America in 250: Part 31-35

Welcome back to this week's recap of our America in 250 series. Where we show you 250 things to do across America to celebrate the 250th anniversary. This week concluded the seventh week of this series that has been posted across all of our social media channels.

1. Walk through Main Street USA at the American Sign Museum

Our first stop this week took us to Cincinnati Ohio for one of the coolest museums we've ever visited. I've always loved old signs. Not just the neon ones either, although those are some of my favorites. I've always found it interesting how signs have been used to attract customers to a business.

Inside the American Sign Museum, there are signs from every era imaginable, there are old wooden signs, gold leaf glass signs, neon signs, blow mold plastic signs, and more. Each sign served a unique purpose but a common theme, get customers to come to this place. We spent hours looking at the different signs and reading about the history behind them.

Tod Swormstedt was the editor of the Sign of the Times magazine, an incredibly important magazine for people in the sign making industry. He kept collecting old signs and restoring them and eventually wanted a place to display them. He opened the first museum in 1999 but as attendance and the collection grew, they needed more space. Eventually the museum ended up in its current location in Camp Washington around Cincinnati.

The museum has different sections highlighting different styles of signs. You can read about the history of the specific signs you see, how that style of sign was made, the years when it was popular, and what establishments it might be seen at. There's a lot to read inside and you'll be impressed with how many different types of signs there are and how old some of them are.

The part of our visit we enjoyed the most was when we turned the corner into what is known as Main Street USA. It's a recreation of a small downtown street complete with sidewalks, street lamps, and lots of storefronts decorated in tons of different signs. Even the windows of the stores have little displays inside showing off smaller signs or objects with descriptions to read.

One of these storefronts is a real neon shop as well. They build real neon signs here in the museum and you can watch them work with a live demonstration every Saturday at 11 AM and 1 PM. They answer questions and let you watch them make signs for 45 minutes so you can see the process in action.

This is one of the most underrated spots we've ever visited on our travels. It was right near my hometown in Cincinnati and somehow I had never visited while we lived there. If you're anywhere near Cincinnati, this is a really cool and unique museum about a topic that isn't talked about much in other museums. The founder has stated that signs are an interesting way to look at America through the years and he hopes that your visit to the museum makes you more aware of signs in your day to day lives. I know it's been the case for us. We comment to each other how nice a sign is when we see one we really like as we travel the country.

2. Visit the Bass Pro Shops Pyramid

If you were to think of different pyramids around the world today, I'm sure you wouldn't picture one being in Memphis Tennessee. And I bet you definitely wouldn't think that the Memphis Pyramid is the 7th largest pyramid in the entire world. Well, it is and we knew we had to visit when we had a few hours in Memphis during one of our trips.

The Memphis Pyramid was built in 1991 and was originally used as a venue for sports and entertainment events. Then it was used as a church from 2002 to 2006. Since then, it has been home to a Bass Pro Shops store which is the largest in the country.

The inside of the Bass Pro Pyramid contains a full Bass Pro Shops store complete with sections for fishing, hunting, and other outdoor gear. It has all the normal Bass Pro decor like taxidermied animals and a big fish tank. But this store has way more. It's themed like a cypress swamp and most of the floor space in the center of the store is set up on platforms with bridges between them. This is so they could fill the bottom with water and tons of huge fish and live alligators that swim beneath you as you walk around the store. There's huge cypress trees around the store to make it feel like you're in a forest.

The store also doubles as a hotel. You can stay the night in the Big Cypress Lodge, a hotel that is inside the pyramid where the rooms all look into the store from above. Then there's the largest free standing elevator in the United States. This elevator will take you up 28 stories to the viewing deck that lets you walk outside the pyramid and get a view of Memphis and the Mississippi River on both sides of you. The trip up the elevator and the hotel cost extra but they're super cool experiences that you can only get here.

Everyone knows that Bass Pro Shops is one of the most American feeling stores in the country. We've seen tons of videos of tourists from other countries exploring Bass Pro Shops on their visits to the United States and they all love it. I always loved going to Bass Pro Shops growing up to get new fishing gear as a kid and I still love visiting the stores today. This is a super cool experience that you can get only in Memphis.

