America is a diverse country. Full of the bright, the beautiful and the downright bonkers. Having covered off bright (Washington) and beautiful (Skyline / Blue Ridge), we felt it high time for something a little less serious. We already knew where might fit the bill and in fact had spent some time in NYC working out how to fit this particular gem into our trip: the Creation Museum just outside Cincinnati, Ohio. Yep, that Cincinnati, Ohio. The one about 300 miles north of our ending point coming off the Blue Ridge Parkway. And also about 300 miles north of Nashville, Tennessee, our next scheduled hunting ground. Small detour then … but worth it we thought not only for the museum, but for the opportunity to pass through the famous Kentucky bluegrass country afterwards.

For those of you who haven’t yet heard of this esteemed establishment, it is, simply speaking, a museum which portrays the views of the Creationist movement – an increasingly prevalent movement in the United States which believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Amongst the key truths espoused by Creationists are that the world was created by God in six days (well earned rest on the seventh), and that this Creation took place about 6,000 years ago. Those of you who know James and I may by now be suspecting that our attitude towards this may not have been without a certain amount of tongue in cheek-ness. Indeed, several days later, my tongue has only just about begun to straighten back out again.

Yep, we went in prepared to mock.

And yes, we did LOVE the diorama of Adam, Eve and the dinosaurs. AND the depiction of the mammals that COULD have been the starting point for all future mammal species (tiger stripes plus giraffe spots plus a lion mane, anyone?). The learned discussion on how Noah might have designed his ark to avoid too much hard work in the way of pesky animal poo cleaning (well, that’s a pretty important consideration when you have dinosaurs on board) was inspired on oh so many levels.

And no, fundamentally, my mindset hasn’t been changed. I still hold onto that good ole’fashioned view of evolution spurned by the museum in favour of a theory primarily reliant on apparent fossil aging caused by the catastrophic effects of the subsidence of Noah’s flood. Blame it on my scientific mother, engineer father and a maths degree, if you will. Or perhaps on the fact that STILL no-one has been able to explain to me what the carnivores ate on the Ark when two of each animal came in and two came out (I’ve given quite some thought to this one, believe me. Yes, pregnant animals will get you some of the way – though isn’t that kind of cheating? A life is a life and all? – and some frisky bunnies would certainly help too. But enough to be able to satiate the appetite of at least two large and hungry DINOSAURS? I just don’t buy it).

Still, at the end of the day, what the Museum basically sets out to do is to provide a venue for the representation of an alternative viewpoint of how we all got here to the big bang / evolution based model shown in pretty much every mainstream natural history museum you can think of. And you know, I can’t bring myself to laugh at that.

After a heavy day we landed up at our campsite for the night – you’ll already recognize this from one of our backgound pics. A gorgeous setting in the midst of rolling Kentucky hills, surrounded by race horse stables. Eating ribs then settling down for a night by the fire with marshmallows and fine malt whisky, life felt pretty good … And waking up the next morning to send out final leaving emails to our (ex) work colleagues from this beautiful spot in the middle of rural nowhere is a memory that will stay with me for a very long time.