[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, I'm Megan and I'm Sarah.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're two women in our forties who live in different states and have a lot of different interests between us.

[SPEAKER_00]: On this show, we talk about all the midlife lady leisure pursuits we're enjoying at this stage of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like travel, hobbies, food, wellness, style, and more.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are both super excited today to chat about a recent development in our mid-life lady leisure pursuits.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are reading all the historical plaques and going to all of the history exhibits.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, my, my, my.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like we've unlocked a new level for each of you.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we get a badge for this one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today's episode is brought to you by our exclusive season sponsor and a long time partner, Vionic Shoes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Vionics are the perfect combo of stylish and super comfortable and they really help keep us moving, especially as we're looking at those plaques, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Use the promo code midlife at Vionic Shoes.com for 15% off when you log into your account and be sure to check out the special page we've set up where you can see our favorite Vionic styles.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can look for that in the show notes for this episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, thanks to Veronica for sponsoring this episode, and let's dive in, Megan.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the most classic of midlife afflictions, cumulsive plaque reading.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, when did you first notice this predilection in midlife?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know it was after the age of 40, but it's really ramped up in the past like two-three years, and I mean, I feel like I was formally too impatient, right, to with them, either as a young person, I just wanted to keep moving as a young mom with young kids, like they wanted to keep moving, who had time to stand and look at a plaque.

[SPEAKER_00]: But now I've become the joke.

[SPEAKER_00]: The joke is me.

[SPEAKER_01]: So speaking of jokes as long back as I can remember traveling with my family, it we didn't do a ton of like [SPEAKER_01]: historical type of travel where you're going to museums and stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: I guess we did just enough, and my siblings and I would make fun of my mom for stopping to read plaques.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I honestly, until you and I have started laughing about this recently, I really think I thought it was a quirk of my mom.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, you know Lisa, like, she can't help herself.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's got to read the plaque.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this has been an insight into my family for years.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, my kids know, like, she'll be like, oh, there's a plaque.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, more and more is going to read it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Megan, it was never about her, it's about like, we're all, we will all fall to this stage of life at some point.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I also am a plaque reader.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was trying to think of like, when I noticed it in myself, and I think it probably coincided.

[SPEAKER_01]: with yes, turning 40.

[SPEAKER_01]: I also the year I turned 40 was COVID and I moved back to my hometown partly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: So many plaques to look at.

[SPEAKER_01]: So many plaques at before moving back to my hometown, I had lived for a long time in very newly developed kind of suburban subdivision type areas.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I really felt like a craving in my body for more historical significance, architectural [SPEAKER_01]: So part of moving home, of course, I was glad to move home and be near family and all that, but truly like living in a place where buildings are older than 25 years and houses look different from the one next door was like it was like something [SPEAKER_01]: I'll definitely read plaques while on a trip, but just even in my own hometown, I have felt my interest in what happened here, who lived here, like, how old is this building?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what style is this building?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as part of you feel like this was here all this time, you know that you didn't notice it before, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I love I this is not a plaque, but I know we're going to talk about history exhibits too.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love if I can come across an old photograph of like an intersection in my city that I know quite well now, but you can like almost like imagine it then because some of the buildings were still there and then some of them have changed.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love that kind of stuff too.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I would say in the last five years.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have now started to take pictures of plaques.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I will go back and look at my phone and be like, oh, right, I took a picture of that plaque because I don't remember why, but I guess I thought it was interesting or significant or maybe I wanted to get home and do more research.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's really, it's like needing readers.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you don't, [SPEAKER_00]: You don't read plaques, and then overnight suddenly you just find yourself reading plaques.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you don't know if it's going to happen at 39 or 43 or 47, everyone's a little different, but at some point, yes, you will need to read the plaques.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's so funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also with you that, like, it doesn't have to be in a museum.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are great.

[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the other thing about plaques is that once you notice, then you can't unknow, they're everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, and, you know, like, I love just walking down a random street and being like, ooh, this house is a historical significance of some sort.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see what.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think the whole world is just so rife with [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's really the midlife twist, like that now we see how really full the world is of things to learn.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and I think we have been on the planet long enough to see change in different eras and things like we're just been around long enough to be like, wow, remember when like you used to be able to go all the way to the airport gate and not like with your friend and not have to stop before security, like there's entire [SPEAKER_01]: paradigmships that happen at different points in our lives, and I think the longer we're here, the more we have context and appreciation for whatever the historical period is.

