Field Trip To Point Lookout

 I was sitting at breakfast with Cris on Monday morning, getting caught up on each other's lives, and I glanced out the window at the beautiful sky. 

"Let's go get the girls and take them on a field trip!" I suggested impulsively. 

We've been trying to get the girls out for more educational activities lately, so we did a quick mental run-down of where we could go that would be educational but accessible (as we had a limited amount of time). I'd never been to Point Lookout State Park, and it had been awhile for Cris, so off we went.

We started off at the Point Lookout Confederate Cemetery and walked around for awhile, examining the obelisks and talking about the information displayed there.

Then we went around the corner to the Confederate Memorial Park.

 

 

This is one of my favorite local sites, as it tells the story of the soldiers largely through their own words - excerpts from diaries, letters, etc.

 

 

We all spent some time wandering from plaque to plaque, calling out information that we found interesting, and reading each engraving.

Then we drove into Point Lookout State Park.

   

First of all, the park is really gorgeous! I'm ashamed to say that though I have lived in this county almost my entire life (I'm a happy, self-proclaimed SMIB),  I had never been to Point Lookout before. And we spent just enough to time there for me to realize that I will need to return many, many times in the future. :) The water views alone are stunning!

We hiked a bit from the closest parking lot to go see the historical sites - reproductions of the wall surrounding the prison camp, and the recreation of the guard's bunkhouses.

I kid you not, when we walked into the main bunkhouse, I had to laugh and exclaim "It's Hogan's Heroes!" :)

  

We read that the guards slept two to a bunk, so the girls climbed in to give it a try. :)

 

And they did some climbing in the bunkbeds, too. (Did I mention we were dragging poor Scout along, too? lol)

 

 

We stayed quite a bit later than we intended, and realized we had to scramble to make it back in time, so we took a shortcut... we thought. Turns out it was a literal scramble along the seawall, over a few hundred feet of riprap, through the marsh, etc before we made it back to the parking lot. I was truly terrified one of us was going to step on a snake. 

 

 

But we made it back to the parking lot just in time for Cris and Dari to zip off (hopefully just in time!).

 

Seaglass and rocks I picked up along the beach.

All in all, it was a great trip, and I look forward to going again, hopefully getting to spend more time exploring and enjoying the beach. :)