Gardens and Critters in Wilmington

We have (touch wood!) had a mild Winter. We have certainly had days of perishing temperatures but no snow. No shoveling is a win for me. This has given us the opportunity to get out and exploring – even though my instinct is definitely to burrow in and hibernate. This weekend’s wanderings took us to Wilmington, Delaware, as its a place we have passed through a lot but never stopped.

The two offspring who were accompanying us vetoed a few suggestions so out first stop ended up being the Marian Coffin Gardens. These are the gardens of a 19th Century mansion named Gibraltar – because it is built on a rock – that is now a decaying ruin. That was actually the appeal of the place for me because the gardens are also largely abandoned, though maintained as a preserve and green space.

Marian Coffin, the landscape artist who designed the gardens, was an impressive person. Self-educated, she was one of only four women to be admitted to MIT in 1901. Despite those educational credentials, she was rejected by all of New York’s architectural firms. Not to be defeated, she founded her own business and made it a complete success. The terraced gardens of Gibraltar was a commission she undertook in 1916. They must have been gorgeous in their heyday but they have been deteriorating for 50 years so it was hard to imagine how splendid they must have looked. I do imagine, however, that we chose the worst time of year to visit because so much of the plant life is also dead or dormant.

Next stop was the Brandywine Zoo. This small zoo has free entry off-season and that was definitely a smart time to visit because it is pretty small. We had been concerned that the animals might all be cosied up in their indoor enclosures but actually the opposite was true and they were all out and moving around, enjoying the blue skies and sunshine despite the cold. Highlights were the red pandas, the serval, and the lemurs. The focus of our visit, however, was the capybara. We went to the zoo precisely because it has capybara and our 15 year old is obsessed with them.

We barely scratched the surface of Wilmington on this visit. In fact, we barely poked the surface. We will definitely need to go back for more exploration.

Prime Hook Beach, Delaware

We have just returned from a week at the beach. Our destination this summer was Prime Hook in Delaware. Delaware again. I confess I was not jazzed at the prospect of a third summer spent on the Delaware shore. However, a variety of alternative travel plans fell through for a number of reasons and it seems like Delaware is now our default setting for family vacations. One advantage of having very much been there and done that is that our time at the beach was very chill because there was zero reason to go out exploring. Rather than experiences, therefore, our focus was on properly relaxing and recharging our batteries and on spending quality time together as a family – and this time our oldest son came with us too so we had all six of us on vacation for the first time since 2019.

Our oldest son had not been to Fort Miles at Cape Henlopen for several years so he accompanied his Aged Parents on a jaunt there. We were actually able to get inside Battery 519 for the first time so at least that was a new experience. My husband spent a lot of time chatting with the docents about a U-boat captain and the Civil War while I wandered around and looked at the exhibits.

We also went into Rehoboth one morning. Our first stop was the Farmers’ Market so we could pick up some patisserie for breakfast but we also spent some time on the boardwalk and browsing in stores. One incessantly rainy day, we decided to take a tour of some nearby thrift stores as a fun retail challenge. We ate a few meals out too and – after three summers of trying – my husband was finally able to order soft shell crab – so he ate two of them.

Most of our time, however, was spent at the rental house. With the house being right on the beach, a lot of time was spent in the water and on the sand. I am not so much a beach person so I just dipped in and out of such activities but I enjoyed sitting in the sunshine and watching the boys larking around in the water. I was able to spend some time on art and reading and we also played a lot of board games as a family.

We also got to enjoy terrific sunsets every evening.

Our week at the beach was a much-needed break away from our daily stresses and our usual routines and ruts. It was definitely relaxing and restorative. Next year, however, I am hoping for some travel plans that expand my experiences.

Our Autumn

We have had an incredibly busy couple of months so this is going to be a bit of a “catch up” blog post that jumps from subject to subject.

My oldest son moved to Rochester, New York, in the middle of August in order to attend college and then the other boys went back to school on 1 September. This was their first time attending in-person school since March 2020. After 18 months of virtual learning and only seeing teachers through screens, they were very much looking forward to a more normal school year. However, not long after they got home on that first day, our community was hit by a tornado. Some neighbourhoods were devastated and community buildings, including the High School, sustained damage. My two High School aged sons, therefore, had to pivot back to a few weeks of virtual school again. As deflating as that setback was, we were very thankful to have not personally endured any lasting damage to our property.

