Ham and Potato Soup

I may have done a post on ham and potato soup before. It is what I like to do with my ham leftovers after Christmas. I don't have a recipe for this so wanted to make sure I wrote it down while it was fresh in my mind. By now even the ham and potato soup is almost gone as Michelle and I loved it. Usually I do it in the crock pot but I didn't have time enough for that this time as I wanted it for supper one night so I cooked it in my cast iron pot. I think it was much better this time and will likely give up the crock pot entirely for this recipe.

Leftover ham
Potatoes, peeled and diced
2 tsp. diced garlic
salt and pepper

Put it in the pot with enough water to just cover. Boil until the potatoes are done through, turn the heat down until it is just simmering. Add some butter. I believe I added about a 1/4 cup. Add milk. I really don't know how much milk I added maybe a cup, just enough to turn the soup white. Then thicken the soup with a mixture of water and flour. I usually take a small coffee mug, fill it half and half, then whip it with a fork until all the lumps are out. Slowly pour it into the soup while stirring. Cook a bit longer.

Taste, add more salt and pepper as needed.

Violin Playing Videos

I have now almost reached a year of taking violin lessons. Phil took a few videos while I was practicing today from his phone and I got them uploaded tonight. Merry Christmas everyone. I hope to have better videos next year.

This first one is Rosin, the Beau (Ireland) or Acres of Clams (US)

This one is Ashokan Farewell

The Dust Collectors

We live on a dirt road so everything collects dust. I don't like to dust, very seldom ever have time for it, so it...collects. My kerosene lamp collection sits on the entertainment center in the living room. So far it has been safe there from the cats (though the knick-knacks on the shelf below them...were not); they have not been safe from the dust. So today's job was to dust the entertainment center which meant taking all the lamps down, washing the shades and then washing the bases.
I have to admit though, they are much prettier when they are all shiny though you might not be able to tell from my phone picture (plus it is a dreary raining dark day).

There are seven lamps, a crystal candle holder and one odd oil burner thing up on top, though you can't see the ones in the back and there are actually four more lamps on the shelves below (sorry, someday I will get a new camera).

All of the lamps are usable though the small ones are not exactly major light producing. The larger lamps have often come in handy during power outages though I don't know how much we will need them now that we have a generator but you never know, generators all run out of gas eventually.

Maybe tomorrow I will move on to the dust collectors in the kitchen which happen to be all chickens. I decorated my kitchen with chickens and my sister has never gotten over it. She give me heaps of chicken stuff every year which I have no idea what to do with, consequently there are chicken dust collectors all over the kitchen.

M&M Cookie Day

It is a cookie day for us today. We made the M&M ones. We got lazy and saved the chocolate chip ones for tomorrow. I used to make peanut butter, and oatmeal ones too but since I have to cut back on my sugar and we really don't need all those cookies for three of us this year, I think we will stop at just two kinds. The M&M cookies filled my big cookie jar as it is and I don't know what we will do with the chocolate chip ones if they don't fit in the little jar that I have left (someone will just have to eat more!).

I have next week off. There are actually a couple of trainings that I could go to but since they don't ever have any kind of training that has to do with my job as the membership clerk, I see no reason to go. It feels so nice to have a week off. I always feel like being home is my "normal" and being at work is the "abnormal" for some reason.
My plans are to clean this house some and try to declutter a bit.....but we'll just see. It seems like a week goes by so very fast.

A Wood Burned Gift

I haven't wood burned anything in a really long time but to me it is just like drawing. It is something I never seem to lose the ability to do. So today I wood burned a gift for Phil's mother for Christmas. We didn't want to get her the same jewelry or gift set present that we always get  her and when I saw a little bird feeder in the craft section of the store, I knew I wanted to wood burn it and make it pretty and that would be her gift. I drew the design on it today and sat down to wood burn. It took me about two hours (my hips are so bad, I thought I wasn't going to get back standing straight again afterwards!). I think it turned out rather nice.

And yes, I really hate leaves now :)

Chickens!

