This past weekend Lisa and I packed up the girls and drove to Cincinnati. We left on Sunday and met up with my dad and stepmother, Patty, at the Ikea there. As we pulled into the parking lot I though, holy crap that place is huge. Patty, having shopped at the one in Portland before said, "Oh, how cute, look how small it is." I'm not kidding - the biggest store I have ever seen was described as cute and small! I have long heard of Ikea but this was the first time I had actually gone in one and it was quite an experience. Just inside the front door is a child drop-off point for a day care type facility. This place knows it is so big you will be there for so long that you need to get a babysitter once you arrive! We passed on the daycare and headed upstairs to the cafeteria. Yes, we needed sustenance and we hadn't even shopped yet. The Cafe served a variety of Swiss/Norweigen foods and Lisa and I both had Swedish Meatballs. They were OK. The price on the food was right as it cost about $22 for the whole family of four to eat and I even had a nice piece of chocolate cake for dessert. Once we were done eating we headed toward the actually shopping part of the store. Even having seen the outside of the building I didn't fully comprehend what I was getting myself into.
The store is two floors. The first floor (with the Cafe) is broken down into sections based on rooms of your house. We started out looking at living rooms and family rooms. Nested within each section of the store were little showcase's that represented entire apartments. Some were about 200 sq feet others were closer to 600 or 1000. Each showcase was broken down into entire apartments so that there were bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and closets. The showcases were pretty neat and really got me thinking about our home and the way we have things laid out. Eventually we made it through all of the different showcases and room sections of the first floor and headed down to the second floor. This floor is half "stuff" where you can find pillows or toilet bowl cleaners or glasses and plates. The pillow section was actually really cool because they were broken out by what type of sleeper you are - there were pillows for "back sleepers" and pillows for "stomach sleepers." I've always been a stomach sleeper so I was tempted to get one of their pillows but I resisted. The second half of the floor was the large product pickup area. For instance if you had seen a desk you really liked in the home office section on the first floor you could have written down a code and then, in the pick up section, you could find it boxed and ready to go. After the pickup area were the cash registers and a little grocery area that sold Norweigen snacks and other specialties. Patty bought some odd little chocolate filled cookies. The cookie part tasted like popcorn. They were pretty good but very sweet - I could only eat two at a time. We managed to finish shopping at Ikea five hours after we entered the store. Five hours? That is rediculous - who shops in one store for five hours? Apparently a lot of people because that joint was packed. Lisa and I made it out with nothing more than a small stuffed hamster for Shannon and a toilet bowl brush for the girls bathroom. I was proud of our restraint because there were a few things there we really liked.
We had actually gone to Cincinnati so we could go to their labor day fireworks show. It is supposed to be huge, maybe the biggest in the country, and we thought the girls would really get a kick out of it. I tried to convince the family that we should head downtown early so we could get to our intended dinner place early because the crowds would be huge but I was overturned by everyone. Unfortunately, the downtown area was packed, the bridges across the river were closed, and we couldn't make it to the Haufbrau house in time for our 8pm reservation. Mysteriously, when we called them at about 7:40 our reservations had disappeared anyway so it didn't matter. Instead we drove all over the place looking for somewhere to eat and then settled on a Longhorn Steakhouse. I like the Longhorn but was a bit disappointed we were eating at a chain we can eat at anywhere. Typically Lisa and I like to go somewhere more local when we travel so we can experience something new and fresh. On the bright side though dinner was really tasty but we didn't get back to the hotel until it was pretty late and the girls were exhausted.
The next day we were going to split into two groups. My dad, Shannon, and I headed to the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base while Lisa, Patty, and Emily went to a 6 acre large grocery store called Jungle Jims. Lisa really wanted to go to the Museum with us but she also wanted to see Jungle Jims plus Patty was definitely not going to the museum and we weren't entirely sure how cool Emily would be with looking at old airplanes all day so she sacrificed her opportunity to hear Dad tell some stories and share his experiences.
The Air Force Museum is much larger than I remember it from 1986. It is three huge hangers full of all sorts of air planes plus a silo that contains some some huge rockets including to ICBMs (which definitely gave me chills to see; they are a scary proposition). The first hanger in the museum contains historical planes and artifacts from early flight through World War 1. My Dad, during his time in the Air Force had actually worked (lead?) a team that restored an old biplane from that period for inclusion in the museum. However, we couldn't find the plane though we did find one that looked similar. I could tell my dad was pretty disappointed to not find the plane that he and his team had spent so much time working on. It would have been really cool had it been there. The second hanger had more modern planes from WW2 to the present. Thus there were old P-51 mustangs along side a brand new F-22 Raptor. This room was really cool. It was much better lit and we were looking at planes my dad had a lot of first hand knowledge. It was great hearing him talk about each plane and explaining how different parts worked or what bits on each were a pain to work on. Plus it was great to see him sharing some of his experiences with Shannon. After we finished up in the modern hanger we were pretty hungry so we headed for the cafe. My dad was kind of bumming about his biplane not being around and wasn't really interested in going into the third hanger, the Cold War. Shannon asked why we couldn't go in that one so Dad relented and after chow we headed into the Cold War. It's a good thing we did too. The Cold War room had bunch of different planes in it including the SR-71 blackbird (my favorite plane) and the B2 stealth bomber. As we wandered around looking at all the modern day artifcats we came across an F-106 from the 49th Fighter Interceptor Squadron of Griffis Air Force Base, Rome NY. The 49th was my Dads last duty station before retiring and he knew this plane very well. He instantly recognized it's tail number and started telling us it's history. He was very very excited to have one of his old planes in there. In fact this plane was retired from the Air Force the same year he retired. It was pretty cool.
After we finished in the Cold War hanger we went into the silo and then we headed onto the actual base to see the Presidential Hanger where retired "Air Force One's" are enshrined. The presidential hanger has a sister hanger on base which is full of experimental planes. One of the planes in that hanger was the only surviving XB-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber. It is HUGE. It dominated the hanger. All of the experimental planes were really cool - some of them were little more than rockets with small wings; it was hard to believe they could fly. Overall the whole experience at the museum was really great. We got to see a ton of cool planes, hear some neat stories, get a hint of a story my dad doesn't want to tell me, and Shannon seemed to really enjoy it. We were there for seven hours and my back and legs were worn out but it was well worth it. I've uploaded some photos of the museum - the first few are planes my dad had hands on experience with during his career.