Adventure #71: Valley Forge

"Naked and starving as they are
We cannot enough admire
The incomparable Patience and Fidelity
of the Soldiery."
- George Washington at Valley Forge

May 12, 2016

As Jordan's classes have started to wind down, we have had more time to do things as a family. One particularly free day Jordan took us to Valley Forge. It was only about 40 minutes away and boy, was it so beautiful in that area. We went to the small museum first (which I forgot to take pictures there!), and then we headed out to the fields.

It was so green and it just seemed to go on forever. I keep finding it amazing that at places where such hard and terrible things happened, it is now beautiful and peaceful. Pictures do it no justice either. We didn't know much about Valley Forge before visiting, but we know and appreciate it all now.

They have some replicas of the cabins the Continental Army stayed in during the Revolutionary War.

Jordan even had to duck to step inside one of the cabins.

And this was the best picture of all three of us...  lol

I had no idea Valley Forge was such a huge area. It's impossible to walk around and see everything. They have specific driving routes so you won't get lost.... which we still did a few times. I think that being completely surrounded by the replicas, monuments, and actual artifacts, and not being able to see anything else, made it feel like we went back in time.  

One place we stopped for a while was at the National Memorial Arch. It's on top of a hill and just pops out above the surrounding trees. 

There were beautiful wild flowers there and Maria was wearing yellow... so we couldn't resist taking some pictures. She did not enjoy sitting on the grass, but she did enjoy playing with the flowers.

There weren't very many people at Valley Forge the whole time we were there, but luckily, we ran into some people at the Arch who took our picture.

We just thought every part of this arch was beautiful.

As we read the inscriptions, Maria wanted to touch them. 

As we drove around we saw smaller monuments for each colony represented in the Continental Army. This was for Virginia, so we had to snap a picture. :)