As you all may remember (or not, since I have been real slow posting) my chickens this year have been duds. I never have gotten so few eggs in a year from any chickens I have had before. I wanted some more but you can't get chicks here at Tractor Supply until spring and I wasn't sure I wanted to do the whole brood the chicks thing next year. So I have been keeping my eye out in the paper, on Craigslist, and the facebook sale things for our town for any chickens. Then yesterday as I was coming home from my violin lesson there was a sign that said "Chickens 4 Sale". It was just down the main road maybe a mile across the bridge (that goes over the lake) from us. So I made Phil go back with me but the guy was asleep and he wasn't waking up (and there was a pistol on the floor by the couch so Phil decided we wouldn't startle him awake, ha ha). Anyway, today it was raining and raining and raining. It never rains like this here, all day. But it is a light rain today so we went anyway.
The guy has all kinds of cages with chickens (yes, my type of person) but he was selling some young Buckeye chickens. The Buckeye is a breed of chicken created by a woman in Ohio and the name Buckeye is derived from the Ohio nickname "The Buckeye State". They are a dual purpose chicken with decent laying ability and are also fairly good as a meat bird. They are yellow skinned and lay brown eggs.

Here is a bit from Wikipedia:

The Buckeye was first bred and developed in 1896, by a Warren, Ohio resident named Nettie Metcalf.^[6] They are the only American breed of chicken known to have been developed by a woman, despite the fact that women were customarily given charge of the household poultry flock throughout much of U.S. history.^[7] Metcalf crossbred Barred Plymouth Rocks, Buff Cochins, and some black breasted red games to produce the Buckeye. Her goal was a functional breed that could produce well in the bitter Midwest winters. Contrary to popular belief the Buckeye breed was created before the Rhode Island Red breed and actually sent birds to the RIR breeders for them to improve their breed.^[8]

The Buckeye was admitted to the American Poultry Association's Standard of Perfection in 1904.^[9] Entrance into the Standard of Perfection signifies official certification as a breed by the Association, and thus allows Buckeyes to be entered into poultry shows and judged according to the breed standard (as outlined in the Standard of Perfection).

The recognition of Buckeyes in the Standard has been a significant factor in its survival.^[6] In the past, largely due its lack of color variations, the Buckeye has not been an especially popular exhibition breed, but there is growing interest in the exhibition poultry fancy for this dual-purpose, heritage variety of bird. Not adopted by commercial operations, the Buckeye has generally been a bird of smaller farm flocks. Today the breed status is listed as threatened by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy,^[10] threatened being defined as Threatened: Fewer than 1,000 breeding birds in the United States, with seven or fewer primary breeding flocks, and estimated global population less than 5,000.^[11] The breed is also included in the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste, a catalog of heritage foods in danger of extinction.^[12]

Mine are not all that noble looking in the rain today. They are small but I think they are just pullets (young birds) and are wet and a bit starved but I think they will do fine with proper care and food. 

Not a good picture either but it was still raining and my phone wouldn't take a picture because I never charge it anymore (cause I never use it!) so Phil took the picture with his while they were still in the cage. I'll get a better one when it is dry out. 

I got 7 chickens that I think are hens for $7 each which is too much but I wanted some and wanted to get a few for my brother who now has a place where he can keep them and has been wanting some for a while. So three of them will be going to him. I hope they lay better than my current bunch or at least inspire the current bunch to lay more. Right now they are being housed in the old duck pen. I'll let them get used to seeing each other a bit before I put them in together. 

What is a turkey fryer?

Here is what our turkey fryer looks like. This isn't ours, of course, but this is exactly what we have.

I got this picture here.