[SPEAKER_01]: So speaking of history, what are, let's talk about what we're each drawn to when it comes to reading plaques or looking at a historical thing or museum.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you find yourself drawn to certain categories, certain types of things more than others?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think what I'm really interested in is like the history of sort of everyday life and domestic life.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm walking down a street, I will always stop to read a plaque if it's outside of a house.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like if it's just an ordinary house, and I'm always like, wow, there's people living in this house, and there's a plaque outside.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would say that there's a certain kind of [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I guess I could say that like, oh, I'm really drawn to houses that were built in the 1800s or something, but to be honest, like, what else are you going to find?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like there's a lot of houses still standing that were built before the 1800s and you go to where my husband grew up.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so magical.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, that's kind of a care.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I was just in Susanne Marie and Susanne Marie has been at least an outpost since 1668.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess I didn't really, I never really thought about that before.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I grew up there, but hadn't thought about how old that place is.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean there are houses standing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a very different, it was like a trading port.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even the houses there are more like the oldest ones are early 1800s.

[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, I just love [SPEAKER_00]: to look at information about places people live.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I were to go to a museum, my favorite favorite part is always the recreations of the kitchens and the living rooms and the classrooms.

[SPEAKER_01]: Same.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will spend a lot of time reading those things, those plaques.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will take pictures of the rooms, like the fake rooms.

[SPEAKER_00]: and take them home and kind of pour over them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just really love getting a sense for how people lived and why those like certain objects might be where they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like it just, it just really evokes something for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It really sparks my imagination.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it reflects my interest, I think, in normal people and how they would have lived whenever.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, by contrast, I'm really not that interested in, like, military heroes and governors and stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if I walk past a statue of a dude on a horse, I'm going to walk right past the plaque.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not usually going to stop and spend a lot of time with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is not to take anything away from those people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, very important.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've had a lot of battles.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've had a lot of governors, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: It all kind of gives the same vibe about things I didn't find very compelling about high-school history classes, late dates and battles and generals, and I've heard all that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't feel [SPEAKER_00]: relatable to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to know, like, okay, in the, let's say 1700s, what herbs, what a housewife have grown in her kitchen garden.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I want to know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like how did people live?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like those plaques I will read all day long.

[SPEAKER_00]: Does it really matter to me, like the time period so [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if I've ever given an answer to a question that is just like, yes, same me too, like this might be the one that just lines up, it's just, yes, same me to all of the above for all of.

[SPEAKER_01]: the same reasons.

[SPEAKER_01]: We probably both read so many books growing up like historical novels and near little houses on the prairie and things set in England or I just think like there I agree.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everything you said, I'm just gonna say I co-sign that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking about if there is a particular, [SPEAKER_01]: historical time period that is like extra interesting to me and I this might just be I have seen more from it but I'm gonna say like [SPEAKER_01]: late 1800s like the last 25 years of the 1800s and the first 25 years of the 1900s, a lot of westward expansion was happening in that time period.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I've always, I haven't always lived in the west, but all my people are from the west.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have Oregon.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have Montana.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have Idaho.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have Washington.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then we all live in California.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, but I actually don't have like I don't have ancestors who lived in California.

[SPEAKER_01]: But [SPEAKER_01]: Um, something about that, like, the cover, everything from the covered wagons to the gold mining towns, to the growth of Western cities, and, um, and then I live in a Western city that was largely, um, well, it has a long history of indigenous people and then Spanish occupation, Mexican occupation, and then the Western settlers, and, and it's all here, like, we have forts from the 1700s here, and then we have houses, [SPEAKER_01]: that were built by, you know, the people living in Santa Barbara in like the 1850s, 60s, 70s, 80s.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then we, in Santa Barbara, we had a big earthquake in 1924, 25, it just had 100 years.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so then a lot of the city that was knocked down in the earthquake was rebuilt in the 20s.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's like, there is a kind of like 50 year time period where I feel like people were living [SPEAKER_01]: kind of modern lives that weren't that different from ours in that there were stores and businesses and kids went to school and people but but then also so different in that time period like before cars or new car anyway I don't know if that makes sense but there's something where it's like relatable and unrelatable at the same time and you can still see evidence of [SPEAKER_00]: Right, the vestiges are still all around you that the town the basic bones of the town are still there that I I agreed like I think there's something very accessible about that time period yeah 1800s early 1900s it feels [SPEAKER_00]: like worlds away, but it's right there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you can literally walk into the buildings like we own one of those buildings in the U.P.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's from the 1800s.

