This trip got off to a bit of a rocky start. The night before we realized that the RV wouldn’t start – we think it had something to do with the boys playing with buttons near the steering wheel, burning out the battery. After charging the battery for a while, we tried again and … it still didn’t start. After fiddling for a bit, we couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Luckily, the RV comes with an emergency start button – which essentially starts the engine using the RV batteries, which are separate from the battery that drives the RV. At least we could drive in the morning and get someone to look at the electrical in Cincinnati.
Then, to our surprise, the truck just started working. After driving for a bit, we stopped for some gas and the truck just worked. Maybe something just started working or we have some engine fairies. At least we won’t have to worry about it for a while.
The rest of the drive was pretty smooth, until we arrived at the campground. Google, in its infinite wisdom, directed us down a road with no outlet or place to turn around. We assumed this led to the campground. We were close – it was one street over, and, no, it did not connect. We managed to find a stable that let us turn around and go back the right way. What’s even crazier is as we made it to the check-in point, Google was trying to tell us to turn around. It’s usually very reliable, but this time it was really off.
Saturday was a rainy day, so we took the kids to the Newport Aquarium. This place was highly recommended, so I was excited to take the boys. However, I was disappointed – from the ticketing process to the exhibits, it was just a let down.
We arrived and found a massive line for tickets, so I went online. We encountered an error, so we called the helpline only to be told that we couldn’t buy tickets because of the long line. The way the sell tickets it’s by times and the next available wasn’t for two hours. This made no sense as the website showed a lot of a availability, so we just tried again for the next time slot. Guess what happened – it worked and we walked right in. Thanks for the help, helpline.
The actual aquarium is nice, but it really annoyed me that I paid for mini-man to go in and none of the exhibits were at kid height. Even in the kids section, the exhibits we’re above most of their heads. Why charge for little kids of they can’t enjoy the exhibits. We wound up carrying the kids most of the time just so they could see stuff. All-in-all, not a fun experience. I would recommend this place for those with older kids or as a date place, but if you have young kids, skip it and go to the Children’s Museum in Cincinnati.
The next day was another rainy day, but we enjoyed just staying home and playing on the floor with the kids. Sometimes, that’s all you need – just a quiet place to play with your kids.
Monday was, yup you guessed it, rainy. So we decided to check out the Duke Energy Children’s Museum, which is housed in a 1940’s art deco train station. This building is gorgeous! I wish we could’ve seen more but it was under construction.
The station is no longer an active train station and now houses multiple museums. We visited the children’s museum and it was awesome. The museum spans multiple rooms and is filled with activities – climbing, balls, pretend, building, and water play. The boys had so much fun, we ended up staying for four hours!
We chose to let the kids play instead of going to lunch, so after the museum we took the boys to an early dinner. We also hoped it would make it easier to take the boys grocery shopping.
Ha! We ended up dragging two, crying little boys through the store. That is until we got to the ice cream – once mini-man spotted his favorite ice cream he calmed down. It even led to some dancing in the produce section.
During a much needed down day, where we played at home, Alex led Damon to another family in the park who are finishing their full-time RV experience. They exchanged stories and gave some recommendations on what to do in the area, including a local train exhibit, called Entertrainment Junction.
We checked it out the next day and it did not disappoint. This awesome place housed one of the largest train layouts we’d ever seen. Additionally, there were ride on trains, climb on trains, train tables, and a bunch of stuff to entertain the boys. We had a wonderful time as a family. We would’ve loved to stay longer, but the boys had horrible nights sleeps, and soon started wearing down.
But that didn’t stop us from hitting a few stores on the way home. Our first stop was a bust, but mini-man did have fun trying on a pair of too-big roller blades. Guess it’s time to get him some skates of his own. Then we stopped at IKEA for some food plus a couple of things we’d been wanting to get.
Out last day, we hung out at the campsite. I honestly don’t remember too much of what we did – at this point, I was exhausted. Little-dude was starting to get sick, so I wasn’t getting any sleep. I remember at one point, mini-man wanted to go swimming and started putting on his swim suit. Unfortunately, we didn’t have access to a pool, so Damon tried to help by putting together the kiddie pool. Didn’t work at all. I am very grateful that we have access to a pool at our upcoming stop in St. Louis.
But before we get there, we have to stop in Louisville.
Heartswell Adventures 