Powered by the Sun

After our stay at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we took the scenic route back north, up the Blue Ridge Parkway. But alas, that is a post for another today. One thing we realized after being in the South is that in addition to not wanting to experience winter, perhaps we didn’t want to experience the hottest heat of the summer, either. We then had a choice – do we head back up North, explore parts of Canada, Vermont, and New Hampshire before returning to Acadia (since I felt our time there was too short?) Or do we head west, since most of the national parks are indeed out west. The downside with going west in the summer is you have to go through the Midwest first- and let’s face it, temperatures are pretty freaking hot there, too.

Our initial plan was to head northwest, to Cuyahoga National Park, to see the first leg of the American Solar Challenge. What is the American Solar Challenge (or ASC, for short), you ask? We like to describe it as the Tour de France for solar-powered cars. University teams build cars powered by the sun for a ride of almost 2000 miles, with stops along the way. This year, the route was 8 days long, crossed 7 states, and passed through 9 Midwestern National Parks, starting with Cuyahoga. If that wasn’t enough of a reason to get us to go, NPS made special stamps just for the occasion that were only available during the ASC. Not only did we now have to go but for a hot minute (okay, maybe a hot few hours) we contemplated following the cars through their entire journey as a way to quickly make our way through the Midwest.

We arrived in Cuyahoga on July 29th, the day before the official start of the ASC, to check out the cars on the display. Many of the team members were quite excited to share details about their car, how it worked, the types of solar panels used, their decision to have 3 versus 4 wheels for the car, among other details. It was really neat to see how different some of the cars looked!

The next morning, we arrived at the park for the 8:30am start and watched most of the solar powered cars begin the first leg of the race (some of the cars had a few technical difficulties but eventually all 13 got going). Each of the cars is typically driven by the smallest and lightest person on the university’s team, as the cabins can be teeny tiny and the teams don’t want to add much weight to their cars. The cabins are not air conditioned (but there are fans), and temperatures were quite hot during the race; I imagine that driving 3-5 hours alone in that heat was not very pleasant!

We followed the cars to their first check-in at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park. (When I say “followed” I more mean that we ended up there as well- we decided to take a nap first and then take the faster-moving roads to get there, as we had been driving a lot in the last few days). A big perk of traveling to Dayton is that one of my college roomies- Diana, lives just outside of Dayton with her husband Rich, their first child (doggie Argus) and their second more recent addition, Sienna. Diana and Rich hosted us for a few days. During that time we took a nice driving tour around Dayton, met up with the solar-powered cars again (and got a stamp!), ate at a historic local brewery, played with Argus and Sienna, and caught up. They also brought us to the National Museum of the Air Force which was pretty awesome (and free!). DC folks, if you think the Udvar-Hazy outpost of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum is cool, that is nothing compared to this museum! There are four gigantic hangers of planes, ranging from some of the first flying machines created by Wilbur and Orville Wright to fancy drones to four retired Air Force Ones. Rich knows the museum inside and out and colored our tour with some nice stories. Thanks, Diana and Rich, for hosting us; we had a great time and it was wonderful to catch up!

Our typical selfie with our great friends in front of Ellie!

After saying goodbye to our friends in Dayton, we took a quick stop to see some early flight history, visiting the Wright Cycle Company Complex. We watched a video about the early lives of the Wright Brothers, their bicycle shops, and their first attempts of creating airplanes; we also explored one of their local bicycle shops / workspaces. Unfortunately we couldn’t see the Wright Brothers’ home, since Henry Ford scooped that up and moved it to Dearborn, MI (but, spoiler alert – we stopped in Michigan about a week later and found it!)