In October, my in-laws came to visit. Having not seen their grandsons for almost two years, they decided to risk travel and international flights. Their visit inspired us to return to some seasonal family traditions we had skipped last year because of the pandemic. The first of these was apple picking. We went a bit crazy picking a variety of apples. Over a month later and I we are still eating those same apples and I am still baking apple cobblers for dessert. I never thought I would get sick of apples but …

Our second son turned 16 in early October. What he wanted to do was take his two best friends to Shady Brook Farm to hang out and eat fair food. We all went together and then we set him and his friends loose to do whatever they wanted while we did the visited the Halloween themed barns, found our way around the corn maze, and visited the pumpkin patch. Mr Pict and our youngest son even took a ride in the monster truck hearse.

My in-laws wanted some time at the shore while they were in the US so they rented a beach property in Lewes, Delaware, for a week. We went down to stay with them for the weekend and properly explore Lewes, having only dipped in there before. We took a wander around the historic town centre. I enjoyed seeing all of the vintage architecture. Even my kids enjoyed seeing a cannonball from the War of 1812 still lodged in the side of the building that now serves as the town’s maritime museum. We took a stroll past the lightship Overfalls and played draughts (checkers) on the waterfront. I also managed to meet up with a friend who moved to Lewes over the Summer.

My in-laws celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary at the end of their visit with us. We went for an elegant and delicious brunch at the William Penn Inn.

Finally, in the last weekend of October, we took a flying visit up to Rochester to visit our oldest son. He had attended the open day on his own – the weekend before we went into lockdown in 2020 – and my husband had dropped him off in August so this was actually my first time visiting the RIT campus. Our son took us on a tour of the campus and to his dorm room. He is actually sharing with one of his best friends from High School so that worked out perfectly. He seems very happy and settled there and it was reassuring for me to see with my own eyes how comfortable and confident he is and how successfully he is managing everything.

It was cold and rainy while we were in Rochester so, in search of something indoors to do, we went to the Strong Play Museum. It was a terrific museum focused on the history of games and my kids would have had an absolute blast there when they were younger. There were lots of interactive exhibits, indoor playgrounds, and even a miniature supermarket. With our kids all being much older than the target demographic, we spent most of our time on the upper floor which was focused on board games and video and computer games. We are a big board gaming family with an extensive collection and Mr Pict and the boys all love computer games so we all found it pretty engaging. It is always amusing and mildly disconcerting to see things from our own childhoods now being curated in museums as vintage and classic items and there were abundant cases of that in this museum.

It was so lovely to have all six of us together again and the perfect way to round out a very busy couple of months. I am now looking forward to things slowing down and getting quieter for the remainder of the year.

Slaughter Beach

No sooner was the school year over (actually we bust the younger two kids out a day early) than we headed off on a much-needed vacation. Our oldest son did not accompany us for a variety of reasons so he stayed home with the cats. One of the things I have missed the most during this pandemic is travel so I was very glad of a break away from my own four walls. We needed to book way back when I was the only member of the family eligible for vaccination, however, so at that time we had to keep our plans modest and be mindful of the need to maintain mitigation efforts. For that reason, we rented a house on Slaughter Beach on Delaware’s bay.

The house was perfect for our needs. It had everything we needed for family life and easy access to the beach. There was a set of steps that took us from the house, across the dunes, and right onto the shore. Easy peasy. The boys absolutely loved that they could go to the beach whenever they wanted and at all times of the day. My favourite thing about the house was the master suite because it was massive. It was literally the entire second floor of the house. So luxurious. A large bank of windows meant that I could wake up and see the sun rise over the sea from the comfort of the bed every morning. I even had a nook that I could set up as my art table.

The nearest big town was Rehoboth and we headed there a couple of times. The first trip involved a morning jaunt to a farmers market and from there we walked to the shore so we could have a stroll on the boardwalk. The beach itself was absolutely heaving with people. Even in non-pandemic times, places that crowded set me on edge. I was very grateful that we had access to a very quiet beach with no public access so that we could be isolated and enjoy peace and quiet. Nobody was in the mood for shopping or boardwalk pursuits so we just wandered and people watched for a bit.

