Saw Disney's "Earth" today, which was an excellent show, and blissfully reptile-free, for those of you who care about that sort of thing. Creatures did attack other creatures, but it was bloodless, and not terribly graphic.
I do have a ton more photos from our Carolina trip, so while I'm waiting for the Widge to fall asleep, I'll post our Cowpens pics. (Cowpens is actually in South Carolina, so I feel totally justified saying "Carolina trip" rather than specifically "North Carolia trip". I'm not linguistically lazy, I'm inclusive.)
here's the Widge, literally standing in the footsteps of a Continental soldier. Some how historians have extrapolated not only where the battle lines were, but also exactly where the individual soldiers stood. The cutout of a soldier is apparently of an average height for men at the time.
there were plenty of soldiers to check out.
here's one of the major problems with Revolutionay battlefields. This is a cutout of an artillery piece. You just don't see fields littered with artillery like you do on Civil War fields. In general, there seem to be far fewer artillery pieces in use during the Revolution: we weren't set up to manufacture them, so they pretty much were captured from the Brits. They also seem to have changed hands quite often. The museum at Cowpens has one, as does the museum at Guilford Courthouse, but none in the field. Were Civil War soldiers just less concerned about litter? You can't walk ten feet in the south without tripping over either a leftover artillery piece or a memorial to Our Glorious Dead, Placed Here by the Society of Confederate Widows and Orphans. The DAR really needs to get with it, because as far as memorializing things, the Confederate Widows and Orphans totaly rule.
Anyway.
Apparently, compared to the actual Revolution, there are fewer tress nowadays, and our trees are smaller. At Civil War felds, on the other hand, I've heard often that there are more trees nowadays, and the trees are bigger. I think that in the rapid expansion between the Revolution and the Civil War, trees were cut down like crazy, and the after the Civil War (or the War of Northern Agression, for all you Souther readers), there was a surge of interest in finding and protecting battlefields, parks, and nature in general, so we started letting trees grow. At this battlefield in particular, the Parks Service (who are terribly undervalued, diligent, outstanding public servants, and I wish to give a big thumbs up to the entire Department of the Interior) is working hard to re-plant the sort of vegitation that is both native to the area, and was present at the time. I really like the idea of that, I think it helps vsitors to better understand what the battle would have been like. More thumbs up to the parks.
here we are with Banastre Tarleton, who, I'm guessing, is not shown at actual size.
see, here's the field piece. I think they call this a grasshopper, because its small and light (note how the Widge, at 3 feet, is taller than the wheel).
Whats interesting is that the Widge is all Patriot, but here he's only pictured with Brits. This is a footsoldier. I think the Widge is sayng "cheese".
and here we are with a giant peach, which has nothing to do with the battlefield, other then we were at the peach on the same day. The Wige could not possibly care less about the peach. I am actually wearing that same shirt today, in case anybody ever wondered about my blogging wardrobe.
there are still roughly a million photos from Carolina, so stay tuned!
The main benefit of going to Rutherfordton seems to be the fabulous children's museum. We don't have that here (although we have both a quilting and a knitting shop. They only have quilting). We especially loved the fire truck section.
they also had a nice train table, which, unfortunately, was mostly mobbed by annoying field trip kids. I don't recall being nearly as obnoxious on my field trips as the small children of North Carolina were the week that I was in town. 
And really, with lovely museums like this, there's no reason for such behavior. Look at this fantastic little farm! All these veggies are actualy fitted into the rows using shaped pegs, which the child matches to the correctly shaped hole. This is Agriculture plus Geometry, and the Widge adored it! He was very focused, really a wonderful farmer, carefully planting, "watering", harvesting...these are the memories I cling to when he gets into a destructive mood.
Look! He even got to ayak on "Lake Lure"! This was a great museum, it ranks up with the Richmond one as the best we've yet seen. Thumbs up, Rutherfordton!
This is the one thing that puzzled me, though. Rutherfordton, although just barely to the east of the Appalachians, is apparently three minutes ahead of New York City.
We tried not to stress over it too much: instead we went to McDonald's!
