Fort Ticonderoga

Since we were staying in Ticonderoga for the wedding, we decided to visit Fort Ticonderoga.  I was picturing it as being in ruins like the ones we had just seen.  But the fort is restored and like a living museum and has a gift store and café.  They had people dressed in period clothes and doing activities of the time period.

Inside some of the buildings were museum-like displays and one building had a new gallery with paintings and maps.

Detail on a cannon.

An old sundial.

Photo credit: Frank Ross

Photo credit: Frank Ross

The King's Garden.

Crown Point State Historic Site

On our trip, we drove from Burlington, VT to Ticonderoga, NY where we were staying for the family wedding.  On the way, we stopped at Crown Point State Historic Site (NY).

This was the site of two different forts.  Fort St. Frederic was built from 1734 to 1737.  It was built and occupied by the French.  According to one of the informational signs, it was "hastily evacuated upon the advance of the British army in 1759."  The French blew up the fort when they left rather than letting the British take it over.

After the British arrived, they began building one of the biggest forts in North America.  In 1773, an accidental fire destroyed the fort and left it in ruins as well.

We walked around the ruins of both forts.  They are right next to each other.  There is also a small museum on the site but when we realized it, it was too late as they were closing up.

Crown Point is at the very southern tip of Lake Champlain.  Here's Anna just before she slipped and fell in the water (with her iPod in hand, which somehow is still working).

Frank has put some more pictures of the forts and our entire trip on our family website.  But don't worry, I will continue sharing some with you here.  Next stop: Fort Ticonderoga.

Oregon Grapes

I will be posting more of our trip pictures in the coming days. But today I wanted to show you what I did this weekend.  It was my first attempt at making Oregon Grape jelly.  We have an Oregon Grape plant that was here when we moved in.  There are now several more plants around the yard that spread naturally.

Right now they have bluish purple berries on them.  The berries are edible but very tart.  We never thought about doing anything with them until a friend said that people make jelly with them. Frank wants to take out of couple of the extra plants but I told him to wait until after the berries are ready so we could make jelly.

The berries are small and have seeds (kind of like our serviceberries).  We have a bumper crop this year.  Here they are ready to cook.

I looked up online how to make the jelly.  You boil and eventually mash the berries.  Then you strain the juice out and that's what you use for the jelly.

I thought it was interesting that they changed color as they started to heat up.

When I was looking up recipes, I found out that I could also use them as a dye for fabric.  Since we had so many of them,  I decided to try that, too.  

I have not done any natural dyeing before.  Once again, I had to look up info. on the internet.  The process is a bit different than the chemical dye process that I normally do.

Here is what the fabric looked like in the berry dye.  It was a pretty burgundy, rose-like color.

But what was surprising was that when the process was completed and the fabric washed out. They were a light lavender color.

From left to right: The cheese cloth I used to strain the berries, a white piece of fabric, an off-white piece of fabric and a piece of fabric that was already a pale yellow.  

They are very subtle changes and hard to see in the photo ( and probably a little bit lighter in color than what shows in the photo).

I had read that if you let the berries sit over night in the liquid that you would get a stronger dye. So, I let some sit over night.  

The next day I died a pale blue piece of fabric (on left side) and another white piece.  These look darker in the picture but they really are very similar to the first batch.  So, leaving it overnight didn't make much difference.

You can also use the roots of the plant to dye a yellow color.  When Frank digs up the plants, I'll think about trying to use the roots for dye.

It was an interesting experiment and I might try some more natural dyeing sometime in the future. But I will stick to the chemical procion dyes to get my wide range of colored fabrics.

A Trip East

We spent most of our Fourth of July day on airplanes and in airports (we were suppose to be doing that on the 3rd) returning home.  Another family wedding took us to upstate New York and the surrounding area.  Our flights were in and out of Burlington, Vermont.

This gave Anna the opportunity to see the University of Vermont, which is also Frank's alma mater. As with any campus over time, some things had changed and some had stayed the same.

Here is Anna and Frank by Pam's Deli truck.  Frank said that Pam's truck was around when he went to school there (23 years ago).  Pam said that she had been in business for 30 years and that this was her second truck (but it was painted like the first).

I visited Frank a few times while we were in school and these red brick buildings were the ones that I remembered most.

Another building I did remember was this one that Anna and Frank are standing in front of.  It is Converse Hall and Frank lived here for some of his time in school.  It is known as the castle.

The UVM mascot is a catamount.

This gal was creating some summer chalk art on campus.

Frank had not been back to UVM for many years.  I think he enjoyed his trip down memory lane and showing Anna were he went to school.

Virginia

I promise this will be the last you see of our trip to Virginia.  Here are some random photos.

We made a stop by Virginia Tech, alma mater of Anna's paternal grandfather and her Aunt Mary. Most of the buildings are made of stone.

Chandelier in one of the buildings.

Anna and Frank on campus.

We also visited Old Salem and shared a giant creme-filled cookie!

This last picture is from inside the art museum at University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  We had some time to kill before our flight and went to see some art.  Just after the end of school is not a good time to visit as they were changing out most of the exhibits.  We did see some things, but probably only about half of the space.  We had the same problem at UVA.

Monticello

Another thing we did while in Virginia was visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson.  You have to go on a guided tour to go inside the house.  Then, you only see the main level and not the upstairs.  No pictures were allowed inside the house.  Therefore, all I have to share is on the outside.

From the front, it appears to be just one level because of how they did the windows and other elements.  But there are two.

Front entrance.

Going through the inside of the house, it was interesting to hear about some of Thomas Jefferson's inventions.  A big lover of books, he created a rotating stand that could hold five books, so that he could be reading more than one at a time.

View from the back.

A small desk was pointed out to us that was used for home schooling.  We were told Jefferson believed that girls should receive an education and his daughters were home schooled.  Here is a link that explains a little more about his views of females, education and his daughters.

Underneath the house was a basement area with different storage areas, a wine cellar and a beer cellar and the kitchen.

A view down the basement corridor.

The inside of the house was interesting but what I enjoyed more was the outside.  Not particularly the house, but the surrounding landscape.  

Monticello sits atop a hill and has great views.  The landscaping around the house is nice and I especially liked the big, long garden which was used to help feed all the slaves at the time.  It sounded like they tried to be as self sufficient as possible on the plantation.  

When the supply of imported cloth was cut off, Jefferson brought in an artisan to build textile machinery and to train the slaves to make cloth.  This was used to clothe the slaves.

A nice view.

View from the structure in the garden.

Some of the garden.

We were fortunate to have nice morning weather for our visit. 

University of Virginia

Anna will be a junior in high school this fall.  So while we were in Virginia, we decided to visit some colleges/universities so she could start getting an idea of what she might like in choosing a school.

One of the places we visited was the University of Virginia.  It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson.  Of course, there were old historic buildings.  What we saw of the campus was very nice.

We went into the rotunda building.  

Here's Anna with Mr. Jefferson . . .

. . . and in the lecture hall.

On the upper level they had a display of old books.  They were ordered by dates and descriptions were given of the typical characteristics of books from that time.

They were all behind glass and therefore, have some reflections on them.  I did not take the time to note the dates of each book.  What I love about the old books are the cover illustrations and the texture on the covers (some of them are embossed, stamped or have cloth covers).

With our electronic readers, we just don't get the tactile pleasure of holding the physical book.  But we do save some trees.  I guess there is always a trade off.