Damon was able to get a long weekend of leave as our last long trip before the baby came. We decided to go down to Virginia to spend the weekend at the Massanutten Resort where they have ski slopes and also an indoor water park. Owen absolutely loved the water park. We spent a full six hours at the park where Owen was moving constantly. He even loved going down the big slides. Damon would take him up to the top and then I would catch him at the bottom. The water wasn't exactly warm, but we got him a life jacket as an extra insulating layer and then there was a warmer pool that we could take kiddos into where Damon and Owen would warm up. To say the least, he slept wonderfully that night.
We made two stops in my NPS stamp quest over the weekend. I got five stamps from Cedar Creek and Belle Grove Historic Park and one from Booker T. Washington Monument.
The Cedar Creek and Belle Grove Historic Park is another one of the many Civil War sites in the DC area. Civil war battles are difficult to summarize because you want to cheer for both sides. I had family that fought on both sides of the war. The battle of Cedar Creek took place on October 19, 1864 and is considered an Union victory. At the conclusion of this battle, the final Confederate invasion of the North was effectively ended. The Confederacy was never again able to threaten Washington, D.C. through the Shenandoah Valley, nor protect one of its key economic bases in Virginia. The stunning Union victory aided the reelection of Abraham Lincoln and won Sheridan lasting fame.
Since Owen was grumpy about trying skiing, he and I took the day and drove down to the Booker T. Washington National Monument in central Virginia. Booker T. Washington was born in 1856 into slavery on a tobacco farm. With the 1865 Emancipation Proclamation he was now freed along with his mother where they went to join his stepfather in West Virginia. He was a very hard working young man and found as many ways as possible to try to get an education. When he was 16 he travelled 500 miles to enroll at the Hampton Institute, a new school for black students. He stays at Hampton as an instructor in 1879. His most notable accomplishment was founding the secondary school for blacks in Tuskegee, Alabama. He was very outspoken for civil rights but to do so through education.
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