Day Two (9/15)

We were so ready for our first day of exploring! At least, we were ready after sleeping in a little and watching some cartoons :-) Armed with cappuccinos from the campground coffee shop, we headed to Harper's Ferry National Historic Park around 10:00. Turns out, the entrance is right around the corner from the campground. We got our new national park passes for the year and headed to the Visitor Center. Not terribly happy to find out that you now have to pay to participate in the Junior Ranger program here. They don't even sell the books at the Visitor Center - you have to go down into town to the Book Shop to purchase them. At least the ranger recommended some hikes for us and the kids bought their first round of postcards.
There is very limited parking down in Lower Town in the park, so we took the shuttle bus down. It is a gorgeous historic town that is part national historic park and part private residences and businesses. It is surrounded by rivers and mountains, so the scenery is breathtaking. At the Book Shop, we bought the Jr. Ranger booklets and a civil war book that caught Gavin's eye.

Our next stop was the "Industry Museum." The most interesting part was a water-powered pulley system that ran all of the machines in a shop that made the locks, stocks, and barrels of guns in the 1800's.

We also toured several historic homes, a men's clothing store, a dry goods store, a boarding house, a tavern, and museums about African-American history in the area, the Lewis and Clark expedition (Harper's Ferry is where Lewis stocked up on supplies before they set out,) civil war battles in the area (the town changed hands eight times!) and the natural history of Harper's Ferry.

We climbed a bajillion carved stone steps to a 19th century Catholic church and some ruins of an older Episcopal church. From our perch on top of the hill, the kids got to see a train passing by and going through a tunnel through the mountains.

We had left our picnic lunch back in the truck at the Visitor's Center, so we settled for some ice cream instead. Such a shame :-)
The highlight for us was visiting John Brown's fort - both the original location and its current spot - because we have been learning a lot about him. He was a pre-Civil War radical abolitionist who believed that the only way to do away with slavery was through violence. One of his goals was to arm the slaves so that they could rise against their masters and free themselves. In 1859, he and some of his men seized the arsenal in Harper's Ferry with the hopes that slaves and free men in the surrounding area would come to their aid and fight. Unfortunately for them, no help ever arrived. They killed a few men, including civilians, and lost some of their own and were captured within three days. Brown was tried and hanged shortly thereafter. The kids and I have decided that we admire Brown's motives, but aren't big fans of his methods.

John Brown's Fort

We headed back to the camper in the afternoon to take a little break and pick up the dog so that he could join us for an evening hike.

The ranger recommended the Murphy-Chambers Farm loop, so we headed out on a path through the woods, across a footbridge over a dry streambed, then down an old farm road.

The original farmhouse was seized by the Union army and destroyed, but the family was never compensated, like most of the properties in the area. We got to examine a line of Confederate cannons that Jackson's men pulled up the ravines to defeat the Union army. 12,500 northern soldiers surrendered here.

The trail went back into the woods to the "earthworks" where the soldiers built redoubts - huge mounds of earth and dirt that sheltered cannons and soldiers - while defending the Shenandoah River. There were beautiful views of the river! We hung out on a bench and enjoyed our surroundings for a while.

The trail also went by the foundation of John Brown's fort's third location (it was moved a total of four times over the years.) We looped back around the fields to return, then headed back to the camper for a quick dinner of pork tenderloin. Don took the kids to the bounce house across the road while I cooked. I could hear the roars and shrieks from our campsite (you can guess which noise came from which child.)
I let the kids stay up late to watch "Wild Man" on Animal Planet. It's their favorite and they don't get to watch it at home. We all slept well by the time we made it to bed!