Our second trip to Rehoboth was to have a walk around Gordon’s Pond, which is a nature refuge. It proved to be a pleasant enough walk, especially since it was flat on a hot day, but the pond was very low and wildlife was nowhere to be seen. I think I saw a bird at a distance. We did get a good view of the submarine watchtowers from a raised walkway.

Because Mr Pict is an outer space nerd, we went out one morning to see a satellite launch.  We were supposed to be able to see it in the sky ten second after launch.  Mr Pict was viewing the live feed on his phone and was counting us down to the point when we should have been able to see the object in the sky.  Alas, the clouds rolled in and we did not see a single speck of anything.  You can see from the photograph how impressed the boys were by that jaunt.

Our nearest town for things like groceries was Milford. It is one of those towns that is clearly in the process of regenerating after the loss of its traditional industries. There are certainly shabby areas of the town but we found the centre to be quite appealing. We quickly found a favourite bakery and coffee shop and we stopped in there for some treats a couple of times. Their baked goods were among some of the best I have ever scoffed. We also returned one evening in order to buy some pierogis from a food truck since our 15 year old is a massive pierogi fan. It happened to be on an evening when there was some sort of community thing going on so the place was buzzing with people and there was a nice atmosphere. The boys approved of the various pierogis they purchased too.

On the subject of food, we also returned to the British themed fish and chip place that we discovered last summer. While it is not quite authentic chip shop grub, it is close enough for our stomach-based homesickness and quite delicious. We did takeaway and picnicked in the grounds of the same still-under-construction health clinic that we ate the same food in a year ago. I guess we are establishing new family traditions?

We visited a Nature Center on the outskirts of Milford one morning. It was not a big place so our visit took no time at all. It was, however, informative and we learned more about some of the local sea life and sea birds. We especially learned a lot about the anatomy of horseshoe crabs, which are truly peculiar creatures, and my 14 year old loved the turtles. We experienced a lot of wildlife on the stretch of beach in front of the rental house. The place was littered in horseshoe crab casts but the boys were most excited by the fact that they kept encountering live horseshoe crabs while they were paddling. We also encountered lots of little burrowing crabs and I even had a visit from a chubby frog one evening on the house’s patio. The wildlife I could most definitely have done without were the horseflies – what I grew up calling clegs. They were vicious and persistent and their bites were very nippy. I actually have a severe reaction to insect bites so the bites were very painful. There were so many swarms of them at certain times of the day that it was impossible to sit still and do anything. I had to take a fly swatter out with me and waft it about constantly just to keep them at bay. The same type of horseflies made us abandon a walk around a wildlife refuge at the end of our week’s vacation. The horde of them was just too apocalyptic to be tolerable.

The best thing about the vacation as far as Mr Pict and the boys were concerned, of course, was the beach. I am not much of a beach person because I loathe sand. I am happy to sit on the beach or paddle for a while but I cannot do it for hours on end. The ideal thing about our location was that I could just scuttle on back to the house and read or draw while still enjoying a view of the sea and fresh air coming in through screened windows. The menfolk, however, made the most of their time at the beach. They went out at all times of the day to paddle, swim, and kayak. There was a long shelf (is that the word?) which meant the water remained pretty shallow quite far out to shore. That meant we felt comfortable letting the boys take the kayak out without an adult being with them. Even our 12 year old was able to take the kayak out on his own. They really enjoyed that freedom. The 14 and 15 year olds even took the kayak out, took a break from paddling, and had some drinks and snacks while bobbing about in the waves.

It was a lovely week and a very welcome break from our own domestic spaces and our own well-worn routines. It was also great to spend a good chunk of quality family time together after a year of being trapped together while working, learning, and functioning as a family all on top of each other. It felt like we were rinsing some of the stress of the past year off and recharging our batteries.

Delaware Beach Getaway

We had really big travel plans for this Summer but, of course, the Covid 19 pandemic means that all of our plans were cancelled.  As a family, we are taking the risks very seriously and are being super cautious with what we do.  My youngest brother contracted Covid and had a really gruelling time getting through what is considered a mild case.  That only served to underscore how important it was to stick to our strict way of operating.  However, for various reasons too personal to get into, we did decide to get away for a few days.  We found a beach house in Delaware where we could maintain our isolated ways and that had a robust, Covid specific cleaning regimen to put our anxiety at ease.  We were also the first guests to stay in the house for several months.  Our oldest son opted to stay home with the cats.

