Tales From My House: Valley Forge

My goal is to blog at least once a week, I am falling woefully behind on that goal. Maybe May will be my month!

This weekend we had plans to go out of town for a long weekend. We were going to go to Six Flags New Jersey, spend a day in New York, and then head to Valley Forge before making our way home. Sounds pretty fun, right? Well, the forecast for the weekend was terrible. Extremely windy and hot (average high is 68, it was going to be 92) on Friday, good on Saturday, then rain on Sunday. So, we decided to postpone. We had already made arrangements to board Gus, and we had to pay for him regardless, so we took him as planned and made alternate arrangements for an even minier vacay. On Friday, we pulled the kids out of school a little early and went to our local Six Flags. It was completely empty. We walked on every ride and had dinner. Unfortunately, they closed at 6, so we only got to enjoy the emptiness for a couple of hours, but they were pretty glorious.

Only two people--Jack and Anna sitting in the front row. They did this twice in a row.

From there we went to the Valley Forge area. We had a night booked at a Homewood Suites (that and Residence Inns are my favorite for family travel). By the time we arrived it was after 9, so we just went to bed. We offered a prize to the first kid to fall asleep and the last one to wake up. It kept the kids extremely quiet. Except Luke. He was the last to fall asleep and the first to wake. He was calling for me by 5:45 the next morning. Kara won both, although it was hard to judge.

We had our hotel breakfast and then went to Valley Forge. We explored, watched the movie and after walking for a while, decided our best move would be to drive through the remainder of the park, stopping at each site. However, as we were walking to our car, we saw they had bikes for rent, including kid sizes and a trailer for Luke. It seemed like a great idea, so we did it! It was absolutely beautiful and I really enjoyed the ride...for the most part. At one point, we had to off-road along a river. Which was nice, until the bolt connecting Luke's trailer to Thomas' bike fell off. Fortunately, the safety strap did its job and Luke was safe. Thomas had to try and hand-tighten the bolt and then we had to stop periodically to make sure it was still secure. Then, a few minutes later, Anna and Kara fell simultaneously. They were both scraped up and unhappy. It was on a rocky dirt road and they both tried to brake as we were going downhill. I felt bad for them, but they were troopers and hopped back on, although Anna became pretty timid and wanted to walk her bike down the hills after that. We found our way back to the concrete trail and everyone was (relatively) happy again.

The best part was seeing Washington's actual winter quarters. The house is 75% original and it was amazing to think of the history that took place there. The whole area was very pretty. It was a sad contrast to imagine the harshness of the winter that the Patriots endured. Definitely a vastly different experience than the beautiful spring day we enjoyed. From the winter quarters, it was a 2-mile ride back to the visitor's center. By now we had been riding for about 2 hours. I estimate we went around 12 miles. The kids handled it very well. Ironically, Luke complained the most about being tired. It was exhausting to be hauled around like a little prince!

After Valley Forge, we went to the King of Prussia mall--the second largest in the country. We had lunch and walked around for a while and then decided it was time to head home. We arrived home around 6:30 and proclaimed the miniest of vacations a success!

And now, the photo dump:

Huts in the background were built like the ones the army spent the winter in.

Arch built in 1917 as a monument and entrance to the national park (there were supposed to be two entrances, one for Washington and one for General von Steuben, but Congress only allowed funding for one). It was pretty impressive and it was hard to believe it was constructed over 100 years ago.