When I was looking up the park on the website the day before, there was a bunch of information about satellite parking and shuttle buses for the expected crowds, so I was expecting mobs of people. When we arrived on the 4th, we saw cars in the satellite parking lots even though the buses weren't scheduled to start running for another half hour. Hoo boy ... But Magnolia was in the backseat squalling that she had to pee, so I figured we'd run up the hill to the front gate and drop her off with Grandma, and if I had to drive back down to the satellite parking, so be it. When we got up to the main parking lot, however, it was practically empty - everyone was down the hill! HA HA HA! We got an awesome parking spot right at the front, in the shade, so we could leave our lunch in the van and not have to haul it around all day!
We figured we'd start with the house tour before the line built up, and that was the right choice for us. We were only able to see the first floor (all the rest of the year, you can go through the entire house), but that gave us a good idea. I loved the main family room with all kinds of artifacts from TR's travels.
While we were waiting to go into the house, a couple of Rangers came around the corner and asked our girls if they'd like to raise the flag for the day ... heck yeah! It took three of them to carry it. It was HUGE.
To give a better idea of the proportion of the size of the flag compared to the people.
After the flag and house tour, we went down the lawn to where the kids were able to line up for horse rides and pet a bunch of farm animals - sheep, goats, and chickens. There are no animals there now - these were brought in for the day - but TR had an excellent working farm back in the day.
There was a tent with a bunch of arts and crafts. After we ate lunch, we descended on them and our girls wouldn't leave until they'd done them ALL. There were coloring pages and puppets of farm animals, a paper bag puppet of a bear, and some other things. I don't even know what all, but we came home with a lot of paper! The favorite was the Teddy Roosevelt mask. Looks just like him, right?!?
The highlight of the day was a Theodore Roosevelt actor giving one of the TR Independence Day speeches from the front porch, just like he did during his life. There was also a local concert band and choir playing/singing patriotic music. It was about as Independence Day-ish as you can get without seeing fireworks - I enjoyed it!
Then it was over to the horse field to watch Rough Rider training exercises, and Magnolia even got to try to hold the sword. It was heavy! I know everything is heavy when you're 4, but still.
There's another house on the property - it was TR's oldest son's home, and it's been turned into an actual museum. We also went through the displays there and did a scavenger hunt for information. At the end of the day, we headed back to the Ranger station to get the Junior Ranger books signed and get the badges. In the morning, when we were told that there were two badges to earn, one of the Rangers commented that they were short on badges to hand out. When we got back, she came out of the office - "I could tell these girls were going to follow through, so I went and got more badges." That totally made my day.
Posy and Birdie getting "sworn in" as Junior Rangers. (Sunny was sworn in a few years ago at Gulf Shores in Florida.)
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