Harpers Ferry

Welcome to Spring Break!  We have the luxury of having Jason home during this week.  I would like to tell you that we have done lots of exciting things, been to exciting places or even finished a lot of projects around the house.  But if I did, I would be lying.

We did, however, take a drive up to Harpers Ferry on Wednesday.  It was one of those spur of the moment decisions that takes 2 hours to prep for with three boys, but we went and had a great time.

The key to a successful outing with the boys, I have discovered, is giving them the opportunity to get the wiggles out after a long drive and matching hats.

Just kidding about the hats.

But we did meander down to the Shenandoah River to skip rocks before heading into the town proper of Harpers Ferry.  The boys thought this was a great idea and even asked if this was what we drove 1 1/2 hours to do.

Once we got into Harpers Ferry, the older boys were actually pretty excited to go into the different buildings and learn about the history of the area.  Of course, it helps that the history of the area has a lot of battles, uprisings and guns.  You can't go wrong with an humongous artillery shell (or "big bullet" if you are 4 years old and see one of these on the ground).

Did I mention guns?  The boys were so excited by this one case of guns I am thinking that a visit to the NRA guns museum might be in order.

Having exhausted the boys' historical attention span, we went hiking up to Jefferson's Rock.  He claimed that the "scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic."  I wouldn't go that far, but there is a lovely view.

Up a bit from Jefferson's Rock is the cemetery.  The graves date from the Civil War era to today.  Our description of what a cemetery is left quite an impression on Ben.  He spent most of our time there using both hands to point around him saying, "People died here!  People!  People died here!"  I asked him if that made him sad and he said, "Yes!"

And because I am very mature, I took this picture to share with everyone.

We made it down the hill and then over the river on a bridge next to the railroad tracks.  We were lucky enough to see 3 trains pass by.  It turns out that bridge is part of the Appalachian trail (which explains some the gear people were wearing crossing the bridge) and left us with an interesting choice:

As summer comes, Maine is tempting, but we opted to go home instead.