[SPEAKER_00]: We know that it's been all these different things.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can find photos of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so fun to look back at newspaper articles about the building and think, what were the standing in this building?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's ours now, and we're doing our thing, but it was this other thing, and this other thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I actually find the time period of like the 20s, 30s and into the early 40s, very interesting, but I don't see as much, maybe just because it's not quite old enough yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to maybe be a lot of plaques about a house built in the 30s, like you just don't really.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if we will, because, yes, each of them will find for historic register, maybe it's different by state, maybe out in the district.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think, and there's something happens at 75 or 80 years too, [SPEAKER_01]: I know here in Santa Barbara there was just a big fight about a neighborhood where the houses were built in the 40s, which that would be 75 years.

[SPEAKER_01]: They were built in the early 40s and they're like a big fight about whether the neighborhood deserved historic recognition.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I do think there's benchmarks of like 75, 80 and then a hundred.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder if we will start to see plaques pop up of things from the 20s and 30s.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope like.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I hope that in this is going to sound really boomer of me, what I'm about to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I hope in a hundred years people find the things being built today worth, worth caring about.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's the fact that I live in this day and age and you're never as excited about the things that are happening when you're, you know, if they're not as novel.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I look around at them like, I'm not very excited about a lot of the architecture I see going up and what will be considered historically significant.

[SPEAKER_00]: in a hundred years, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do feel like you considered, you know, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe, yeah, there's something that becomes quaint about your 1990s, like, tract house.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do think that there was like a big resurgent in appreciation of mid-century modern life, modern life, furniture, architecture, and probably in like 1978, people were like, ugh, like, just my grandma's house, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Built in the 50s or whatever, so.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's just talk about what's coming up for us in terms of historical appreciation and plaque reading.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do we have any trips?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there something you particularly want to continue to read about?

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at you did a lot of regional travel this summer that the picture just texted me was you at a northern Michigan plaque correct?

[SPEAKER_01]: So what's next?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I don't have any big outings planned right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will say these kinds of opportunities to engage with Plex tend to be a little bit spontaneous for me, so like last time we were in the Upper Peninsula back in August.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wound up going to three separate historical parks or museums in one week and I didn't plan any of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eric and I had a couple of days to ourselves, so we ended up going to a lighthouse that was sort of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of grass roots, like a small community organization that runs it, but very interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then one was a very nicely done state park that is [SPEAKER_00]: at the ruins of a former mining community like a mine town on this bay in Lake Michigan.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's gorgeous and a lot of very well preserved buildings and then like a walk you can go up and go on the cliffs and kind of look down on the town.

[SPEAKER_00]: That I told Eric what I really want to do is come back in where long dress and just walk [SPEAKER_00]: walking, just walking in those paths myself, and looking down at my the town and imagining that I'm the doctor's wife or perhaps the clerk's wife or well maybe I'd want to be the Supervisor's wife because then I'd live in the Red Sea as a house.

[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, I mean there were so many houses I got to go into the doctor's house and I got to go into the you know the Supervisor's house and the the other one I love is the company store.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love a company store.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, and then I also went [SPEAKER_00]: When I went to St.

[SPEAKER_00]: Reeve to do a book event at my childhood library, which is amazing, Katherine went with me, my sister, and she and I popped into this little series of historic homes that have been turned into a museum, and we were both like, did this exist when we were kids?

[SPEAKER_00]: So what it turns out is one of the buildings.

[SPEAKER_00]: was already there.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other ones were moved there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I just don't think we probably ever went there as kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was just kind of getting off the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now it's a legit little historical, I guess, complex run by the local historic society.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was great, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess my point is like none of that was [SPEAKER_00]: really all that planned.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we spent like an hour at one of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: We spent a couple of hours at the lighthouse and then the state park was like an all day thing because there was so much to see.

