It started with a photo op.  We pulled off 71 to get lunch and as we were debating a less than healthy Burger King or McDonalds I saw an Indian on a horse and teepee and said “why don’t we go check that out?”  The kids were all for it.  They then wanted to go see the train and I noticed the place opened at 11:00 am for lunch.  It took no effort to convince the kids that eating in a rail car would be more fun than chicken nuggets.

I’m not sure how many times I have driven past this exit and seen the “Diner” sign on the train car and never gave it a thought.  My loss. If you are going to eat at the Buckeye Express Diner, bring your appetite.  The portions are really big and the food is fantastic.  As one might expect the place is decked out in all things Ohio State and trains.  Really fun place to stop (https://buckeyeexpressdiner.com/).

Next stop on our Monday FunDay was the Ohio State Penitentiary.  Before you go questioning my judgement as a parent, there is a lot of history here.  This former prison is best known for being the shooting location of “Shawshank Redemption”, but has actually been used in 6 movies, multiple tv shows and 2 music videos.  It is in the Guiness Book of World records for having the largest steel cell structure in the world.  All in all a great stop for a rainy day.

There are a couple options for touring.  You can do a self guided tour or go with a tour guide.  If you plan to to a guided tour, you should call ahead to make sure there will be a guide available.  If you do the self guided tour, I do recommend paying the extra and getting everyone their own headset.  If you don’t hold the headsets directly to your ear they are hard to hear.

The first part of the tour covers the administrative sections of the building.  There are markers where various films had scenes, historical items, which include Ohio’s electric chair that was moved here, not actually used here.  From time to time you come to a place where there have been incidents with the paranormal.  The kids really enjoyed the ghost stories and I can imagine the ghost tours around Halloween would be exceptionally spooky.  When they are a bit older, we will come back for that.

The next part of the tour includes the cell blocks.  This was eye opening and the kids all decided they NEVER want to go to jail.  See, my parenting skills are actually stellar.  A couple things surprised me.  One, how high up they built the cells and two, how small they were.  Hard to imagine at one time inmates spent 23 hours a day confined to that small space and only showered once a week.

At the end of the tour is a gift shop and lunch cafe.  There is also a place where you can watch various videos about the prison which was very entertaining.

Our next stop was the Bible Walk.  The kids liked it, but I was not impressed.  I thought I was going to a wax museum.  There are 5 different exhibits you can choose from.  We choose the old testament.  It took almost an hour to get through.  You have a guide that pushes a button at each exhibit where there are scenes with wax figures.  A professional recorded narrator reads passages from the bible about the scene you are seeing.  Then you move on.  We were not allowed to take pictures so most of these come from their website https://www.biblewalk.us/.  Had we went up just for this, I would have been disappointed, but since it was only 4 minutes away from the penitentiary it was worth visiting.

Here is a link to more pictures from our day out.