in Chicago, but also on the way there.

A view of Lake Michigan

   The trip took around five and a half hours. From Louisville to Chicago we saw different landscapes and excellent forms of human environment interaction (HEI). I could see examples of HEI as soon as we left home. Many roads in Louisville have been built in beds of lime stone. This creates rocky cliffs on both sides of the road. Humans blasted the rocks and paved the road; ergo, it is a form of HEI. Half way through the trip we found ourselves in a vast sea of farmland. The land was flat unlike the land in Louisville. Though, in my opinion, hilly forested land looks better than flat farmland, it does have its advantages. One of the most interesting and awesome things that we saw on the road trip was a wind farm. It contained what looked like hundreds of tall, white wind turbines for miles around. I had never seen a wind turbine in my life. This makes one of the regions exports renewable energy and is another form of HEI.

Cleveland Ohio (41°28′56″N 81°40′11″W)

  During our visit to Fostoria we also decided to meet my grandma's cousin in Cleveland. My grandma was one of six children and was used to living in a large family. Her childhood stories have let me know that family get together's were not uncommon. We thought it might be nice for my grandma, Uncle Sol, and Uncle Redding (my grandma's cousin) to meet. Uncle Redding was conveniently in Cleveland during our visit to Fostoria, so we decided to take a small portion of time out of our trip to see him. Though the trip took around two hours, it felt like we were there in no time because of Uncle Sol's stories about working in the hospitals. If you, the reader, haven't figured out from my other posts on this blog, my family takes a lot of road trips. On these trips, our most valuable resource is our GPS. It is probably the reason we can make it to our destinations in one piece. Our GPS is a great device, but occasionally it makes mistakes as most all machines do. And it just so happens that the GPS made a tiny mistake on the way to Cleveland.
    The land scape between Cleveland and Fostoria changes dramatically. In Fostoria all you can see for miles around is farmland. As you get towards the outskirts of Cleveland it is more hilly and there are portions of forested land. Some of the roads near Cleveland have been paved in places where they have used dynamite to cut into the rock. There are also places where the roads turn into bridges to cross creeks. This is a form of HEI because it shows how humans have adapted to the environment. This is vastly different from Fostoria. Our GPS usually navigates us through any type of landscape, hilly or flat, but for some reason this time it got a little confused. We only figured out we had taken the wrong exit when we landed up at a completely wrong house. After that, we entered in the address again and figured out that we had typed a letter wrong in the street name before. So it wasn't our trusty GPS's fault after all! When we finally got to meet Uncle Redding, my grandma and my two uncles told us some childhood stories. I found it fascinating that kids those days played so freely in the streets of India which I thought to be very dangerous. I thought it was amazing that my grandma had to walk a few miles and take a train to get to her school every morning. Overall I thought the reuniting of the members in older generation of our family was pretty awesome.

Fostoria Ohio (41°9′33″N 83°24′55″W)

                                               Hancock County War memorial, Findlay, Ohio

My grandma who stays with us for half the year, has a brother who lives in Fostoria, Ohio. This is a small town that we visit frequently on the weekends. The drive to get there takes about five hours and is in a very rural part of Ohio. Though the drive may seem long it is definitely worth it. My Uncle Sol is hilarious and Aunt Ruth's cooking is amazing.The land is mainly flat and is used for farmland. The town of Fostoria is very close to the town of Findlay. Findlay is a slightly larger town that my family also got to visit during our trip. During our last trip in February it was still very cold. In fact there was snow on the ground. The climate there is similar to the climate in Kentucky except that their winters can get much harsher than Kentucky's.
     If you've ever spent five hours in a car, you know it can be extremely boring. My brother and I brought some movies along, but half the time I couldn't help staring out of the window. The land in Ohio is flat. When I looked out of the window all I saw was farmland. Occasionally, there would be a random clump of trees in the vast sea of farmland. These islands of trees suggested that the area must have been forested at one point in time. This is an example of HEI. My trip was not entirely boring. Uncle Sol always has stories to tell and he let us listen to some of his classic rock records. I was sad to leave Fostoria, but I think that I left with a new found liking to the Beatles. On the way back our family decided to visit the town of Findlay, which was very close by. The town has a quaint, old- world charm and features many small shops. It also has a large mural of the Statue of Liberty painted on the side of a building. This marks the site of the Hancock County War Memorial. The drive back was fairly uneventful. Though the crops looked barren in the winter landscape, past trips to this region have let me know that a major crop in this area is corn.

Louisville Regional Tournament: Hodgenville, KY (37°34′16″N 85°44′19″W)

     The speech season had come and gone. There were only three more tournaments to attend. When I woke up early the next morning I was less stressed out than I usually was for speech tournaments. At the regional tournament I was only going to be doing one of my events. Normally, I have to run around the whole school to get to my events in time. This time I would only have to preform in one single round of extemporaneous speaking. We were going to be traveling south. Hodgenville is located near Elizabethtown in central Kentucky. We packed up my mom's van with supplies and picked up my friends who were riding with us. Though I chatted away with my friends, I did get to notice things about the landscape by briefly looking out the window.
     The landscape was similar to Florence. There were a few gently rolling hills, but it was mainly farmland. To get to Hodgenville you pass through Elizabethtown. If you continue further south you reach Cave City, which is the home of Mammoth Cave. Just as Cave City is the home of Mammoth Cave, Hodgenville is the birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Museum was very close to the school where the speech tournament was taking place. The area is very rural, but as I saw signs all throughout the school that the people are very proud to have President Lincoln born in there town. The  tournament proved to be successful for me and was fairly laid back. I was one of two extemporaneous speakers and ended up getting runner up for the region. Now, there were only two tournaments to go.

