DAY OFF-Civil War Fort Foote

The kids asked for a day  off from museums, so today we slept in and had pancakes for breakfast.  Around 11 we made our sandwiches, all piled in the car and headed out to Fort Foote, a Civil War fort which was built to defend the capitol.

It was a short drive to the national monument and it was very quiet there--very few people.  We hiked along the path, reading the story boards along the way.  Fort Foote was built in 1864 and had two huge cannons which could shoot 15 inch cannon balls.  The cannon balls weighed 434 pounds and the crew practiced until they were able to clean,load and fire the cannon in 4 minutes.  We couldn't even imagine how they could load that heavy cannon ball.  Fort Foote was one of 18 military forts built around the capitol.

The hike was pretty short, and there must have been quite a wind storm recently because at one point there was a huge tree that had fallen over and broke down the bridge over a ravine.  ABBC were able to scramble over the tree and teeter across the other side of the bridge and then they found a little trail that went down the embankment to the Potomac River, so they went down there, using a rope to get down the steep part.  GG and Grandpa watched through the trees as the boys ran up and down the shore, threw rocks into the river and did the normal boy things--except no one got a shoe wet.

We returned to the car and had our picnic lunch before heading home.

For their day off all ABBC wanted to do was to sit and watch cartoons on tv, but Grandpa said no and hid the controls.  So then they were bored for awhile.  Eventually they played cards for about 10 minutes and then began to complain about nothing to do.  They started a rousing game of hide and seek and played that for awhile.  While they were hiding they ran across some racquets and a tennis ball, so they went into the court and played ball for awhile.  At 4:30 GG relented and told them they could watch TV for a hour while she made dinner.

For dinner we had pork roast, rice-a-roni and spinach salad.  Those boys love that rice-a-roni and ate it all up again.

Tonight we have to say goodbye to the turtle and put him back in the wild because tomorrow we are off to Williamsburg.