The thing with the star on the bottom is what you put through your turkey so you can lift it in and out. There is a hook thing over by the leg, you hook it to the hook on the top of the star thing which will be coming out the neck (or butt, I can't remember) and you can lift  in and out the turkey.  You hook up your gas grill propane tank to the fryer. Then you basically put peanut oil in the fryer (I believe there is a line that tells you how far up to start with but you then have to be careful because larger turkey's will need less oil). You can adjust the flame on the it, you heat it to a certain temperature and put the turkey in and then cook it for the recommended time according to how many pounds your turkey it. This is an OUTDOOR toy only!!! Cause that is a whole lot of hot peanut oil in there. This is probably why this is a Southern thing as it usually isn't so cold here that the guys don't mind sitting outside watching the temperature on it.
I will say that when I first heard about it I thought that there is no way this could taste as good as a turkey cooked in the oven but I can tell you now that a fried turkey is the best turkey I ever had. It is just so moist and good.
This, however, is not a toy that idiots can play with. If you go to Youtube you can see all sorts of videos of turkey frying gone wrong mostly from people putting too much oil in and it overflowing when you put the turkey in and catching on fire. You are better off having too little oil than too much and that turkey needs to be dried off as much as possible before you put it in to prevent the oil from foaming over.
Ok, thanks everyone for giving me the idea for this post. I had no idea that some people had never seen a turkey fryer.

Brrrrrrrrrr!

It is really chilly here! We don't usually get this cold until January or February...if we get this cold at all. I actually bought a new coat, which is kind of a funny story. I bought this lovely light brown coat with white fleece trim. I liked it a lot until we went to walk the dog the other day and I heard a shot in the woods. Not unusual for this time of year since we live right beside the WMA property. But that shot made me realized that now I looked just like a DEER! Eeeek! I am going to have to make myself a red hat.
Anyway, besides the cold, not much is going on here. I have been practicing hard on my violin because my violin teacher has set us up to play for a nursing home in the area on Dec. 13. The "us" I am referring to are her 4 students. Myself who has been studying with her for a year, a 12 year old girl who has been studying for 6 months, a young man who has been with her about a month and the 12 year old's older sister (maybe 14 years) who has been with her for 2 weeks. Yeah...you are thinking the same thing I am...that we are going to be really bad at this and we have had one practice together and we are definitely not sounding good. We have several weeks until the 13th but we only have two more practice times together. Plus we are not just playing the melody but 3 of the songs will have three different parts which we play all together (ugg!). We are to play, Jingle Bells, Jolly Old St. Nicholas, Silent Night (those are the three with the three parts)then we are to play Joy to the World together and then she and I will play Up on the Housetop and then we each have a solo piece. I will be playing I'll Be Home for Christmas. I am pretty nervous about it as I tend to mess up even when I play just for my teacher but it will be good experience I suppose though I would rather just have kept studying several Christmas songs that I wanted to play for my family.
Other than that work has been a absolute horror lately up until this week. I now just take it one day at a time and get through it and close my eyes to how bad things are. I need the job too badly to leave it right now.
There are other good things going on though:

 I started a new blog called The New Violinist. I think I will enjoy writing about my experiences learning to play the violin.

Thanksgiving is coming! We'll have our regular one at home and then on the weekend our family will get together at my brothers and we'll bring Phil's turkey fryer and fry a turkey....so good! I hope it is warmer that weekend! Maybe I'll remember to take pictures for you all and you'll get a second post this month!