3. Explore the Civil War history of Savannah

The Civil War is an interesting historical topic for lots of people, especially dads. Something about fatherhood just makes historical wars interesting to learn about. As I prepare for fatherhood myself, I got this urge to start learning more about the history of this country including the wars that our nation has fought. And what better place to start learning about some of these events than Savannah Georgia.

To start learning about the Civil War history around Savannah, we went on a tour with Savannah True History Tours. Our guide Brandon, was incredibly knowledgable about the Civil War era and the events that happened near Savannah. We walked around the city and talked about Georgia's secession, influential people in the Confederacy that lived or visited Savannah, fighting around Savannah, and Savannah's eventual surrender to the Union after Sherman's March to the Sea.

We got to see different spots like the houses that William Tecumseh Sherman and Robert E. Lee stayed in while they were in Savannah. We also saw the squares where pro-secession rallies were held and speeches were given. And we got to walk around the Colonial Park cemetery and see where Union soldiers vandalized some of the gravestones. We got to see even more than that during our walk and we learned about different events like the blockade of Savannah during our walk as well.

We highly recommend this tour if you're visiting Savannah. It was really fun to walk around the city and see so many spots where events happened during the Civil War. Savannah didn't get raided or burned down during the war so a lot of the historical buildings are still preserved for you to see.

During our tour, we had heard about Fort Pulaski and decided to go and check it out. This was a fort made of brick that was built by the United States but was taken over by the Georgia militia before the Civil War began. This fort is an important part of the history of the Civil War for one major reason that revolutionized warfare tactics and rendered this style of fort almost obsolete.

When the Confederates took over Fort Pulaski, they were assured that it was safe from any attack by the Union. Typically, cannons were only accurate if a target was closer than half a mile. Any farther than that and their accuracy and effectiveness dropped off. That was what made Robert E. Lee so confident that Fort Pulaski couldn't be taken, since the closest a ship could get to the fort was about 1 to 1.5 miles away.

That was until the Union army decided to test a new type of cannon, rifled cannons. This allowed cannons to be accurate from much farther than the range of a smoothbore cannon. When the Union started attacking the fort, it only took them 30 hours to get the Confederate soldiers inside to surrender. They had blown clear through the 7-foot thick wall in under 30 hours from almost a mile and a half away. The outer wall has been repaired some but you can still see where the artillery was hitting the outer walls all along the outside of the fort.

Our final stop was at Old Fort Jackson along the Savannah River. This was a fort that was used during the War of 1812 before the Civil War. When the United States had just won their independence, Thomas Jefferson decided we needed fortifications to protect our new country. He commissioned what are called Second System Fortifications to replace some of the forts we had built out of wood and dirt just after the Revolution. This brick fort never saw any combat but was used to protect the crucial port of Savannah from any raids during the war.

There were only 2 caretakers inside when it was stormed by the Georgia militia before the Civil War began. They wanted to protect their ports from any attacks since they knew war would soon begin since states were starting to secede from the Union. The Union instead decided to blockade the city of Savannah so that they couldn't get any supplies brought in from the Savannah River. This blockade seriously affected the residents of Savannah during the war. Old Fort Jackson was finally retaken by the Union during Sherman's March to the Sea.

These are only some of the places and stories that take place during the Civil War era in Savannah. Learning about the history of the city during this time was so interesting and we highly recommend that anyone visiting the city leans into learning the story behind it. Savannah is unique in the fact that so many historical buildings are still around to be seen today. There are really knowledgable people like our tour guide Brandon at Savannah True History Tours that want to keep the history alive for new people to learn about.

4. Watch the sea lions at Pier 39 in San Francisco

Seeing the sea lions at Pier 39 is on every list when you look up what to do in San Francisco. This is a very touristy thing that most people that visit the city on vacation have done. And that's exactly why it's on our list. Our list is about telling you 250 things to do to celebrate the United States turning 250 years old and what better way to do that than with some touristy, well-known things like this.

