50 Gun Salute

When the paper mentions a 50 gun salute to celebrate the 4th of July of course we have to go.  Fort Monroe has been having this celebration since there was only 26 states and it was a 26 gun salute.  It was pretty cool and very loud.  We loved hearing the echo's for the next 20 minutes after it was all over.

 Did I mention it was loud.

 This is looking out over the water towards Fort Wool (with the flag)   Someday we will have to go visit Fort Wool, it is where Andrew Jackson spent his summers while he was president.  It is an island and would have been beautiful before they built the Bridge-Tunnel that now runs about 50 feet away.

 Fort Monroe is an old fort with a moat, and there is a Casemate museum about the rooms built into the earthen walls.  This is the pedestrian tunnel through the embankment and out over the moat.  This is where Jefferson Davis was imprisoned after the "War of Northern Aggression" (can't you tell I am learning my southern history.)  The museum was not intended for kids, but they still thought it was cool, and my geeky engineering side came out as I checked out how it was built, very cool for me.

Parade of Sail

Harborfest was this weekend. It is a huge festival with tall ships and lots of music and pirates and cornhole and dog competitions.... It is usually very hot and a lot of people. Not the best environment for small kids. This year, I decided to take the kids to the parade of sail. It is on Friday afternoon, so not too busy. We parked across the river and took the ferry boat. (Buddy's favorite part) Then we wandered around, got some ice cream and watched the boats. There was firefighter ships and tall ships, and sail boats, a camouflage army boat, a police boat and even one big Navy ship. It was still hot, and we drank lots of water. Both Camelback were empty by the time we got back to the van. Good thing I had more water in the van.