This weekend was the annual Family Day with my family. We alternate between going to a cabin one year, with doing a day trip the next year. This was the year for a day trip and we toured Valley Forge, PA.
We are getting to be a sizable family and were proclaimed by the matriarch as "harder to herd than a bunch of cats", but we basically stayed together and finished the tour on [the matriarch's] schedule. We had CDs to play in our vehicles as we took a self-guided tour of the national park, which helped us know what we were seeing so we could try to visualize what it was like to live there in the winter of 1777. (Except that it was a beautiful, warm summer day.)
George Washington's army of 12,000 lived in 2000 log huts like these replicas. As many as 12 men lived in each one. They were crude but at least provided a roof over their heads. One guide claimed they were actually quite comfortable in these -with a fire going.
The men who spent the winter at Valley Forge suffered from hunger, cold, and disease which resulted in about 3,000 deaths. In addition, they were ill-equipped and lacked training when they arrived here.
George Washington lived in a tent until the men were housed in log cabins, then rented this house where he wintered with his wife and staff. Sometimes as many as twenty people were living here, eating and sleeping wherever they could find a space. The smaller section on the left is the kitchen & bake oven.
Here is a picture of our family in front of the house where George Washington lived 235 years ago.
PA has some amazing, very old buildings.
(You can read more about how the Revolutionary War affected the Mennonites on my mom's blog. Apparently there is a very long history of folks making a fuss over small issues and innocent by-standers getting caught in the crossfire.)
We had a picnic at the park part way through the tour and all congregated at my parent's house for a cookout afterwards. Once again there was an issue with lettuce, since it got accidentally left behind and we had to eat sandwiches without. It's a family joke.
In spite of a disrupted-schedule-kind-of-day, the littlest member of the family was relatively cheerful. Love the hat!
We didn't get to play with him near as much as we would've liked. Already looking forward to having him at our house next month.
