Parchment Paths

After a year's absence I finally made it back to one of my favorite places, Knoebels!    I've been going there ever since I was about five year's old and have loved it ever since then. It's a free admission park, mostly surrounded by forest, so you feel like you're at a small time carnival, but with much better rides, like the new Flying Turns. It's a wonderfully smooth riding, trackless roller coaster. It's modeled after a bobsled track but meant to simulate flying. The only negative is that it's very short ride.    Then, there's my favorite The Twister! It's a great coaster with lots of sharp and swooping turns. There is also an old fashioned carousel where you can catch brass rings and a carousel museum that houses horses from all eras  and gives the history of the merry go round.   Inside the museum There is also a coal mining museum and museum recounting the history of the park.   Coal Mine wing   Knoebels...

  After a year of waiting the gates Mount Hope have swung open for another span of faire days upon the shire. This time  however, we welcomed a new pair of monarchs, King Henry the VIII and Catherine of Aragon.  It was exciting, yelling out "Long Live the King" for the first time, since there's never been a king there as long as I've been attending. As with any new cast the first weekend is a bit stiff, but I'm looking forward to seeing them completely at one with their roles. Also, there's so much to see even without attending the shows, the glittering jewelry shops,  colorful glass ornaments, wooden and steal swords, leather goods and that's just the sights. The shire smells of roasted turkey legs,  incense, handmade soap, apple wine, funnel cakes wrapped around sticks which are so delectable that it negates the anachronism of deep frying in Tudor Times.   The best part of it all was being there with friends and making new ones. One of the cast, ...

First off, this is not a sequel to the book The Phantom of the Opera, but the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. That's rather important to remember. Second, it is the basis of the musical Love Never Dies. I can't help but feel that maybe if the musical had more closely followed the book it would have been a bit better, though I did enjoy the play. The over all story is well written and thought out. The style is similar so Dracula, in the sense that each chapter is a newspaper article, journal entry, or narrative of a different character. I enjoy this style, however I wish more of the main charterers, such as Erik and Christine had more chapters and that the last and most climatic chapter was told by one of the rather than a secondary character, that to me, was a bit annoying. I highly recommend this book to fans (phans) of the original book as well as the musical, especially ones who liked Love Never Dies, but found it lacking.

Today my dad and I took my niece and nephew for a hike and nature scavenger hunt at Frances Slocum State Park. It was a nice, sunny day and under the cover of the forest, it was pretty shady and cool. The kids had a great time looking for rocks, squirrels, and birds while I enjoyed being out in nature and getting some exercise!  I was also able to tell them the history of the park's name sake, who was kidnapped by Native Americans when she was five. They stayed the night under a rock overhang and moved on. By the time her family found her, Frances was quite elderly and had made a life for self among her captives and chose to live out the remainder of her days with the people she came to see as her own. So, the kids got some history as well as nature!  

This past Thursday my dad and I took a day trip to Sight and Sound Theater to see their play Moses. I had seen the show before but it was Dad's first time. I gave a review of it in my post from March so I won't repeat that. I will say, however that live theater is worth seeing twice before you notice different things, a line in a song, a set piece,  or a character that stands out more the second time around. This time I was sitting in a different part of the theater, an aisle seat, which at Sight and Sound is special because the actors and live animals walk through them. Well, the strip of cloth representing  the Nile River was running through the center aisle and kept flopping up and smacking my dad's shoulder. At intermission, a man in our row joked that he was worried Dad would drown.  Talk about immersive theater! After the show, my friend that works at the theater took us backstage, which is always very exciting. We got to see some of the sets up close and meet s...

This past week I've picked up an old habbit,  keeping a journal. I don't mean what you're reading now, but a pen and paper, personal account of my day.  I did this fairly faithfully as a preteen and then feel out of the habbit. However, after watching the movie version of Jane Austen's Emma, it occured to me that journal can be quite useful, there's a scene where Emma is writing about a problem she's having. I realized that aside from keeping me in pratice with writing, it could help me unravel the day, sort out problems, remember good times, and could also help improve my prayer life.  So far, I'm three days strong with journal, so hopefully I can keep it up! 

Most people who know me, know that I adore old, abandoned places, houses, churches, theme parks,  zoos, and the like. I have Pinterest board dedicated to the subject as well as follow two channels of urban explorers on You Tube .  Because of this, I've noticed more and more all of the derelict places near where I live, including a mobile home in my neighborhood.  I had already gone once, the door was actually blowing wide open in the breeze, but hadn't gone more than a few steps due to the broken glass, the rotting floor and the fact that I was wearing flip-flops at the time. So, I waited until the rainy weather dried up, donned some sneakers, grabbed my camera and returned. Sadly, this time the doors were all locked. Several new homes have been moved into the area, and I suspect the doors were locked to prevent possible vandalism. Though, disappointed, I snapped several pictures of the outside.  It's been left alone for at least ten years and yet some parts, l...