Tuesday

Since Alex was studying the Civil War earlier this year, we decided to start our Tuesday with a trip to Wilson's Creek National Battlefield. We thought the kids would last a couple of hours but boy were we wrong! We were there nearly four hours!! And I think they could have lasted longer had we packed a lunch. We just had no clue that they would be that into it all!

We started out the day at the Civil War Museum...
This is where the kids picked up their Junior Ranger booklets and started to work...
We were the only ones in the museum which was very nice! There was an extremely helpful ranger there who answered all of the kids questions and gave them all kinds of great information.
Next we drove over to the Visitor Center to watch the movie about the battle at Wilson's Creek. After the movie and answering a few questions in their booklets, we started on the driving tour.

First stop was Gibson's Mill...
It was a nice little trail through the woods to see the remains of the mill that was there during the battle...
We found this cool little toad on the bridge railing...
Next stop was the Ray House....

The kids stood on the same front porch that Mr. Ray stood on to watch the battle that was taking place in his corn field.
It made us think about how the lives of ordinary people where impacted by the war. The family had a battle taking place in their cornfield and had their house turned into a field hospital after it was over.

The next couple of stops we did as drive-bys.... mom drove, I read from the guide and the kids looked out the windows.

We stopped again at #5... Sigel's Last Stand....
Here the kids worked on the "know your canon" section of their booklets.

Our final stop was at Bloody Hill. The kids and I walked the trail to find the sink hole (used as a mass grave after the battle) and the Lyon monument....
We drove by the last place on the tour and then headed back to the Visitor Center to have their booklets checked, take their oath and receive their Junior Ranger badges and certificates...
Since it was nearly 3:00, we thought it would be a good time to finally have lunch, before going to visit great-grandma.

Later at grandpa and grandma's house, grandpa got out his (replica) muzzle loader to show Alex...

They had a good time exploring all of the parts together....
Even though this "field trip" was more about Alex, Clara really enjoyed it as well. She showed her teacher her Junior Ranger badge yesterday and today she's taking photos and her booklet so she can do a presentation about it to the class. She was so excited when she left this morning!