And on the seventh day God ended his work.

Let's talk about the Creation Museum first. It's located in the far north of Kentucky, right up next to Cincinatti. I suspect it's where it is, namely in the very shallow South, because if it was in the deep South it would be redundant and if it was any farther north (or west, so long as its far west) it wouldn't get such a draw — over 250,000 visitors in every year of its existence so far. The story the museum tells is very specific: The Earth was created approximately 6,000 years ago by God in six days. (It is made clear that each day is 24 hours because there's that one verse in Psalms that implies a day could be longer than that, ("For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past" (Ps 90:4) and these guys in Kentucky are Young Earth creationists who strongly disavow that Old Earth creationism stuff.)

Entry into the actual exhibits was $30 per person, and we didn't want to do that. Luckily, we could walk through the main lobby and, of course, the bookshop without paying, and that gave us a pretty good taste. Lots of dinosaurs, even in the lobby. Lots of stuff that looked pretty sciency, too. Little pieces, like that in the picture below, that make it look legitimate. It seems those are their two chief tools: dinosaurs and legit-looking displays. The dinosaurs attract the kids, making it a big family thing, and the displays convince people that they know what they're talking about.

I found the books to be the most remarkable part. It was nothing short of amazing to see how much text — and good-looking diagrams — could be devoted to so much codswallop. Entire chapters, page after page, explaining why radiocarbon dating doesn't work. And tons of geology books. Books with the Grand Canyon on the cover, with Yosemite, with Yellowstone. And they all told how these things came to be in the span of a few thousand years. The Grand Canyon, apparently, formed during the great flood, the one that Noah built the Ark for. The flood was so powerful it eroded the 5,000+ foot deep canyon in a matter of weeks.
I'd imagine it would be pretty fun, actually. Just making stuff up like that. It's like how Tolkien decided that Numenor was an island that just got sunk into the bottom of the ocean one day. Except these guys are explaining real things that happened on the real Earth.

Here's an old BBC report on the museum.

Oh, and there's a planetarium there, whose astronomers are currently grappling with the implications of stars being billions of light years away. They accept the fact that the stars are so distant, because God has created this huge universe so why not?, but they're trying to work out how the light from these stars has reached Earth in just a few thousand years. And that's the really strange thing: there are some parts of science they completely accept, like the distance of stars and plate tectonics. They just maintain that the light from stars somehow got here a lot faster than possible and the plates moved a lot faster than possible.

Enough on that for now. I'd love to talk to y'all about it when we see each other, if there's anything else you want to know. This topic is one of limitless fascination for me.

Did you know Kentucky has a tiny exclave along the Mississippi River? It came from a lapse in surveying knowledge back in the day. Basically, some old folks said Kentucky was gonna be everywhere east of the Mississippi and north of whatever parallel Tennessee ends at. Problem was, the Mississippi River bends a lot more than they thought. Thus, an exclave.

Definitely on the bucket list.

The weather was ridiculous on the drive back, right around Lake Erie. Wind and snow and more of it.

We drove by King's Island on the way out, Saturday morning. (Out of order, I know. Whatever.) It's only important because it contains one of the most important roller coasters in roller coaster history, The Beast. Too bad they were closed for the season. Not that we would have had time anyway.

Something else happened in the world of XC that Saturday. My man Spencer broke the CdM record at Mt. SAC. He ran 15:15. 15:15 I said! Think about that. Just think about how fast that is. That's seventeen seconds faster than the best time I ran at Mason Park, which, if you'll recall, is not Mt. SAC.

That Saturday was the one before Thanksgiving, though. More than a week has past between then and now. I spent the break with Chuck's family, at his aunt's house in Rhode Island. A great time was had by all, or at least by me. Except for on Saturday night, when I grabbed seven D-cards, and six of them were knights. Meanwhile, Chuck's cousin picked up three D-cards, and all three were victory points. He beat me by one point in the end.

In the month of November, I have spent the night in six states (VT, CT, RI, ME, OH, and PA), and driven or been driven through eleven (those six plus MA, NH, NY, KY, and IN). It's been a good month. A fast one, for sure. If I stopped to think about it, it might have been the fastest month in the history of all of forever. And I have a lot of GIS to do tonight. And even more Geology final project stuff. And let's be honest, I'm not going to catch up on my creative writing any time soon. This week is going to be miserable. The only thing that could potentially stop that would be a win over the Kings tomorrow. I'd like that.