We’ve been busy and a little bit lazy. I think it’s the Florida sun. It’s hard to stay indoors and write when there so much beauty outdoors.

Except I miss you.

I miss sharing our adventures with our little circle of friends.

So here we go. Catch up time. This week. For sure.

After we left Tennessee, we headed to Alabama but not without a stop at Chickamauga National Military Park. We are in hot pursuit of the special Junior Civil War Historian Badges which requires completing 3 Jr. Ranger programs at participating parks or 2 Jr. Ranger programs plus an online activity. Chickamauga is a participating park and we were ready.

Except we weren’t.

The time change. We drove as fast as we safely could to the park thinking we had an hour to browse the visitor center. As it turned out we had about 2.5 minutes before it closed.

Awesome.

Still we drove around and read the brochures I begged the ranger to give us before he locked the door to the visitor center.

The next day was better despite waking up in a Walmart parking lot.

We rolled out of Wally World and 20 minutes later arrived Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park. It was early, leaving us with a whole day for school and exploration. Tennehill Ironworks Historical State Park is a home roadschoolers dream. It’s hands on history complete with a museum and numerous old buildings in a beautiful setting. We took off on our bikes for the Iron and Steel museum of Alabama. Afterwards we checked out the cotton gin and made our way to the old furnace. I watched as the boys explored with excitement.

Yes, these are the days I dream of.

Almost.

Feeling overly ambitious, I suggested we take another route back to our trailer.

We headed over the bridge to what looked, on the map, like a short trail back to our campsite.

All was well and lovely until I looked back and saw this…

Somehow Thing 1’s back wheel had gotten out of alignment and it was sticking on the break making it extremely difficult to peddle.

And extremely difficult to stay calm. Notice the distance between Thing 1 (in the top right corner) and his bike? I’ll let you guess how it got there.

We carried on because “according to the map” the campground must be right around the corner. Wrong.

We rode and rode.

And I had some very unhappy, hungry, thirsty, tired, little boys.

What felt like miles later, we came to the end of the trail except there was no campground in sight. Uh-oh. Thankfully, there was a maintenance man and he explained to us that we had missed the short loop and had ended up on a different trail. He also offered to take us back to our campsite.

What started off like this.

Ended up like this. Thing 2 won’t even look at me.

Sigh.

At least there were deer right out our window. That always makes for smiles.

I think Meow Cow agrees.

Love and Laughter,
Jenn

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