We are having a great vacation!  This weekend we took several big trips to different places.  We went down to Albany and on the way down we stopped at Howe's Caverns, a big cave about 200 feet below ground.  Austin was very unsure about it at first but after a while he came around and enjoyed it.  In his defense, it was very dark down there even with the little lights they have on the walls.

You walk for most of the tour but there is a boat ride towards the end.  Both the boys enjoyed that.  The tour was an hour and a half and we all really enjoyed it.

Here's Austin at the end wearing my coat.  It's 52 degrees in the cave all year round so it's a little chilly.

We got to stay in an apartment while we were in Albany.  It was the first time the kids had been in an apartment so it was a new experience.  The nice thing is that there is a large courtyard between the buildings so the boys played outside while Adelaide watched from the window.

The next day we went to Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts.  It is a whole village from the 1830s.  We spent six hours there and didn't see the whole place!  They have a little farm we went around and three mills with different styles of harnessing the water from the river.  One was a saw mill (which I think is the coolest because the big saw cuts right down the log without any electricity), a grain mill and mill that carded wool.  The kids really enjoyed the farm animals and the boys even took a stage coach ride!

They had several different houses to tour from the wealthy farmer to a regular working farmhouse to a simple two room cottage.

This guy was explaining how to load and shoot a musket.  Gavin really liked this demonstration!

Since the gun was so loud Adelaide and I spent some time in the wealthy farmer's garden.  It's exactly what I want in my yard some day, complete with a grape arbor with benches underneath so you can rest in the shade.

This was the bottom of the wool carding mill.  We were watching the wheels turning.

Then we went on to the farm.  The farm was Adelaide's favorite part.  I kept her in a sling most of the day so I didn't get a lot of pictures of her.

Austin really liked this baby calf.  She was five weeks old and very cute!

We also watched a cheese making demonstration at the farm.  Then we went to some other places like the tin maker, blacksmith and potter.

Finally, we closed out the day with a ride on the stagecoach.

Saturday we went to Fort Ticonderoga, a beautiful site between two lakes in the Adirondack Mountains.  The boys LOVED the fort!!!  These next few pictures are from wikipedia, I didn't take them, but they give a general idea of what it looks like.

The fort is complete with soldiers and it was fife and drum day.  Here are the French troops - they had the prettiest uniforms which stands to reason since they are French :)

We went through the museum and Gavin talked to many of the soldiers so he learned more about the battles at Ticonderoga, the weapons they used and the daily life of a soldier.  There was another musket demonstration here complete with a little lesson in tactics.  We watched a tailor sewing an officer's jacket (by hand!) and the cobblers making shoes with nails and knives.  The soldiers had also made an oven out of mud and were baking their lunch on it.  Gavin talked to them for a long time.  They have a nice little museum as well so we saw some things that belonged to George Washington (like his razor) and we saw Ethan Allen's musket.

Of course both the boys had to have a musket before we could leave the gift shop (which you have to go through to get into the fort).

Adelaide didn't care much for the fort or the soldiers, but she did enjoy the fife and drums as they marched around the courtyard.

We stayed at the fort for seven hours (!) and then went to their annual clam bake.  Austin loved the clams!  They were a little tricky to get out of their shells but he enjoyed dunking them in butter and eating them.

So we have had several long days but the kids had a great time and saw lots of interesting things.  We are going to rest up a little this week with just some smaller trips and then we will head back to Missouri with a couple of fun stops along the way!