Frog Legs

Spring in New Hampshire is an awesome, nasty, sloppy mess especially if you live in the woods, half way up a mountain. Spring was also noisy. Yes, noisy. You would not believe how noisy it could be. The mud that made our dirt driveway impassable (the truck sat stuck in it for weeks) did not make any noise. The leaves sprouting on the poplar trees that surrounded the house made no noise. Neither did the small patches of leftover melting snow. The noise was from the FROGS!
That small ditch pond we so happily skated on through the winter was now the mating and nesting grounds of thousands of frogs. You would never have guessed such a small pond (maybe 30 ft x 20 ft) could produce such sound but it did every spring.
It was impossible not to hear then. It was a loud, steady drone the whole day through. I had walked down and seen that the pond was covered in frogs but I didn't know that my father had taken notice as well. He never mentioned it and he didn't walk down there to check them out like I did. Just one day he took his pole. This caught mine and my brother's attention immediately. I was a girl but I was such a tomboy and I loved fishing. However, my father didn't take bait. He went to the ragbag where we kept the leftover fabric scraps and got a small piece of red felt. He didn't tell us what he was doing but we got poles and followed him as he knew we would. My father wasn't a secretive person but he liked to surprise us and I think he believed in teaching by example.
Once we were down by the pond you couldn't hear to talk anyway. That was how much noise those frogs made. We watched him cut off a very small square from the red felt, put it on his hook, dangle it in front of a frogs face, and SNAP! a second later the frog had snapped it up and he was caught. My father hit its head on a stone from an old stone wall bordering one side of the pond and put it in a plastic bag he had also brought.
Both my brother and myself asked for a bit of red felt and we were off catching frogs. Oh we knew they were for eating, we had had frog legs once before but one frog set of frog legs does not make much of a meal. We were out there for hours, my father went in before we did but we kept catching frogs. We caught 47 the first day and went out again the next day and caught 54. This didn't even make a dent in the frog population or noise level of our little pond.
My father cut and skinned the frog legs and put them in a cast iron frying pan. Then quickly slapped the lid on it. He then lifted it a bit and showed us how the frog leg reflexes would make the legs jump if he didn't have the lid on and they did, they jumped like they were still a attached to the frog!
We, my brother, my father and I, happily ate the frog legs after they were cooked (yes, they taste quite a bit like chicken) though my mother and sister thought it was gross and would not eat any.

How to Shop

I had a friend who once told me that she never learned how to shop. What she meant was she didn't know how to "bargain shop". She said she went to one grocery store and just bought what they had. This was kind of amazing to me. It never occurred to me that people didn't watch the sales and shop accordingly.
I was quite pleased when I moved here to find that there were 4 large grocery stores in town to choose from (we only have 3 now) and they are all no more than a mile from each other. It didn't take long to establish  'what to buy where'. This has changed some over the years but I still know what is mostly on sale now at each of the stores.
One of the stores is my favorite for meat. It always has a good selection and if you get there early enough...but not too early, you can go through the marked down meat and get some good deals. The other store has all the buy 1 get 1 free sales and it also has the fuel perks. The last store is Wal-mart, it is where I get most of my boxed and canned stuff because it is always cheaper there.
What also amazed me about my friend was that she didn't buy the marked down stuff saying she didn't know what was still "good".  You have eaten food all your life and you don't know what is good? Smell it! Touch it! Look it over good! If it looks good and smells good it probably is good as far as meat and fresh vegetables go. If it is in a can, it is likely still good anyway.
Also think about what you can use it for. If it is a really good deal but you don't usually buy it, think of what you could use it for. For instance, this week one store had these small rolls of turkey marked down.

This part of a roll was only $2.11.  It was too good of a deal to pass up so I had to think of what to use it for. I felt I could slice it and use it for sandwich meat or I could dice it in cubes and put it in a casserole or quiche. I bought 4 of them. I sliced one today.

Sorry about the phone picture but this package is only a third of what I sliced up. We will have plenty of sandwich meat for a while and meat for several dinner meals...and they were $2.11 each! (Yes, I will post when I make other meals from it).
I always buy extra of a good deal. Last year at Christmas the turkeys were so cheap that I couldn't resist and bought four of them. Two of them are still in the freezer and will be used this year at Christmas and Thanksgiving. It is one less thing during the holidays that I will have to worry about this year.
Also keep in mind that the larger grocery stores aren't the only place to shop. I go to the next town over every week for violin lessons and I often stop in their little Family Dollar Store because they have the treats my dogs like in there at a really good price and since the store is right there on my way it doesn't cost me any extra gas.

Of course, your garden is the best place to shop. These are probably the last of the peppers picked from my pots the other day.

I don't use hot peppers very much (unless I have a lot of them to make hot pepper relish with) but I will cut them up and freeze them so that I can use a little of them here or there.

Anyway, happy shopping and keep looking for those bargains!

Yeast!

I swear it is not the same as it used to be. I used to make bread and it would rise up out of the pan and swell over it like bread is supposed to but it never does it now. I am trying to make bread today and used two "rapid rise yeast" and it is SO slow and will probably just barely get over the pan rim. Maybe I am more impatient than I used to be? I think that is unlikely. I know what you are all going to say that sourdough is better and I liked it when I had a sourdough but it never rose over the rim either and I did not use it enough to keep it going well. I am going to wait longer for it to rise although I wanted to have it with dinner. Maybe I can get it over the rim eventually.