We obviously spent a lot of time at the beach.  The property we rented was a two mile walk from the closest public access point and parking lot so it was exceptionally quiet and we never had to get remotely close to any other beach users.  In addition to paddling and swimming, the boys loved collecting horseshoe crab moults (or horseshoe husks as the kids dubbed them).  They gathered husks of various sizes over a few days and then my 14 year old had the idea to turn them into a sculpture.  What my youngest loved doing was finding these peculiar little burrowing sea critters at the shore line.  I think they are a type of isopod but I am not completely confident in even that vague identification.  He enjoyed scooping them out of the wet sand and then watching them quickly burrowing back down.  The beach was also home to a type of crab that ran at comically high speed and scurried from hole to hole.  My 14 year old also found a hermit crab.

We also experienced some lovely sunrises and terrific sunsets on the beach.  The boys also liked being out on the beach in the pitch dark.  Mr Pict is into astronomy so he enjoyed using his binoculars to pick out details in the clear night sky.

I can only tolerate sand for so long so I liked having some other outdoor spaces to use.  There was a raised deck at the house where I could sit and read, draw, and paint while being able to see the rest of the family larking about on the beach.  Beneath that raised deck, there was a space enclosed with screens that was perfect for outdoor eating.

On the subject of eating, we mostly ate food at the house whipped up from ingredients we brought with us.  One evening, however, we decided to have a treat because Mr Pict had spotted a place selling British style fish and chips.  As Brits, how could we not go sample some grub there?  They were doing roadside pickup so we placed our order and then parked up to eat it while it was all still steaming hot.  It really was all pretty authentic and passed muster with our British tastebuds.  The one exception was the brown sauce which was far too good quality for proper chippy sauce.  Just the aroma of clouds of malt vinegar wafting off of hot chips transported me home. It was a delicious treat.

We did take a couple of excursions.  We thought about exploring historic Lewes but it was far too busy and most people we saw were not wearing masks so we promptly nixed that idea.  What we did instead was head to Cape Henlopen for a wander around Fort Miles.  We have been there before, in 2017, and we planned on also exploring new areas of the coast, but every other spot was just too busy for comfort.

We went on two woodland walks.  The first of these was at Prime Hook Wildlife Refuge.  We had to pass a few people at the head of the trail but otherwise we seemingly had the whole place to ourselves and we ended up covering the entire network of trails partly intentionally and partly because we got ourselves a bit lost and looped certain trails twice.  We definitely got our steps in that day!  We encountered lots of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and also lots of frogs or toads – I cannot confidently identify the species so please let me know if you can.  My 11 year old also found a complete shed snakeskin but unfortunately we did not meet any snakes.

Our final trip was to Redden State Forest but that was a much shorter trek and we were literally the only people there.  It was a very humid day, however, and we were being constantly bitten by insects.  I have a severe reaction to insect bites so my left hand ballooned up.  We, therefore, moved around the trail paths swiftly and skedaddled back to the car.

It was definitely restorative to get away for a few days and be hermits in a different space.  It is not the Summer vacation we had planned for but it were definitely grateful for a simple getaway.

Nemours

We had four guests visiting us over the Thanksgiving holiday: my in-laws and Mr Pict’s oldest friend and his partner.  After a day of over-indulging in feasting, we all felt the need to get some fresh air and burn off some calories.  We, therefore, headed to Valley Forge to hike around the site of the encampment and the surrounding fields.  I have blogged about a previous visit to Valley Forge, back in Spring of 2016, so will not repeat myself here.  Suffice to say it was a fair bit colder than it had been during that first exploration.  The wind was so biting that I lost feeling in my ears.  I also tried to recreate a previous “gargoyle” photo but had misremembered which son was the model.

The following day, the six adults went on a child-free trip across the border into Delaware.  Our destination for the day was Nemours.  This is a French chateau style mansion that Alfred Dupont built for the woman who would become his second wife.  We learned that Alicia was not easily wooed and that the mansion was Alfred’s final pitch at winning her affections.  She agreed to marry him but I am pretty certain he did not win her affections.  Indeed, the subtext of our entire tour of the property was how problematic and dysfunctional Alfred’s marriages were – and obviously he was the common denominator – and how suspicious a few events in the biographical timeline were, including sudden deaths that removed the necessity for a divorce or the mysterious advent of infants.  I basically had my own little dramatic soap opera playing in my head as I moved from room to room and learned more about Alfred and his wives.