[SPEAKER_00]: But whether you've got an hour or all day, I mean, there's plaques everywhere and you're just going to notice them more and more and any town that's more than a hundred years old, even?

[SPEAKER_00]: Tiny towns.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's going to be a plaque or two somewhere telling you something.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even if the town doesn't exist because it got swept away in a flood or a fire, there's going to be a plaque telling you that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's good to be history.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'll just be keeping my eyes up and for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a small chance that Eric and I might make a trip out to visit Isaac.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's out in New England right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's in New Hampshire, actually.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he's kind of beebopping all around and [SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thinking about maybe going up to Vermont, blah, blah, blah, blah, or would that be down?

[SPEAKER_01]: Does do have sure?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're next to each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they're next to each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I know you mentioned like East Coast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how much older the old stuff is there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've not spent a lot of time in New England.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like if I was to do that, that would be like.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think you would love to.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I mean, I think you would love it.

[SPEAKER_01]: There would be parts that kind of remind you a little bit of Michigan, just like latitude wise and then.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like when I am home with Brian even when we were like 22 and we were newly together I just would like like my eyes were like a kid looking out like a train window or something We'd drive around these towns and I'd be like [SPEAKER_01]: And you they all have plaques the old houses and some of them are like 17 11 and 17 there's crazy old houses there and then yeah you don't see that you don't see that even here It's not to say there aren't houses someplace in Michigan that are that old, but you you just don't run into them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like every town.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know I've popped up in 1800s [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, same without West.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is fun to think about because you're right.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of small opportunities for plaque reading and historical appreciation once the light has turned on for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I'll just mention a couple we did recently and then what I think might be coming up.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this summer with the kids, we went to the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon, which I had been to as when I was a kid.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I actually remember, [SPEAKER_01]: the what what you described about the recreations of a covered wagon and a school like a one room schoolhouse and the the general store in the town and they still had all of that but they had also built out a bunch of new stuff including a homestead like a like and it was out it was outside in the actual land rugged land where a homestead would be and there was a blacksmith shop and a chicken coop and a house that you could walk through and yeah it was just it was pretty [SPEAKER_01]: Um, we also, this is a totally different type of plaque reading, but I'll mention it.

[SPEAKER_01]: We were in Illinois, and we went to the town where Groundhog Day was filmed, and there is for sure a plaque from you and I talked about it with Stockhill and I, um, and that's a great example of like, I think that town already had some very quaint history, because there's a pretty opera house right there, and it's just like a very charming, classic American town square.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then the reason it's significant now is from like 1991 and you could just tell that like, which was a while ago Yeah, it is now a while ago and so that was really fun to see and With teenagers, you know, they're never gonna appreciate plaques to the same degree that we do but I've been pleasantly surprised sometimes at what my kids can appreciate we did we did a trip to England [SPEAKER_01]: a couple of years ago, and Luke would just touch the buildings and be like, this building was here a thousand years ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so they can, I think, they can get glimpses of the appreciation.

[SPEAKER_01]: They will not become Black readers themselves for.

[SPEAKER_00]: It'll be a while, but I also feel like sometimes we can interpret, we can be there to add context and to like be interpreters for them in a way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're really history and they're taking right history classes and yeah, I really think I could have used some of that real life contextualization.

[SPEAKER_00]: to make my history classes more interesting to me as a kid because I would sort of forget that like history, the stuff that was happening in my history books in history class also was happening out in the world that I actually people actually lived in.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like I would kind of separate the two out and I think that anytime there could be a connection, it was helpful for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it may be they've gotten better about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It probably was like these generations, but yes, it makes sense that that would seem completely divorced.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like something like learning about, I don't know, like the cells in your body or learning about anything if you don't have a real-life connection.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's completely abstract.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's irrelevant and a little bit, it can be a little bit boring.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious, Sarah, do you ever read a plaque and then get home and do more research on the thing you read?

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's next level.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it is next level.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's all my mom will say which will say she'll be like, I got to look that up.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to look that up and I feel like that might be next level, but I have definitely had the impulse to and then I think maybe I forget.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I'll graduate.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll graduate to that level.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, here's something I haven't done that I might do in just a couple of weeks.

