A visit to the home of Indiana's FIRST wind farm

Today fron beginning to end was a fun day. 8:45 Kris, the kids and I headed to Benton County on a home schooling field trip to the Home of Indiana's FIRST Wind Farm! We first saw some videos and received an explanation of how they built these amazing turbines that turn wind into electricity. Then we drove to a couple of them and observed how they work. It was amazing, truly amazing.We ate our lunch there and ended up at a beautiful park near Fowler, Indiana where the kiddos worked off some - but not all - of their energy!

Home in time to start cooking dinner because we were having a special visitor. But then we decided to eat at Smokey's instead and take Rima there! Rima is from El Paso and we got acquainted with her when we visited Ken and Esme and family. She's just starting her college life at Valparaiso University as an engineering major, minoring in music. What a fun time we enjoyed around Smokey's delicious meals getting reacquainted with Rima and hearing about her life and all the new things she's experiencing at college. We hope to see her again before I leave (first part of November). Even though it was now dark, we took her to the beach so she could see beautiful Lake Michigan from our vantage point.

Tomorrow promises to be another fun day - to Chicago for a wedding reception. But I'll write about that later!

 Mike and Mikey having a reading lesson! Mikey is now reading! Yay!

Just one piece of the turbine, one of the blades. Our tour guide passed out sharpies and everyone added their name to the blade! This thing is HUGE!

The home school gang. There was a lot of excitement today! For the base of this turbine, it takes 30 cement trucks! It costs between 1 and 2 million dollars to put ONE of them up and takes months! Amazing!

Standing directly under a turbine watching it move tended to make us a little dizzy. Did I already say this thing is HUGE?? It is 260 feet high and the blades make it even taller by 150 more feet, if I remember correctly!

 

This picture gives you an idea where we were - out in the cornfields of Indiana! Mikey decided to walk through the corn and suffered lots of prickers and itches afterward! But he survived, especially when we arrived at the park and he saw what fun that was!

 

Still full of energy!

There's Rima on the left - and the kiddos still full of vim and vigor.

But now they're in bed and I'm sure it didn't take them long at all to get to sleep! What a big, exciting day!