After a quick pootle around the grounds, we embarked on a guided tour led by an enthusiastic young woman named Kat.  She started the tour in the mansion’s basement and that turned out to be my favourite part of the house.  I have visited hundreds of stately homes, palaces, and castles in my time and the public rooms tend to be much of a muchness.  What set this home apart from the others that I have visited was that basement level.  Since he had built his mansion from scratch in the early 20th Century, Alfred was not having to cram modern technology into a much older building or try to couple the old and new.  He also seemed to be especially enthralled with engineering and with the cutting edge of mod cons so there were lots of fascinating gizmos, gadgets, and gubbins going on beneath the surface of the building.  As someone who spends too much of her life doing laundry, I especially liked the spacious laundry room – housed in an exterior building but connected to the mansion through a tunnel so that undies need never be exposed to public view.

Each room in the house had been decorated for the Christmas season.  The chosen decorations were on a theme connected to the space in which they were sited and I enjoyed the festive sparkle and the attention to detail.  Again, my favourite trees were to be found in the basement level – a steampunk tree in the boiler room and a bottle tree in the bottling room.

The house is beautifully decorated and immaculately maintained.  I found myself admiring the skill of the people who must remove every speck of dust from the surfaces in advance of doors being opened each day.  There was a lot of opulence on display but it was not so lavish as to be garish or excessive.  My favourite room was the conservatory closely followed by the kitchen.

After completing our tour of the house, we wandered over to the garage – which was larger than my house – to see the family’s collection of very shiny luxury cars.  We contemplated having a walk around the grounds, which are laid out in a French style, but it was far too cold and we were too hungry to tolerate the cold.  We, therefore, bid farewell to Nemours and its muffled tales of familial dysfunction.  Since we have also visited Hagley Museum (way back in 2015), we now need to visit Delaware’s other open-to-the-public DuPont property at Winterarthur.

 

A Tree-mendous Birthday

My third son was gifted a session at Go Ape for his 11th birthday.  My oldest son had done Go Ape back in Britain for his tenth birthday but this was a first experience for the other boys.  The three older boys were eligible to do the full course under the supervision of Mr Pict and their grandfather.  My youngest son, being too wee for the full course, had a ticket to spend an hour on a junior course which my mother-in-law and I could supervise from ground level.

It was just as well I could supervise from the ground as I don’t think I could have managed even the junior course without my fear of heights causing me to go into a panic.  The staff at Go Ape were fantastic.  They were competent, of course, but they were also great with their encouragement and praise and creating challenge.  My youngest son – who is completely fearless – got the hang of the course pretty quickly so they encouraged him to try and beat his own personal record, then to do one of the routes backwards, and to try different types of jump on the zipline.  He had a whale of a time and absolutely loved it.

Once our time was up with the junior course, we headed into the woods to track down the others and see how they were getting on.  We had seen them getting fitted into their harnesses and being trained and at that time they were all smiles and excitement.  We wondered if, almost two hours in, they were flagging or finding it was getting too challenging.  We met up with them just as they were doing the fourth stretch of the course.  They were definitely feeling challenged but were still enjoying the experience.  It made me queasy seeing how high up they were.  Shortly after we met up with them, they had a choice to make as to whether to take a difficult route over to a platform or an extreme route.  My oldest son wanted to do the extreme route which meant his father had to take a deep breath and accompany him.  They had to move between a series of short scramble nets which were dangling in the canopy of the trees.  It was pretty terrifying to watch even from ground level.  Meanwhile, our birthday boy was having an attack of nerves as he found the combination of height, wobbly platforms, and wind to be overwhelming.  It took him a while to collect himself but, with some advice and encouragement from a member of staff on the ground, he took a first step and then another and then in no time he was across to the next platform.  That experience, however, meant that once he was back on the ground, he decided he was staying there.  He was done.  So were his 12 year old brother and grandfather.  My oldest son decided he wanted to complete the course in its entirety, however, which meant one final set of challenges.  Since he had to be accompanied by an adult, that meant his father had to complete it too.  This included what my husband declared was the scariest part of the course: a just-too-long drop off of a platform to swing across onto a net.  Once they ziplined back across the lake, they too were done.

