What have you been up to?  Have you had a chance to hang out with friends?  Maybe you’ve gone to a Summer Camp and made new friends.  Do you play a sport?  Perhaps you’ve stayed home and hung around the house with family.  Did you go camping?  My kids are currently hanging out with their grandparents in Portland.  I think they’re getting spoiled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Usually summer is a time to take a trip somewhere new.  It can be to meet up with family, or see a new place.  You start to explore new boundaries.  Recently, I was looking at taking a trip to one of our Nation’s great National Parks and came across this website.  Jonathan Irish is a National Geographic photographer that wanted to see all of the parks in one year.  In fact, he is trying to see them all in 52 weeks, or a year.  He’s taking this trip with his wife, Stefanie.  She’s in the exploration business too.  She works for Nasa.

Wait a minute.  I’ll bet you have some questions.

If you haven’t been, you might be thinking, “What’s a National Park? How does a place in the US become a National Park? How many National Parks are there?”

The video series “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” created by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan can answer all of these questions and more.  Check out the PBS site for more information and catch a glimpse of history.

Now that you’ve started to create an idea of what a National Park is, which would you visit?  It’s definitely something to think about.  There are several great choices.  I can remember the first time I went to Yellowstone National Park with my kids.  They had their heads down and they were playing on some electronic devices they had.  Once we got closer to the park I said, “Put your gizmos away and pay attention to what’s happening around you outside.”  They were perplexed and didn’t really get it.  However, once they looked outside, their thoughts of video games and fail videos vanished.  There, in front of them, was a landscape they had never seen before.  It was huge and majestic.  As we drove further into the park,  we came across a 2000 plus pound Bison just walking in the road.  The kids couldn’t believe it.  That was the start of a great adventure for my family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe you can’t make it to a park this summer.  If you could, which would you visit?  How long would you stay?  What attractions would you be sure not to miss?

I’m going to Glacier National Park this summer.  I’m not sure what we’ll do or see.  We leave in 3 weeks.  I need to start answering the questions above.  Hopefully, I can do a follow-up post and let you know how our trip goes.  Stay tuned.

 

I was drinking my coffee this morning and saw a great video on the Internet about a house building project that has some great applications for living. Think about the space that you currently live. You may think it’s small. In fact, most people think they need something larger for their living space. What if we changed our thinking about where we live and how we live? It seems one man, architect Van Bo Le-Mentzal, has designed a 1 square meter house. Check out the video below.

What are your thoughts? Wouldn’t this be a fun project to work on this summer? What about building some of these next school year?

Recently I stumbled across a great website that helps us to investigate the Plymouth Colony. The people of this colony would later came to be known as the Pilgrims. The website information comes from a museum located in Massachusetts. The museum is called the Plymoth Plantation. Here you get to see the distinct differences between 2 different cultures (natives and colonist) and how they lived back in the 1600’s. It’s a crazy interactive experience. Here’s an example of what you’ll see if you go.

The website is very similar in that it allows you to investigate the two different cultures and ways of life. Check it out and share what you learned by leaving a comment.