A Day of Midwestern Excellence

We celebrated June 19th 2025 with a quick drive to West Liberty, Ohio for a visit to the famed Ohio Caverns caverns (“America’s Most Colorful Caverns”). We went whole hog and did both of their available tours — the historic tour (where you visit the first cavern discovered by the farmer who farmed the property and the muddy treks people used to take through its tunnels (fortunately for us they are not muddy anymore!)) and the Wonders of Nature tour where you tour a more recently-discovered cavern. Between caverns we visited the gift shop.

Here’s the gift shop that I mentioned earlier…

Time for the Nature’s Wonders tour! Should mention now that these tours were given by local teens who really knew the tour script backwards and forwards. Great job, teens!

Now at the Ohio Caverns we saw these pamphlets for a “castle” nearby so, hey why not? We went and toured Mac-A-Cheek Castle, a mansion a gentleman farmer built after returning from World War I (if I remember right). And after walking around Mac-A-Cheek we looked at the outsides of Mac-O-Chee Castle, which was built by the gentleman farmer’s gentleman brother just like a mile away (it’s an event venue now and not for touring).

So it seems like a pretty great day so far, right? Well guess what? It gets even better! Because we drove to nearby Urbana, Ohio and got little burgers (and sliced hot dogs!) from famed little hamburger shop Crabill’s and guess what? Those little burgers (and little sliced hot dogs) completely sent me to heaven. They were just so magnificently good, don’t know how to account for it. Magic assembly of onion, pickle, relish and brown mustard? Plus a little dip in the griddle grease? A recipe for magnificence.

And the day still isn’t done! Because we went to Batelle Darby Creek park to get a Metro Park Passport for to memorialize all our metro park visits in…

AND THE EXCELLENCE CONTINUES! On the way home from the park we discovered a … uh … petting zoo without petting? Where you could buy feed cups and feed animals through the fence, just maybe three miles from our house! How fun! There was an ostrich, goats, a zedonk, and a water buffalo! Maybe other animals too?

And THEN we got milkshakes. What a federal holiday it was!