Every member of Team Pict had challenged themselves and felt a sense of accomplishment.  Just maybe even my mother-in-law and I get to include ourselves in that since we overcame our anxiety enough to spectate and offer encouragement.  Everyone was hungry after hours spent in low temperatures in the woods, especially those who had been burning calories swinging here and there, so it was time to eat.  The birthday boy wanted to have pizza for dinner so we headed to Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza and had some delicious food.  Once we were home, he had his special birthday dessert, a platter of cannolis, one of his favourite things.

Exploring History on the Delaware Coast

Having visited the Air Mobility Command Museum as our first stop, we moved further down the Delaware coast to another military history site.  This was Fort Miles on Cape Henlopen.  When we decided that we would be travelling along the Delaware coast, I thought it would be great to visit Cape Henlopen to see the lighthouse.  I have a bit of a thing for lighthouses which I have steadfastly prevented from evolving into a proper obsession (because I have enough of those).  Thankfully I thought to google it because the Cape Henlopen lighthouse fell into the sea in the 1920s.  Oops.  Bit late for that one then.  It reminded me of the time we thought to seek out the Coney Island elephant.  So no lighthouses for me but another dollop of military history instead.

Fort Miles dates from the Second World War and was built to defend America’s eastern coast against a potential German invasion.  We started exploring the site at an observation tower.  These observation towers were used to triangulate the position of any vessel that came into view and looked suspect.  Mr Pict and the boys climbed a spiral staircase inside the tower and popped out on top.  I decided to not put myself through the acrophobia to take in the views given it was mostly flat and uninteresting.  No regrets.  After a period of tree climbing, we wandered towards the shore.

Our walk brought us past empty buildings that were once in use as barracks.  These buildings, which once housed over 2000 military personnel, had no doors so we could wander into them and have a nose around.  The low afternoon sun created interesting shadows inside many of them.  Mr Pict and the kids liked sitting on the 8 inch guns that were in the vicinity of these buildings.  We also saw a 16 inch gun which was apparently fired just the once in order to test it.  The gun we saw was not original to Fort Miles and had instead been removed from the USS Missouri.  The gun appears in famous photos of the signing of the Japanese surrender which happened on board the battleship.

We stopped for a late lunch / early dinner in Rehoboth Beach and chose to eat in Arena’s Deli.  We had read good reviews of it and liked that it had a casual atmosphere plus the menu seemed like it would have something for everyone.  We all opted for comfort food and not so healthy options but it was our only meal of the day so we gave ourselves a pass.  Any excuse.  The food was all delicious and very well cooked and satisfied our hungry bellies for the final leg of the day’s travel.  The sun was setting as we headed towards Ocean City so we pulled over at a beach to watch the sun sink below the horizon line.  The sunset was gorgeous but what most thrilled the boys was finding horseshoe crabs on the shore line.

After that, we checked into our hotel in Ocean City, the boys went swimming in the large hotel pool, and we headed to our beds to rest ahead of the next day’s adventures.

Air Mobility Command Museum

We decided to use the time over Thanksgiving break for a spontaneous family trip.  We found a cheap as chips hotel room in Ocean City, Maryland – because really not many people are clamoring to hang out at the coast in late November – which determined our trajectory.  We, therefore, spent the Friday following Thanksgiving moseying down the Delaware Coast.

Our first stop of the trip was at the Air Mobility Command Museum in Dover, Delaware.  Located next to Dover Air Force Base, it proved to be a vast showroom (split between a hangar and an airfield) of military aircraft.  Now, I am not someone who is into military history or militaria and nor am I interested in vehicles so this blog post is not going to be replete with technical information.  I honestly don’t think I can recall what the majority of the aircraft were even called even though I asked Mr Pict to refresh my memory yesterday.  This will, therefore, be a more impressionistic account of the time we spent there.  I will state, however, that despite my lack of knowledge or enthusiasm for the subject, I thought the Museum itself was really excellent.  The variety of military aircraft was impressive, of course, but there was also ample information accompanying each exhibit, there was space to move around each plane, helicopter and glider, and they were not so reverential that they prevented visitors accessing all the planes.  This latter point was somewhat critical for the success of our visit since my kids tend to baulk at visiting plane and train museums that take a “look but don’t touch” attitude.  And I have not mentioned that access to the Museum is entirely free.  We gave a donation but there was no pressure to do so.

