Harper's Ferry National Historic Park, WV...

On Tuesday we drove down to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. Harper’s Ferry National Historic Park includes a historic area full of old buildings that have been/are being restored. There is limited parking in the town area, so we rode the shuttle bus… Don’t laugh, but we had never been on a bus before (hence the pic)! Even a shuttle.

Harper’s Ferry was made famous (at least for us), by John Brown’s attempt to seize the arsenal that was located there. John Brown was anabolitionist who thought that he could lead the slaves to rise up in rebellion and free themselves. John Brown did take over the fire engine house at the armory where he holed himself up with some of his followers, and held off troops for days. The engine house was much smaller than we thought it would be…

In the end, John Brown was caught and hung for treason.

Harper’s Ferry is located at the confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah Rivers. It is part of the route of the C&O canal, so we got to learn about barges and locks.

The kids did the Jr. Ranger program here. The park has 3 different levels of badges, depending on the level of work, which hinges on how many times you have been there or how long you have to work on it.

It was a long day.
And with so much to learn about! A lot of different things have happened in Harper’s Ferry to put them on the map.

Emma ended up with an apprentice badge, and was happy with it. The boys all HAD to earn all 3, so, after a long day of exploring and finding info, they walked away with Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master badges. Jackpot! (boy am I glad that all parks don’t do that!) 😛
And the ranger that checked their work was the coolest!!! Love the rangers that love the kids!

After Harper’s Ferry, we are off to find a basecamp to do Gettysburg!

We are moving to Round Top Campground, just a mile or 2 outside of Gettysburg N.P.

It will be nice to stop and recoup for a couple of days…

Today: We went to Harper’s Ferry nearly a week ago; I am always behind in my posts, and try to do them while we are driving. The last few days we have put on a lot of miles in starting to work our way towards home. I am ready for a break from driving. The kids must be bored too – Emma just shared with us how many of each shape there are on the bottom of her sandals 😉 And if I have to listen to Your Story Hour one more time…

It is so fun to drive around and visit all these interesting new locations, but I think that I am the worst traveler of the bunch – I like to park somewhere for around a week and get to know the area a little bit before moving on. I know, you feel so sorry for me don’t you? LOL!

But we are putting on the miles to work our way back home. It will be nice to park it for awhile and do some organizing and modifications to the 5er this summer in preparation for next winter. We are already writing up a list of places that we didn’t have time to visit this year and would like to go to next winter!