The sea lions showed up in October 1989 after the Loma Prieta earthquake. They arrived quickly and in numbers and soon had taken over the docks at Pier 39. They found safety and lots of fish in the San Francisco Bay and have been coming back every year since. Now you can see dozens or even hundreds of sea lions crowded on those platforms every day. The best times to see them are from March-May and August-October.

We were walking along the street near Fisherman's Wharf when we first started to hear them barking. They were so loud and we got excited. This was one of the things we wanted to see during our short weekend visit to the city. When we got there, we saw well over a hundred sea lions crowded on the docks. They were barking, playing, enjoying the sunshine, and swimming together. Some were bigger than the others and they were quite mean. They'd charge at the smaller ones and try to get them off the platform so they could have it all to themselves. All of them seemed to have their own personalities and they all reminded Juliana of our dog Koda.

We spent almost an hour there just watching them interact before we headed off to explore more of Fisherman's Wharf. If you've been to San Francisco, I'll bet that you've already done this one. But if you've never been, this is something that you have to do when you're there.

5. Visit Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park

There's one spot in Rocky Mountain National Park that is more so popular that it requires a separate reservation on top of the reservation to get into the park. That area is Bear Lake Road. A 9 mile scenic road that takes you from the Beaver Meadows area of the park to the very popular Bear Lake Trailhead.

The reservation period for Bear Lake is every day from 5:00 AM and 6:00 PM from May 22 through October 18, 2026. This means that if you made the mistake of not booking ahead like we did, you'll need to get to Bear Lake Road before 5:00 AM or after 6:00 PM. We couldn't stay until the evening in the park so that means we had to go in the morning. Since we were camping and the only reservation we could get inside the park was for the Timber Creek campground on the west side of the park, that means we needed to wake up at around 2:00 AM to disassemble camp and drive over an hour to the east side of the park before 5:00 AM. It was a little nerve wracking driving Trail Ridge Road in pitch black, I almost hit an elk that was standing in the road on the way as well. We finally made it to Bear Lake in the dark at around 4:30 in the morning. This is a good way to see Bear Lake if you didn't end up with a reservation like us. There is also a free shuttle system that runs during summer months but we wanted to be at Bear Lake early so we didn't use it. Here is the link to learn more about the shuttle system.

Since it was still dark we decided to try to sleep in the car until the sun started to come up. We maybe got 20 minutes of decent sleep until the sun started to come up around 6:30 AM or so. We had to keep turning on the car to get some heat since it was so cold outside. But after we had some dim light, we grabbed or gear and walked the extremely short trail from the parking lot to Bear Lake. When we arrived, it was already bustling with other people and photographers that were all looking to catch the early morning light as it hit the top of Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain in the distance.

We sat there, took pictures and videos, and enjoyed watching the sun light up more and more of the mountains and trees. Bear Lake is beautiful but we knew there were other lakes to see. We started hiking up the trail from Bear Lake and made it to Nymph Lake after just half a mile. We couldn't see some of the other lakes since there was trail management going on while we were there but we've seen some pictures of the other lakes and they look beautiful. Even more beautiful than Bear Lake if we're being honest. We both assume that Bear Lake is as popular as it is because it's close to the parking lot, not because it's the most beautiful view in the park. On future visits we will definitely try to see some of the other lakes because the trail up to Nymph Lake on its own had spectacular mountain views.

After we saw Nymph Lake, we headed back to the car and started driving down Bear Lake Road once again. This time we could see everything in the morning light and it looked incredible. The whole Bear Lake Corridor is worth a visit while you're in Rocky Mountain National Park. We stopped at pullouts to enjoy the view and even saw a bull elk walking in the woods. It's really a beautiful section of the park, even though the whole park is incredible. This is by far our favorite national park we've visited as of now.

So when you're visiting Rocky Mountain National Park and you're wanting to see Bear Lake, make sure you don't just stop at Bear Lake. It's well worth it to put in the effort and hike to see some of the other lakes in the area as well. Within 2 miles you can see 3 other lakes, Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, and Emerald Lake. So even a little bit of hiking gets you more amazing views than you would see if you just stayed at Bear Lake.

So that wraps up our recap of episodes 31-35 of America in 250. All of the episodes are available to watch on our social media channels @americantravelarchives. Check back next week for another post of America in 250.