America - part two

Tuesday 11th August 2009

6.10pm
Well we’ve had a pretty nice day today – I had my own bedroom last night and it felt SO good :-D

I woke up at 6.30 and figured I was probably safe to get in the shower before my mum though I sat and looked at my clothes for ages trying to decide what to wear hahaha.

Once I was showered, washed and dressed I went downstairs and Pat was the only other one around. We went for a little walk round the back garden and we looked at the trees and flowers and stuff.

My mum came down a while later and once she was down and dressed we set about getting breakfast.

We then sat round for a while, not doing very much except messing about on the computers until 11am when we went out. We went into Cleveland City to go to the Science Centre. Frank is ex-military so he was hoping to be able to park in the coastguard station for free. We got to the coastguard station and there was a big gate there which said it opened and closed automatically but we couldn’t work out how to make the gates open. There was a little box with a button to speak to a person so Frank did that and got the gates to open for us. We went to a little shop within the coastguard grounds and you have to be military to buy anything from it – mum bought 2 bottles of diet pepsi (well, Frank bought it) but that was it. Where we’d parked initially said you could only park for 10 minutes if you were going to the shop so Frank went in search of someone else to see if we could get permission to park in the main compound. He was gone quite a while and Pat said if he’d found anyone he’d be busy telling them his life story. When he came back it turns out he was right – he said he’d got permission from ‘the chief’ and he wanted to meet us. We went round for a brief chat before making our way out. As we were walking towards the gates one of the men we’d been talking to came along to tell us how to get the gates to open from the inside – there’s a little button on a post that you have to press if you want the gates to open as a pedestrian.
Once we’d found our way into and out of the car park we made our way round to the entrance of the Science Centre. Once we’d got in and paid mum and I wandered off to start looking at the exhibits and we lost Pat and Frank almost immediately :-o We just carried on anyway but we weren’t actually that impressed – quite a few of the interactive exhibits seemed to be broken :-( I did manage to get a blimp to move and we played with an infra-red camera and watched a few mini-videos.
We then went upstairs to another section and that was more fun – you could play with sounds and water and lots of other fun things. While we were up there I played on a bike you pedalled to make lights go on and there was also a Van De Graaff generator you could have a go on – the machine that makes your hair fly up. My hair was all tied up in a plait so I took it all out hoping that it would stand completely on end but it was still slightly wet from this morning’s shower so it wasn’t quite as good as I hoped.
While we were upstairs Frank came and found us to say they’d be outside. When we’d finished. We didn’t stay very long after that and went downstairs to meet them. I saw Pat and Frank just outside so I knocked on the window to get their attention. When we met up we wanted to go to the souvenir shop but Frank said they were going to watch a show that was being shown on the grass outside so we were to meet them there. We went into the shop and got a magnet and postcard each.
When we went outside with the plan of meeting Pat and Frank we initially headed in the wrong direction – yes it was my fault!! I hadn’t read the instructions properly LOL Because we’d gone wrong we missed the show but Pat said we didn’t miss much cos it was aimed at little kids.
Time was getting quite late so we were trying to decide what to do for lunch – after a bit of conflab we finally decided we’d eat in the science centre café. More junk food!!! Just for a change though I had a hot dog instead of a burger.
Once we’d eaten we decided actually we’d had enough of the science centre. To be honest it wasn’t actually as good as the Manchester Science Museum which we went to a couple of years ago and it literally took us all day to go round and I think there was still more to see!! This science centre we did in just a couple of hours and I think we pretty much covered all of it.
We headed back to the car but even then we hadn’t really decided what we were doing next. As we were driving along Frank said he would take us home on the scenic route following the lake. As it turns out Frank had decided to take us to the beach hehe. We went to West Beach and Frank suggested I should go for a paddle LOL. I took my shoes off and headed down to the beach. At the bottom of the steps leading to the beach there was a boardwalk so I made Frank take a picture of me standing on the boardwalk hahaha. I’d rolled up the legs of my (cropped) trousers so that they wouldn’t get wet but it didn’t work – I still got drenched LOL. While I was in the water a man told me not to fall in so when I replied to him no I didn’t want to he obviously heard my accent and asked where I was from and he said he was the uncle of another man who was there and he was on holiday from Germany. As I was going back up the steps from the beach I was squeezing the water from my trousers and Frank said it looked like I was peeing myself – that’s how wet I’d got:-o LOL
Once we’d come off the beach we went for a little wander round the garden that’s just above. There’s a big Easter basket that’s currently got flowers in it so Frank took some pictures of me near it. I actually left my shoes with my mum and wandered round to the garden in bare feet.
Once we got back to the car the sand was more or less gone from my feet, there was just a little bit left I had to brush off. When we were in the car I had one very cold leg with the air conditioning on my wet trousers LOL As soon as we got back to the house I put on a pair of dry shorts and since then we’ve just messed about on the computers and I’ve put today’s photos on facebook :-)

9.30pm
We had our dinner at about 7.30pm – ham, potatoes and green beans. Just as we were finishing our tea one of Pat’s children, Denise came over. She’s really nice – we sat chatting for quite a while, especially about some of the grandchildren. She’s just left to go home, we’ll see her again on Thursday for the cookout. It’s bedtime very soon.
Night Night