By Grace We Build

Another fun field trip today.  Jacob finished classes yesterday, so we took one last (I think) family trip here in Louisville.  We went to the Falls of the Ohio.  This is the place from which Lewis and Clark set off to head out west.  George Rogers Clark, founder of Louisville, lived here, and Audubon stayed here to study the wildlife of the Ohio.

Mainly, though, this area is visited to see fossils in abundance which lie in the rocks on the fossil cliffs and the Ohio River bed.

Today we are thanking God for rotten walnuts!  As we were standing outside the visitor center, a staff woman came outside to throw away rotten walnuts, and she asked us where we were from.  That led to conversation, and when she heard we were going to go down to the river bed to look for fossils, she offered to find an interpreter for us who could lead us around and teach us about the fossils.  So we were introduced to Dale, who served as our personal guide for the morning.  He began by teaching us all about the fossils in the area.

Then he walked us around the fossils cliffs and down toward the river bed where he showed us some of the bigger fossils and helped us search for other ones.  

Isaac was pretty good at finding “Cheerios,” a certain type of fossil.  He is spraying them with water because that helps to make some of them easier to see.We are thankful for all of the field trips we were able to go on while here in Louisville, and so very glad that Daddy could go along today.  Oh, and it didn’t hurt that it was free!!

I wish I had pictures of this field trip, but the pictures are on Jake’s camera.  Anyway, we got free kids’ tickets to Squire Boone Caverns in Indiana when the kids completed their summer reading programs at the Louisville Library.  And for once Daddy got to go with us on the trip!

We took a tour of the cave – not quite Mammoth Cave, but still very nice.  In addition, they had little shops that showed a little bit about pioneer life – soapmaker, candlemaker, a grist mill, and a gem mining place.  Each shop offered a small activity that the kids could do for $1, but we opted not to do.

One nice thing they offered is a scavenger hunt which helps to keep the kids engaged as they go around the pioneer shops.  They had to learn the answer to a question at each shop, and once completed, they each received a bag of 6 sticks of rock candy.  That is 30 sticks of rock candy!  That will take us a while!

Aunt Kelly is here for a visit over the Fourth of July, and we took her to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington.  Another great field trip!

There was a great kids barn with lots of activities to teach about things such as the various saddles, grooming tools, care of horses, etc.  There were also a couple of neat shows – one where we got to meet famous race horses, like Funny Cide, and one where we got to see and learn about various horse breeds.  There was also a museum about the history of the horse, and that was interesting because it hit on so many things we have studied in history and in a horse unit we did this year.

These chairs were at some point park of a horse jumping contest.  

These barrels each have a different kind of saddle – western, english, bareback, and I don’t know the fourth.  Rachel must be the navigator!

There were so many different kinds of horses – Morgan, American Saddlebred, Fresian, Shire Sport, Gypsy Vanner, Thoroughbred, etc.  And we could pet almost all of them.