A Book and A Dog

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Dayton & Yellow Springs, Ohio

We love celebrating my husband’s October birthday in Dayton and Yellow Springs, Ohio. Dayton is a really cool city known as the birthplace of the Wright Brothers and is home to the The National Museum of the US Air Force. This area also provides some of our favorite bookstores and shops with products that suit our interests perfectly. There are also popular chain restaurants we like to patron. This adventure provided a lot of book shopping, hiking, eating, and relaxing. 

Bookstores

The Half Price Books in Dayton is my favorite of their stores. It’s clean, well-organized, and has plenty of books, new and used, to browse. I also love their bookmark collections, puzzles, calendars, and journals. We were excited to find a few unique books: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Little Book of Karma by Isabelle Loynes, and The Little Book of Tibetan Rites and Rituals by Judy Tseui. I couldn’t resist picking up a couple of bookmarks too! We also enjoy visiting Dayton’s Barnes and Noble, where I picked up a copy of Peter Heller’s latest release, Burn

Yellow Springs has a small downtown with lots of unique shops and cafés. A guaranteed destination for us is the independent bookstore, Dark Star Books and Comics, where they mostly sell used books and some new ones too. They have great signage and stickers to show your love for Yellow Springs or express your personality. We discovered a paperback Edgar Allan Poe sticker jigsaw book. It’s one of those books that is neat to own and have as a collectible. 

Glen Helen Nature Preserve

Glen Helen Nature Preserve was just as beautiful as it always is this time of year. Fortunately, we enjoyed warm temperatures as we explored some of our favorite trails and discovered some new ones. The cost for parking has increased to $10, but it’s totally worth it. There are tons of squirrels running around. We saw three deer who seemed completely comfortable with us in their environment. It was serene to watch and listen to the leaves fall from the trees to the forest floor. The springs and river are beautiful specimens of nature. 

Air Force Museum

The National Museum of the US Air Force is an amazing place to visit for an opportunity to see and learn about the history of aviation up close. My husband is an Air Force Veteran, and we have visited the museum several times. Over the years we’ve visited, the museum has added new planes and even a new hangar. The size of the museum and the planes it holds are astonishing. The exhibits begin with the Early Years, the various wars, missiles, spacecrafts, Presidential planes, and an outdoor air park where extremely large planes are displayed. 

My favorite part of the visit is when we get to the planes my husband worked on while he was stationed at Castle Air Force Base in California during Desert Storm. It’s always fun to hear him tell stories of working on the B-52 and KC-135. I also like hearing about the other planes he really likes and the significance of their operations.

The presidential planes are especially enjoyable because you get to walk through them and see how the Commander in Chief and their staff traveled. I was surprised by how old they are and that the interiors were pretty plain. The planes are not as opulent as I expected, given the important people they serviced. They were smaller than I anticipated. 

As we neared the exit, we explored the gift shop. It’s nice, but it’s changed a lot since we were last there. They have increased the amount of items for kids and decreased the quality of other specialty items for adults. 

Before leaving the museum grounds, we drove around to the outdoor Air Park to see the four large planes they had on display. These planes are massive, and I believe were for cargo and transporting soldiers. The KC-135, which my husband worked on, was parked here. For perspective, I am in one of the pictures standing next to the KC-135.

We had a wonderful adventure in my home state, exploring one of our favorite vacation locations. 

I wrote a blog post about our previous adventure to Dayton and Yellow Springs, Ohio. It’s linked below if you’re interested.

Dayton & Yellow Springs 2022

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