I'm so glad to hear that some of you want to try out the chocolate trail after reading about it last week! It really was a lot of fun. And today I'll tell you about another fun thing we just kind of happened upon while we were at the Welcome Center picking up our chocolate trail passport. I perused the brochures and found a Wayne County Scavenger Hunt booklet that I'm pretty sure was designed with kids in mind, but you can better believe it did NOT stop us. We decided to throw that into our weekend and we made it to almost all the stops while we were there!
Even though we fell short of completion, we had a BLAST stopping by some places we never would have visited if we hadn't done this hunt. I'll show you a few of our finds here!
Though I didn't feel like going in winter grossly affected the quality of what we got to see, the first couple of stops I'll tell you about did seem to be affected by winter and/or the pandemic. The Hayes Arboretum was on our list to see even before we knew about the scavenger hunt. We were excited to hike some trails! Alas, when we arrived, the Nature Center was closed for the day (though according to the printed hours in the booklet, it should have been open) so we didn't get to find any answers for our hunt (womp womp) and the trails open that day were DRIVING trails. I've never even heard of driving a trail! We did it, but walking would have been more fun. Even so, we did get a few cool photo opps:
We did have success at the Morrisson-Reeves Library, which wasn't too far from our Airbnb. They have a gorgeous Tiffany stained glass window inside!
We drove by the Bethel A.M.E. Church, where we got the points for our hunt question from the comfort of our car! Just needed to read a sign outside the church.
The Whitewater Valley Gorge Park was a really cool place that I would have loved to have explored in more detail, but it was SO COLD AND WINDY on the day we were there, so we did what we needed for our questions and hurried back to the car. But if you go in warmer weather....it's a 100 acre park that has gorge walls containing bedrock. The gorge runs 3 1/2 miles through the city and the Starr Piano Company began operating there back in the late 1800s. The remains of the old building is so cool, as is the Gennett Records Walk of Fame with its medallions honoring musicians. We didn't walk the whole length of it, because of the aforementioned weather, but we enjoyed seeing a few!
The Joseph Moore Museum of Natural History was a womp womp bust for us. We made the mistake of going on Tuesday the first time, and it turns out they're closed on Tuesdays. Whoopsie! So we went back Wednesday - made a special trip, even! - and they were closed again. So no answers for us there, nor did we get to see any cool exhibits. Side note, though: this is located on the Earlham College campus, which is a college affiliated with the Quaker church. Even though we both grew up Quaker, neither of us have memories of ever going there. This was the only proof we could provide that we tried:
One of Ryan's favorite stops was the Cope Environmental Center, which is just outside of Richmond. The lady working there that day was SO NICE and talked with us for a while about the history and mission of the center. It's on 102 acres and has hiking trails (though they weren't open that day and it was way too frigid to be out hiking anyway), grasslands, prairies, wetlands, ponds, and an educational center. She showed us around AND let Ryan hold the snake. I stood a proper 20 feet away and did Lamaze breathing while that thing was out of its cage. If you hate snakes, please scroll.
Then we went over to Cambridge City, which was equally charming. We had to track down some murals and find a few details about them. (This county has 80 some murals, I read, and we did do a small mural trail and found some cool ones!)
We visited Hagerstown, which is a town I'm pretty familiar with because a bunch of my dad's extended family members lived/live in that area. We drove past the funeral home and I said, "Hey! I think that's where my Grandma Freelan's viewing was." Now how in the world did I remember that building after TWENTY-SIX YEARS?
But even though I've been to Hagerstown many times, I'd never been to Abbott's Candy Shop, and it was on my list and on the scavenger hunt. (It was on the chocolate trail, too, so I already told you about it. But here's a reminder.)
And last but not least...we stopped in Fountain City on our way out of town. I'll tell you more about this visit another day, but our questions on this stop revolved around the Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site, which we actually toured. (There is an admission fee on that one.) This was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Our tour guide was great and we learned a lot on this stop!
So there you have it! The scavenger hunt layout! I thought it was a great idea of the county to put it together, and even though a few of the things were already in the plan for us when we went, some of them were new to me, and we wouldn't have seen them without the booklet as a guide. I also loved it that they made it fun to do even if you didn't want to/couldn't pay admission for things. And like I said - even with it being winter in a pandemic, most things were accessible. And actually, most were outside, so that made it even better!