Baked Ziti

Or in our case baked macaroni since I had no Ziti yesterday. I had gone to my brother's house on Tuesday to visit and my sister-in-law fed us this for lunch. It always seems funny to me that I probably have several cookbooks with Baked Ziti recipes in them but I almost never try anything new from a cookbook. For some reason I have to see the recipe in person which is what happened with this one. It was SO good! So she told me what she had put in it and I made it for us the next day...except I didn't have any ziti and substituted the macaroni for it. Pasta is pasta.
So anyway, wanted to write the recipe down so I would always have it.

Baked Ziti

1 box ziti or other pasta
Peppers- I have a bag in the freezer that has cut up peppers all different colors in it and I used a handful of these.
Onion- I used a half of a medium onion
1 can of spaghetti sauce
Parmesan cheese (the grated kind)
Mozzarela or other shredded cheese (8 oz bag)
Italian seasoning
1 1/2 lbs hamburger

Cook the pasta, Meanwhile cook the hamburger, onions and peppers in a frying pan. Sprinkle generously with Italian seasoning while cooking. Drain grease, add spaghetti sauce. Cook the sauce on low until pasta is done. Drain pasta. Mix the two together add about a cup of  grated parmesan cheese, add about half your shredded cheese. Put in a 9x13 in. pan. Sprinkle the top with more parmesan cheese and the rest of your shredded. Cook for about a half an hour in an oven on about 375 degrees.

I made this ahead of time and covered it and put it in the frig for Phil to cook when he got home. He had to cook it in the oven a bit longer because it was cold.

Sorry I did not think to take a picture. Everyone had second helpings of this, EVEN MICHELLE!
I know, amazing!

What's in the Bag?

I hesitated to write this one. If you "prep" too much people think you are strange. I can't explain to people that I am not really a "prepper" when I post things like this. I have a "bag" in my car and Phil has one in his truck. It is NOT because we think the world will eventually collapse and we think we might have to "bug out". We really don't believe that but we do have "emergency bags" in our vehicles. This is in case some natural disaster prevents us from getting home and we need to go on foot OR some disaster causes us to spend a couple of days somewhere other than home. Our emergency bags aren't complete however, they are just a work in progress.
My emergency bag is rather small but I have done it keeping in mind the amount that I think I can carry. Even then, it will still be heavy for me. Phil has a much larger bag because he can carry more. I tend to pack a few more medical supplies in mine because I work with over 100 children and I always have the fear that we will have a tornado or something while I am there and any medical supplies at that time may be helpful. I am missing some things and even today I added a few more things that Phil had in his bag that I didn't know about until we were taking these pictures and I wanted them in mine as well.
Here is the bag I keep in my car:

This is from one of the small pockets on the front: Binoculars, hand warmers, and sewing kits. 

Another small pocket on the front: muscle creme, Pepto Bismol, scissors, face masks, bacitracin an some antibiotic pills--amoxicillin, an ace bandage, some lip balm and a bottle of aspirin and the stuff in the zip lock bag which will be in the next picture.

This is just a couple of plastic ponchos, tooth paste, a firestarter and a salt and pepper container that I need to fill.

In the Ziploc bag I have eye drops, another ace bandage, thermometer, thermometer covers, bandages, cleansing pads.

The first large pocket contains: a flashlight, extra batteries for the flashlight, a multi-tool, a knife, matches in a bag, lighters in the bag, q-tips and different cotton balls and pads, extra water filters for the water bottle, glucosamine (because I need it), multi-vitamins, a little first aid kit, 550 cord, glove, an extra quart zip-lock bag and feminine pads.

The next large pocket contains the food, wipes, two sterno cans, a firestarter, duct tape, a head lamp and drink mix. There are two metal bottles of water that didn't make this picture for some reason.