[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't ever, like, sought out a historical site completely by myself for my own curiosity, and I am doing my annual road trip north.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, in a couple of weeks, I'm going to Monterey.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's for our drive along that for our drive is, [SPEAKER_01]: what they call Steinbeck country, which is just the entire Soliness Valley, and this summer, I finally read East of Eden.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we actually did, we did do this trip as a family this summer, but we did not stop at the museum.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there is a, there's a Steinbeck museum in Soliness, the town of Soliness, I'll be going right through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just thought, why wouldn't I stop?

[SPEAKER_01]: Even for 45 minutes, there's a house you can go through.

[SPEAKER_01]: So of course, I want to go into the house.

[SPEAKER_01]: you know, takes place right there.

[SPEAKER_01]: The novels so descriptive of each street and the intersection and where the jail was and where the butcher was and I just felt like I was there.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I haven't fully decided but there's no reason I can't stop for an hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: and just take myself to a museum, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: That feels very midlife lady.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love this idea so much and it's inspiring me so much because I've been thinking lately, I would really like to just get out of my house more.

[SPEAKER_00]: There, we're both in a stage where we're sort of like in our careers are changing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: What I'll end up doing when I find myself with free time is sitting there looking at the computer Expecting like work to jump out of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess and be like do me and I really as you today I don't actually need to be in my house as much like I can get all of the work I need to get done done in much less time than it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I use to need [SPEAKER_00]: I guess.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I've been thinking about taking myself on little day dates to like go to the antique store to do the things I love, you know, I would love to just map out every little historic town in a 30 mile or 300 mile radius or something and go to like the little town every little town, not every little town, but many little towns.

[SPEAKER_00]: have a historic society or have a small museum.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's probably an old house.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's yes, it's going to say yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: But how fun to just do that?

[SPEAKER_00]: And you never know what like cool stories you might learn.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, people are fascinating.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the way people have lived is fascinating.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if a small town has had a one, all it takes is one good archivist or one good historical preservation person.

[SPEAKER_01]: And sadly, that also means that there's probably small towns that deserved that that didn't have anybody [SPEAKER_01]: looking after it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, if one person cares that there can be really cool stuff preserved We have two small museums in my own town that I That I think would be fun to hit one is a stage coach museum.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of like old stage coach roads around here and similar to covered wagons There's just something we've just read about stage coach is so much that I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I find them interesting [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a stage curd coach museum.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a manuscript library in museum.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't, that's like a little bit of a different thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: But have you ever, like, has that ever been interesting to you, Megan, to see like a draft copy of a famous novel or like something signed by Shakespeare or something?

[SPEAKER_01]: People get really into collecting and curating those.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we have a small, but I think it's supposed to be pretty impressive manuscript museum.

[SPEAKER_01]: And those are both in town that I could easily hit up on one of those days that you're talking about.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't need to sit at my computer and wonder what's next.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, when you live in a place long enough, you realize how much is there right under your nose.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we opened the business and managed to one of the first things we did was go to the historical society because we wanted to know more about our building.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were curious of the history of the town.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just interesting then to try to talk to that about people who live there forever.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where is this now?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they didn't even, it's like, once you get used to something, you don't see it anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm pretty sure, look, the lighthouse is around here, you can go into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just doesn't really, like, why wouldn't I just got into a lighthouse in a different town?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I couldn't, I go into the lighthouse in my own town.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's an museum.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just never occurs to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it sounds like there's plenty more plaques to read.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to run.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't even have to leave our towns.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm going to get on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is going to be definitely an assignment, but a project that I'm going to work on is mapping out some day dates.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'll do Antique and Historical Museuming in the same day.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you'll we're coming up on fall colors, so it'll be so pretty to drive.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think French fall colors under my seat of cider or a tea.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, oh my gosh, it does not get any more midlife lady.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm bad sure doesn't sure doesn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, everyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thanks for being with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Today, just a reminder, you can find our expanded episode show notes with photos and links on sub-stack at mid-life lady leisurepresuits.substack.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's also where you'll find that special page we have set up with some of our favorite vionic styles.

[SPEAKER_01]: Use the promo code midlife at vionicshoes.com for 15 percent off when you log into your account.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for being here, everyone, and we'll talk to you soon.