We started in the hangar and I was able to hook the boys’ interest right away.  There was a glider on display, one side of which had been removed to reveal that it contained some sort of military road vehicle as its cargo.  The kids found this sort of aircraft autopsy interesting.  We also learned that these gliders became rather sought after following the Second World War not because of the gliders themselves but because of the crates they were shipped in.  People would build houses from the disassembled crates.

War II plane.  They knew about ball turret gunners and their perilous placement on war planes but seeing one up close actually drove home the vulnerability of the poor gunner.  They were even able to peer inside and see how terribly cramped the space was.  A separate replica demonstrated, through use of a dummy, how the gunner would have been positioned inside the ball turret, tucked up like a fetus in a mechanical womb.  It made me vividly recollect Randall Jarrell’s poem ‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner’ and I felt very squeamish just thinking about the intense claustrophobia let alone the imminent danger.

We saw simulators and training aircraft, mid-air refuelling vehicles, fighter jets, and helicopters – including a Huey which even I could identify – and a machine for making dog tags, which was somehow both fascinating and poignant.  The boys especially enjoyed the airfield exhibits, however, because they had space to roam and even run.  Best of all, however, was the fact that several of the aircraft were open to visitors meaning they could actually clamber aboard and experience the interior of the planes.  Having seen the troop seating with all the webbing on the interior walls in movies and documentaries, it was interesting to be able to experience something of its discomfort for ourselves.  It was also interesting to see how cargo would be stacked up inside planes and to learn about the incredible capacity of some planes, including one that could fit several fully assembled Hueys.  A tour guide demonstrated how strips in the floor could be flipped so that regular passenger seating could be clipped into place.  The boys also got to clamber around inside a Hercules (see: I know the name of that one) and sit in the cockpit.

Military museums always have to go a long way to win me over because, as stated above, I really have pretty much no interest in the subject of military history.  As I possess only very general knowledge of military transport, I admit to having had low expectations of this one.  But win me over it did.  It was accessible, provided information that worked as an “idiot’s guide” for the uninformed (me), spacious enough that we never remotely felt harassed or harried by the presence of others, offered variety, and allowed the kids to actually engage with what they were looking at.  It was a really good museum and was a great start to our trip.

Mother’s Day Weekend at Hagley Museum

It was Mother’s Day weekend this past weekend in the US – UK Mother’s Day having happened in March – and it was a busy time in the Pict household.

On Saturday, Mr Pict and the three older Pictlings headed into the city to go to the Wizard World Comic Con.  They had a whale of a time.  They went to talks with the actor Michael Rooker and Stephen Amell – my 9 year old is a massive fan of ‘Arrow’ – and James and Oliver Phelps who played the Weasley twins in the Harry Potter movies.  They enjoyed all of the talks but found  the last one to be the most engaging and entertaining.  They also went to a talk and demonstration given by the creative geniuses at Weta.  Mr Pict and the kids are huge fans of the Lord of the Rings movies so they were in awe of seeing some of the costumes and armour demonstrated and learning a bit more about the processes involved.  They also visited various stalls and technology demonstrations, played some old school arcade games and took in all the sights and scenes of the visitors in their costumes.  Mr Pict geeked out when he got his photo taken with a chap who was dressed in a completely authentic looking Predator costume.

While they were geeking out, meanwhile, our youngest son and I were supposed to be going to a zoo and then out for dinner.  But the car battery was dead as a dodo and when I called roadside assistance I found that we had exceeded the number of free call outs we were apparently permitted.  Aggravating.  So we decided to make our own fun at home.  We went to the play park, walked through the woods, painted, watched a movie and baked brownies.

