Field Trips, September/October

Okay, so really, I really do home school, too! I know, lately it's been nothing but reviews.

In our home school this year we are taking a field trip every week or two, and it is my intention to blog about our field trips. Sadly, I have already let at least one trip slip by without even a photograph. I think I got there only to find my camera battery dead. I remember taking a couple of photographs... I guess they're probably on my dead camera... Maybe I'll get back here and stick them in later, but for now I'll just update.

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Our first field trip of the year I have absolutely no photographs of yet. Maybe on the dead camera, but I can't even find the cord to transfer photos to my computer, so I'm not doing very well in the photo department... (images below have been gleaned from web searches)

We went to Black Hills Regional Park and had a pontoon boat tour of Little Seneca Lake, looking for eagles, beavers, and other signs of nature.

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In September we visited the Clara Barton House, in Glen Echo, MD. I have lived nearby most of my life, but this is the first time I visited.
Clara Barton House, Glen Echo, MD

I learned that:
• The house was built for Clara Barton and the Red Cross in the early 1900s and given for FREE by the developers of Glen Echo, who were seeking a celebrity to live at their new development in the hopes of attracting tourists.
• The "Angel of the Battlefield", also known for her services during the Civil War, was actually not a nurse, but a college graduated teacher and Civil Servant to the U.S. Patent Office. (She was the first woman ever to hold a clerkship with the federal government.)
• The Red Cross existed before Clara Barton. After the Civil War, Clara Barton was a speaker and traveled speaking for awhile, but had a breakdown (mental and exhaustion). Her doctor advised a trip to Europe. While there the Franco Prussian War broke out, and again she served as an angel of mercy on the battlefield. While there she learned of the Red Cross organization in Switzerland.
• After the Franco Prussian War, Clara Barton returned to America and founded the American Red Corss, and the first major relief effort of the Red Cross was helping after the Johnstown Flood of 1889.
• One of the first disasters the Red Cross (which Clara Barton founded) responded to was a devastating hurricane's aftermath in Galveston, TX in 1900.

Clara Barton was born Christmas Day, 1821 and died April 12, 1912

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Calvert Marine Museum; Drum Point Screw Pile Lighthouse

In October we went to the Calvert Marine Museum on Solomon's Island in southern Maryland.

We had a behind-the-scenes tour. I finally know the differences between a "skate" and a "ray".

We climbed the Drum Point Lighthouse. The "shed" on the outside of the deck was an "automatic flush toilet" (translated -- an outhouse where the refuse went straight into the sea...) in the days of its use.

And, one of the highlights of the field trip was the particularly high tide. The water was coming up onto land through a sewer grate, and the pool of water we found in the yard by the water's edge was teaming with minnows, which was really cool. JD had to get in and try to catch one. He failed, but had fun trying.