"Stars of Tomorrow" tournament: Florence, KY (38°59′36″N 84°38′33″W)

      Like all of the other speech tournaments, getting from Louisville to Florence, KY takes over an hour. Most tournaments take up one full day and start as early as possible so that they can end at a reasonable time. The early starting time and the time it takes to get there results in me waking up extremely early and getting ready. The drive to Florence takes about one hour and twenty minutes. The area is closer to Cincinnati than it is to Louisville.With waking up so early and not having much success breaking into the finals at the last tournament, I was not very enthusiastic for this tournament. All the while, before leaving I practiced my pieces and loaded up the car with speech tournament essentials. The essentials include bottled water and my box filled with magazines and newspapers for extemporaneous speaking. It also includes lots and lots of junk food. One thing that I must bring with me to each and every one of my tournaments is a big bag of white chocolate. The tournament ended up being a successful one for KCD.
     My drive to Florence was, to my relief, was not eventful.When we are driving so early in the morning the last thing we need is something to add to the stress of getting there on time. Like previous tournaments, when we left the house it was still dark. It was still December and my mom and I had to bundle up against the cold air.  For the first half an hour I couldn't see anything because it was so dark. Once there was a little daylight I could make out the outline of trees. I could see patches of forested areas and an occasional farm. Though we were moving northeast, the landscape was similar to Louisville's. Florence was more rural than Louisville. The area was hilly, but like Louisville, the hills were gradual. They were nothing compared to the hills of eastern Kentucky. Almost anyone who has driven from Louisville to Cincinnati has seen the water tank that reads "Florence Y'all". Originally the water tank read "Florence Mall" but it was later changed. The mall that sits next to it houses stores like Macy's. The tournament took place and I ended up breaking into finals in all three of my events. This was the best tournament of the season for me.

Beginning of the Speech season: Bowling Green, KY (36°58′54″N 86°26′40″W)

       As we are now in the beginning of Spring, I think it is a good time to log in many of my adventures which occurred during the past winter. Unfortunately I did not do much traveling out of state. However, I was able to explore much of Kentucky through our school's speech program. I was fascinated at how different many of the towns and rural schools were from my home town of Louisville, KY. The first and last of the seven tournaments that I attended took place at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. This tournament was named the WKU Hilltopper Junior Tournament for a very good  reason. The landscape where the town is located was very hilly indeed. It was amazing to see how the gently rolling hills of my back yard could transform into the dramatic ones of Bowling Green within a few hours drive. The last tournament of the season was the Kentucky High School Speech League Junior State Tournament which was also in Bowling Green. The car ride there and the actual tournament proved to be very eventful. Though I did not get to explore the town as much as I would have liked during these visits, due to the events that were at hand, I did make basic observations of the area and of the campus.
       Our journey started out from Louisville at six o'clock. The drive would take us about two and a half hours. I was weary and wished more than anything to go to sleep because I had woken up at five in the morning to get ready. Nonetheless I was excited for the first tournament of a long string of speech events that would span the upcoming weeks. As we reached the outskirts of Louisville it was still dark, but under the street lamps I could see the outlines of trees that were barren with the freezing temperatures. The farther we drove the more forested the landscape became. The surroundings were also gradually getting more hilly. Though the hills were not reaching a mountainous height, they were still high enough to create valleys. These valleys are used by farmers. Towards the end of our drive we entered the town of Bowling Green. As we drove along College Street with its old Victorian- looking houses we saw the Cherry Hall at the top of the hill that we were now driving on. Once we reached the top we were right in front of Cherry Hall and could see the surrounding hills. The building itself is a beautiful structure with its white marble walls. The rooms in which the participants of the tournament were to preform their pieces in were scattered around the campus and in various buildings. This gave the students an opportunity to see a good chunk of the WKU campus. The ride back from the Hilltopper tournament was fairly uneventful, but the drive back form the KHSSL tournament, which was also at WKU, proved to be an experience. After the latter tournament, I was in low spirits because I had not made the final rounds in any of the events I was preforming. My mother stated that she was starting to doze off so we were going to stop at the next McDonald's to get a coffee. As we took the exit, the first thing we saw was a horse that was tied to a tree. At first I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Who would station their horse so close to the main road? Too curious to stop driving, we continued down the road that lead to the fast food restaurant. Right next to it was a wagon. It turned out that there was an Amish family who was selling their hand made baskets. As my friends (whom I had met at in the McDonald's) and I looked upon their merchandise, we started a conversation with the family. This was not only an experience that lightened my saturnine day but was also an opportunity for me to learn about a culture which was unfamiliar to me.