This is the bottle I have strapped on the outside with the iodine pills and the other ones to make the water taste good again ( I really need a larger bag). I eventually would like to have a blanket and tarp strapped here.

This folding shovel and MRE stay in my trunk with the bag because they won't fit in it. 

This is what is strapped on the outside of the bag, an extra knife, some clips and extra rope. 

I did miss one whole pocket in the food section that had Slim Jims, more peanuts and a folding fork/spoon set.

I am now going to move on to Phil's bag but I don't know what everything is in his bag so you will have to figure it out from the pictures. As you can see Phil's bag is bigger than mine.

Just his first pocket has all sorts of stuff. I know there is a whistle, compass, glow stick (I have these in my bag too. I think I lost a picture somewhere...), a map of the area, a mirror, scissors, binoculars, and I don't know what he rest of the stuff is.

 

This is a survival  book, glasses, ponchos, not sure what else the other stuff is exactly.

Here is his gloves, hatchet, headphones, spoon and fork, a pot and folding stove for the Sterno (I bought that for him) and cord. Oh and I think that is a fishing kit. I want one of those in mine!

There is food from an MRE in this one, wipes, muscle rub, antibiotic ointment, Vaseline, towels (those are the round things), hand sanitizer, and I think that is it.

\

Here is some first aid stuff he has in there.

Then he has a pocket for flash lights, knives, knife sharpener, clips and 550 cord.

After looking through Phil's bad to do this post, I added some Moleskin (I had never heard of it) and a 5 in 1 tool I found at Wal-mart that has a waterproof container for matches, a compass, a mirror, whistle and fire starter.  I want to add a blanket and tarp still but other than that, this is probably what I will have in my emergency bag. I can't say that it hasn't come in handy. I have gotten things out of it several times at work. The duct tape has come in handy and so has the thermometer when I had a child who was sick at work and our thermometer's battery had died. I have a work bag too and tools in the car that come in handy all the time. Nothing like being prepared~

Sweet Cornmeal Mush- Crockpot Recipe

Have you ever just made a mistake and stumbled onto something really good? That is what happened here. But first the recipe:

2 quarts of milk
2/3 cups of sugar
1 cup of cornmeal

Cook in the crockpot a 2-3 hours until the cornmeal thickens. Cool and eat! It is so good! And I never would have know if I didn't have my dry milk in the same plastic containers as my cornmeal....because this is the same recipe I used to make yogurt only there is no cornmeal, it needs dry milk....so you see my mistake. I put it all in the frig and I am eating it for breakfasts.

Poor Man's Meal

The idea for this meal came from Clara. If you have never seen Clara and her Meals from the Depression on Youtube you really must go see them. Here is a link to the one I got this recipe from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OPQqH3YlHA
She is a wonderful lady in her 90's with, as you can imagine, lots of cooking experience. The Poor Man's Meal really intrigued me. My version is slightly different because I don't have Clara's sauce to add to it but it was still pretty good (there is a video for Clara's sauce too, I just haven't gotten to it yet).
It is a very basic meal:  potatoes, onions and smoked sausage (Clara used hotdogs). You cut up the potatoes in small chunks, then the sausage into small slices and add a cut up onion. I used a Vidalia onion because I happened to have some Vidalias which are nice and sweet (not all Vidalia onions are, even though they are all supposed to be sweet). You add oil, salt and pepper and fry all of it until the potatoes are done. When I tried it I felt it was a little bland (missing Clara's sauce perhaps) so I added a few sprinklings of hot sauce and thought it was much better. I think next time maybe a chili pepper or some hot pepper flakes? But you could add any spice or herb you want.
Anyway it is a ridiculously cheap meal especially if you have your own potatoes or get some on sale.

Phinizy Swamp Nature Park

Another day trip! But this one was even more special because my oldest son was down to visit. He had a three day weekend and came with his wife to see us! I hadn't seen him since before he went to Afghanistan. He is still in the Army and, of course, doesn't get much time off when he can come.
It was too hot by the time we got going to the swamp and we probably should have just not gone...but we went anyway. It turned out to be 97 degrees today. I hoped that the park would involve too much walking but it was all walking, nothing but trails and we went all the way around it.
Here is the start of the trial and really the most wonderful part. They have these boardwalks right across the swamp at the beginning.