Mother’s Day itself began with a breakfast in bed of patisserie and fruit juice and then gifts and cards.  My kids being the geek children of geek parents, my gifts were all pretty geeky.  They had bought me a set of Walking Dead custom lego at Comic Con and a cuddly xenomorph from the Alien movies.  After being stuck at home the day before, I wanted to go on a day trip so we headed across the border to Delaware so that the boys could claim a new state.  Our rules for collecting a state are that two of three things have to be done: eat, pee or sleep.  I had managed to claim Delaware back in 1995 only by virtue of having consumed a milkshake and falling asleep in the car so really this was my first really proper visit to Delaware rather than just passing through.

Our destination for the day was Hagley Museum which is on the shore of the Brandywine River.  It is the site of the original black powder works founded by Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours in 1802.  He chose the site because the river would enable him to harness the power generated by water wheels.  Du Pont is significant in this area’s industrial and economic history so it seemed appropriate to learn a bit more about the company.  Furthermore, my direct ancestor Joseph Scrine was a black powder manufacturer in London in the nineteenth century so I was keen to learn more about the process for that reason.

We began inside the museum, housed inside what had originally been a cotton mill.   We learned about the history of the company’s foundation.  Du Pont, realising that American gunpowder was inferior because of a substandard milling process, spotted an opportunity in the market.  We learned that he had selected the site because of the access to water for power but also the use of the river for transportation  of resources and ingredients, the abundance of willow trees to turn into charcoal as part of the process and nearby stone quarries for building the mills.  Another gallery in the museum housed a large hooked rug crafted by a member of the family depicting the history of the Du Pont family through visual symbolism.  My 8 year old had fun spotting the skunk, which was some sort of family in-joke.  The final floor of the museum told the story of Du Pont’s pioneering work in scientific discovery.  Essentially if you can name a polymer it was probably invented by the scientists at Du Pont: nylon, neoprene, teflon and lycra were just a handful of those featured in the exhibition.  For the kids, this was the most engaging bit of the museum as there were more hands on things for them to do.  They could climb inside a space suit, pretend to drive a nascar rally car, look through microscopes at slides comparing natural materials to the synthetic versions created by Du Pont and investigate various subjects on touch screen computers.

We had been told that the family’s Georgian mansion, on the banks of the river a short distance further on from the powder works, was closed for renovation of its heating system.  We decided early on, therefore, not to trudge all the way to see the house and gardens as we could always return to focus on those another time.  Instead we decided to concentrate on the industrial buildings and take a gentle amble along the tree-lined river bank to see them.

Back home in Scotland, my boys had loved playing among ruined castles, tumble down chapels and standing stones so we thought they would enjoy exploring the ruined powder work buildings as we reached each in turn.  For the most part they did.  They particularly liked scrambling through small tunnels in the building’s foundations and guddling about on the banks of the river.  There was, however, a fair bit of griping and moaning.  It was another one of those days where the kids were tag-team whinging.  Rare was the moment when all four were happy as clams at the same time.  I, however, was determined to enjoy every moment of the trip and Mr Pict and I found the whole trip to be engaging because of the interesting history and also because it was a scenic and peaceful walk  – if we ignored the thrum of child moaning.

Some of the buildings housed artifacts so we could see the milling equipment, line shafts, methods of sorting the powder into different sized pieces and even guddle around with a model water turbine.  A highlight of the trip was seeing a sixteen foot water wheel in action.

We walked back on the other side of the canal so that the kids could just run around a bit more freely without us stopping to “educate” them at every stop.  They found a ruined powder store that they turned into a stage.  Our 9 year old noticed a circular pile of ramshackle bricks and immediately transformed himself into the Iron-Man Hulkbuster from the current Avengers sequel.  They also did the Karate Kid crane move, did shadow boxing and tried to run up the walls.  It was handy way to get everyone to burn off some energy and everyone’s mood was finally in synch and positive.  Then they found a fuzzy caterpillar, named it Special and starting pleading to be permitted to take it home with us.  Repeatedly told no, the happy vibes got grumpy again.  Sigh.

Towards the end of our walk we passed the spot where a building had blown up in 1920 killing five workers.  We could see the remains of the obliterated buildings and the kids enjoyed exploring a piece of metal equipment that had been smashed to smithereens.  It was a useful reminder for the kids to see how dangerous the work at the powder mills could be and to comprehend the power of gunpowder generally.

Despite kid grumblings, our trip to Hagley Museum was a great day out.  I would definitely recommend a visit and I am sure we will be back, especially given that we did not manage to see the house and gardens.