An Old Fortress (reconstructed)

 I went with the kids on an organized outing with other people to a place about an hour drive away to a city with an old fortress. It reminded me a lot of Xi'an with the city walls. The city we went to had fortress walls that have been rebuilt recently. The original ones were built in the 1300-1400s (?) but largely destroyed recently because of recent wars. The outing was specifically in the evening to get the sunset and to see it all lit up at night. There was a big festival going on at the time. I'm not sure if it's regularly all lit up at night but they had special dance and cultural performances for the festival. There were lots of people; it doesn't look like it in the pictures because I waited until it was relatively not crowded to take the pictures (or between the crowds).

World War II at a Museum

 We were able to go to a museum a few days ago (me and the kids) and they had both a World War 1 part and a World War 11 part. They mentioned that birds were used in World War I if they suspected there was chemical warfare. If the bird died from the air around them, they knew the air was poisonous and the soldiers should wear protective gear. They also had a homemade flag on display that a Prisoner of War during World War I had made by hand out of an old sugar bag. They stained it to get the colors of the flag and would drape it over caskets of other POWs that died during the war...then they'd have to hide the flag so it wouldn't be taken away. 

World War II History in Oregon

 In World War II two bombs were dropped by the Japanese close to where we live. Their goal was to start a forest fire in the forest close by, but their plan backfired because it had rained not long before they dropped the bombs. The trees and ground were all wet so the bombs didn't start any fires. There's a trail today where you can hike out to see where the bombs were dropped and we had wanted to go on this trail for the last 2 plus years but didn't get around to it...until yesterday. We went with some friends and drove about an hour on forest roads to get to the start of the trail. We were surprised to see redwoods out there; there aren't many redwood trees in Oregon. Redwoods are massive, really old trees that have "red" looking wood. Here are some pictures:

You can see how big the Redwood is compared to the trees around it.

This particular redwood was really big!

There was a fire up here a few years ago but the trees are starting to grow back (that's why this trunk is black- blackened from the fire).

On a side note, the man who flew the plane and dropped the bombs (Mr. Fujita) flew the plane from the top of a submarine. The plane was disassembled, put together on the top of the submarine, flown, and then disassembled again on the submarine to go inside the submarine so the submarine could submerge under water. Years after World War II had ended, Mr. Fujita came back to the area and gave his samurai sword to the city of Brookings as a goodwill (and reconciliation) gesture. The sword is permanently on display in the library in Brookings, with a write up and a model of the submarine ship. 

Trip up to Washington state and back

 We had to do a last minute trip up to Washington state and back last weekend so we drove up the Oregon coast to get there. It was a trip I had wanted to do anyway because it's such a beautiful drive with lots of places to pull over for views. We also got to visit the Lewis and Clarke national park, where they re-created the winter fort they stayed in all those years ago in northwestern Oregon. We also got to visit a few lighthouses we hadn't seen before in Oregon. 

A weekend trip and Lighthouses

 We went for an overnight trip over the weekend for a follow-up doctor appointment. Our youngest son (7 years old) broke his arm a month and a half ago. It was a bad break and they flew him to a bigger hospital to put 3 small metal pins in it to hold the bones in place. A week and a half ago we went there to get his cast off. They took out the 2 metal pins they could see. This weekend was his surgery to get out the final pin that they couldn't see. When they put the pins in the arm, they normally leave part of them sticking out so they can just pull them out. However, one of them got pushed further in. Anyway, we made a little trip out of it and re-visited the Cape Blanco Lighthouse (which was extremely windy and foggy!) and went to the Heceta Lighthouse.

                                                        Cape Blanco Lighthouse (foggy!)

Heceta Lighthouse

Lighthouse

 Today we went to visit a lighthouse...the first lighthouse any of us have ever been to. It was super, super cool. The kids loved it. We moved here (to Oregon) a few months ago (December 2024) and have been waiting until April to see some of the lighthouses because most of them are closed in the winter (and start opening up for the year in April). We got the kids "Lighthouse passports" where they can stamp each passport we visit. We hope to visit a few lighthouses this year. 

Shanghai

 We went to Shanghai for a few days to renew the kids' passports and had a few other things to do. We did some sightseeing though: Saturday we went to Ignatius Catholic Church which was built in the early 1900s. They had some gorgeous stained glass windows! Today we went to a water village, but it was really hot and humid. We didn't think Shanghai would be so hot this time of year and can imagine how hot and humid it gets in the summer.

The remains of the big palace from the Han Dynasty

 Today we went to Weiyang Palace Remains Park. It's a huge, huge park that's the exact spot of where the old palace used to be. Xi'an was the capital of the country for a few different dynasties. The big palace we saw today was destroyed at the end of the Han Dynasty, around 200 AD. There's not many buildings to see (almost none!) but they have the outlines on the ground of where they used to be so you can get an idea of how huge it was. Although there are so many historical places to see in Xi'an, this park isn't one of the ones commonly seen because it's so big and on the outskirts of town. I enjoyed it, even though it was so hot today! It was great to see how big it was and to think that I was walking where some of the people I've written about (children's biographies and the Storybook fo China) have been. 

This used to be where the wall for the palace used to be. You can see how thick the walls were.

There's a plastic window with a drawing of how this exact place looked like many years ago.

The park goes all the way to the trees in the back. 

Where the trees are are probably where the main roads used to be. All the green fields are where the old city and palace used to be. It's huge!

A Historic Park (and more tulips!)

Yesterday we met up with another family to go to a park together. This park has some buildings from the Tang Dynasty (roughly 600-900 AD), a small lake, and this time of year tulips! The first time I went to this park, I didn't know they would have tulips and it was a pleasant surprise. It was about 10 years ago. 10 years later...the park is still there, but it's changed significantly. I didn't know if there would be tulips or not and I was glad to see them still there this time of year.