They twist and turn all through it.

We went down to that little covered area first but saw no animals. The foliage is nice though, it looks like small elephant ears all over the swamp but they bloom.

This spider was in one corner of the covered area. Elizabeth (my son's wife) was not real fond of it but we see these black and yellow spiders all the time here.

Then we went on.

The trees with the hanging moss are really spectacular...when you see them in real life anyway.

We saw no otters, or beaver, or alligators like the park boasts about but we did see this big turtle and a couple of baby turtles and we saw a really long snake skin.

I was getting really hot by this time but that bench was in the sun and we had a lot farther to go.

By this time I was SO hot and dying to stop. We got to this covered viewing area and stopped for a little while trying to cool down some. We had been off the boardwalk for a while by now and just walking the trail.

This pond was surrounded by a fence. I am not sure what it was keeping in or out but we only saw the white birds in it. I think they are snowy egrets.

We then went through a very long trail through the woods where we really didn't see anything interesting. I was just glad to be in the shade and trying to get through and back to the car. We ran into one detour at nearly the end where the nice quick trail was "closed" and we had to take the longer one around which really wasn't appreciated at the time. We were all very glad to make it back to the car. I think it was still a nice trip but one I wouldn't want to take again until it is a lot cooler.

The Ocmulgee Indian Mounds and Museum

Today I woke up and started asking Phil, "Where are we going to go today?" I am trying to get us out more to see things. He didn't know and I didn't know so we got online and I found these Indian mounds in Macon, GA. Macon is just a couple hours from us. So we went. The trip was fairly nice until we got to Milledgeville where Phil tried to kill us pulling out of the gas station on the wrong side of the street (there was a grassy divider between the lanes so we ended up on the wrong side of the street...going the wrong way and a truck who was on the right side almost hit us when we got to the intersection.
Other than that one life threatening moment :) the trip was good.
When we got to Ocmulgee State Park we found they also had a really nice museum!

Lots of tools and arrowheads.

And examples of pottery where they took shards and recreated the pots from them.

Some were quite nice.

This showed you what a lodge might have looked like.

Another recreation. This showed the seating the lodge. There are hollowed out place in front of each seat that they really aren't sure what they were used for.

This is a bench with turtle rattles on it. I wish the picture had come out better.

We then went outside to see the real ceremonial mound. It has been reconstructed and only the floor is the original because the structure had been burned sometime in its past possibly when the Indians abandoned it. Here is it from the outside. I mistakenly thought this was all we would have to walk today...I didn't know there were other mounds but this one is the only one you can go inside.

Here we are at the entrance. It took me a couple tries to go in as the walkway in it is real claustrophobic but then they have an air conditioned room and glass around you so you can't actually walk on the original floor.

This is the inside. There is like a bird alter type thing and then the central fire pit.

With seating all around the outside edge of the lodge. The one bowl and shell are the only things they found on the original floor.

And then there were other mounds...WAY over there so we walked, and walked, and walked a whole lot more. It was very hot today! They don't look that big in this picture. But the big one is huge and has these handy steps for you to climb....

There was this pretty bridge to go over too.

One of my rest stops on the way up the mound steps. I wasn't doing so good by now. Heart skipping and not getting in nearly enough air but I was determined to make it to the top.

And here is the view from the very top of the mound. It was nice but I was really too tired to enjoy it. A cooler day might have made this a lot better for me.

We then went back down. I did not think I could walk all the way back through the hills in the sun so we decided to take the road which was more shaded although I think it was quite a bit longer. I made it about 2/3 of the way and they had this nice little bench in the shade and I had to stop by this little railroad bridge. A train went by while we were there.

 Phil went the rest of the way and got the car and said it was good thing I had stopped because it was up hill the rest of the way.  I felt better after I got cooler in the car and we had a nice, uneventful trip home (no near death experiences for the trip home).
It was really a wonderful trip and I hope we can find more things like this close by to visit!