Rock On!

My son's Webelos Geology achievement badge was completed today with a trip to the Lucky Lake Gem Mine in fabulous McKinney, Virginia:

When I say fabulous, I really mean fabulously far away. Almost 2 hours, which was long for me.

I was worried that we'd get there and it just wouldn't be what we were hoping for (details are skinny on the website). We were very pleasantly surprised!

For starters, we got to dig ourselves:

There is an option to buy buckets of material (soil and rock and planted goodies) and sluice away at the giant sluicing area, but my son really wanted to dig.

Lots of muck and rocks to dig up and plop in a sieve. Once washed clean in the creek, the treasures start to show up:

I dug one spadeful - and struck it "rich" immediately:

Here's my daughter's haul for the day:

One of the best parts of the place is that a gemologist sits own with you when you're done to explain what each rock you have is:

My daughter was in sorting heaven!

Not sure how great this pic is, but this turned out to be my favorite rock from my daughter's haul. Naturally, we've already forgotten the name and forgot to get a copy of the handout, so now I'm not really sure why I'm posting this:

except that is looks like hay running through a crystal and is sometime known as Aphrodite's Hair. Cool!

My son found a Dalmatian Stone:

and you can tell why I had a hard time with Geology class in college. Cannot remember the real names to save my hide. Oh well, the common names are usually much more fun!

The trip was a culmination of a mini-unit study on geology at our house. After studying lots of rock books this week, we were excited to think that we might have found some petrified wood:

Turned out to be a piece of burnt wood (thus the charcoal marks on the picnic table) and a special type of rock.

Despite the long drive, the gem mine was a great trip. Not only were cool rocks in abundance, but to have someone handy for identification really made the education level worthwhile. The setting with the shade and picnic tables made for a comfortable place to spend a day and the staff couldn't have been more helpful.

No field trip is complete (at least for my group) without treats! McKinney seems to be completely frozen in time 50 years ago. Couldn't you see this place on and episode of "Happy Days"?

Once home, we tried out my son's gift shop purchase, a crack-by-yourself geode.

The chickens got wind of it all and decided to check it out ("No ladies, that's not an egg!").

And here's what we found inside:

Not as high-tech spectacular as could be, but more than expected and better than most. Just like our field trip!

Hawk Man

We had our field trip experience at home today. Our friend, Mr. Andy, brought his red-tailed hawk to show the kids. We invited a few families to see and had a great afternoon of it.

Here's Mr. Andy and Dart (or is it Dash?):

Tubby particularly enjoyed the attention from everyone (after he jumped in Mr. Andy's car and generally made the hawk nervous):

We learned lots of tidbits about hawks. For instance, it's the talons and not the beak that do the attacking. 

We learned lots of names of all the hawk gear (which quickly "flew" out of my head). We even learned why this red-tailed hawk has no red tail (not mature yet).

Just being so close to a bird that only see soaring or perched far away was pretty stunning. He was gorgeous. Mr. Andy has permits to capture and train wild birds, which he then lets go at about age 3 when they become mature males. The details of the capturing and care of the birds was fascinating.

The hawk didn't fly for us as it is the wrong time of year for him (Mr. Andy explained that he's just too fat now to do much but perch on a shady limb) and the kids couldn't pet the bird (see talons above), but they were fascinated by the gear, including the glove (which also has a name!).

It was a great field trip - at home!

Montpelier - the House

Last month, we were studying American presidents for a speech presentation with fellow homeschoolers. My daughter asked "Are there any lady presidents?". My heart fell with a thud, but I tried to recover with the only (lame) thought I had. "Not yet", I replied "but there are lots of interesting First Ladies". I hope my daughter doesn't have to have this conversation with her daughter.

I tried to rally with Dolley Madison, wife of our fifth president, James Madison. As a reward for all of our individual and joint research efforts, we headed off to Montpelier - home of James and Dolley - to see what there lives might have been like. After a week of having a bad cold, and a forecast of a beautiful sunny day (I neglected to notice that the temperatures didn't move much), we headed off for a romp in the countryside.

Our first hurdle was to figure out where to find Montpelier. My kids thought that it must be really close as there is a town next to us by the same name. But we weren't that lucky. Orange County, Virginia was our destination and Mapquest got us there with no problems.

The home was breathtaking, but oddly unfamiliar. I knew I had never been there, but from pictures, I was not expecting the brick manse we encountered. It wasn't until we were well into the tour that we discovered that the home had been owned by the DuPonts from the 1930s and tripled in size and stuccoed (with pink stucco!). It has only recently (as of September, 2008) been restored to the home that the Madisons would have returned to after the presidency. Amazingly, the DuPonts frugality preserved much of the original structure and reconstruction of some features was as easy as looking in the basement for missing mantles.

Here is the view from the front porch entrance:



And from the outside looking in:




No photography is allowed in the house, but not much is in there. They are just now in the process of locating and reproducing period furnishings. While the house was not the walk back through the time of an important person, like Monticello is, it was a fascinating display of restoration techniques. We didn't learn as much about Dolley as we'd have liked, but we were able to answer the guide's questions (and even catch an inconsistency!), and learned my daughter's favorite fact about Dolley - her favorite ice cream flavor was oyster.



Here's my daughter paying respects at the Madisons' graves. James' is in the forefront, and Dolley's smaller obelisk is in the rear. The grounds would have been much more fun on a warmer, less windy day, as there are loads of walking trails with recorded interpretative guides to add more information. As my cold was wiping me out, we cut out early to enjoy a late lunch at Jean's Family Cooking before heading home. What a fun trip.