We had two full days in the Philadelphia area, and we had to decide whether to spend day two in the city again (you can read about day one here) or to venture farther out and go somewhere we’d never been before, like, for example, Valley Forge. We had plans to meet up that day with college friends of Dave’s, and it turns out they live very close to Valley Forge but had never made it there….so that made for an easy decision.
Also we’re pretty big fans of Revolutionary history sites.
Valley Forge was the site of the Continental army’s 1777-78 winter encampment, and today it’s a National Historical Park run by the NPS, about half an hour from Philadelphia–making it a great companion to a visit to all the historical sites there.
(My camera had mysteriously switched to some weird setting for this photo; the visitor center does not really appear so strange and otherworldly).
We spent maybe 2 1/2 hours here, which was enough for a quick overview, but more time would definitely have been better. We didn’t stay longer for a couple of reasons: we were planning on lunch with the friends we were meeting up with, and everyone got hungry, and…it was FREEZING. Perhaps you’ll remember me complaining about how very hot and humid it had been in Philadelphia the day before. I guess I shouldn’t have complained, because our Valley Forge day was cold, overcast, and windy, and it was kind of miserable being outside.
But we did check out the museum for awhile:
And we took a ranger guided walk, which was, uhh….not geared toward kids.
But some of the kids, Abe included, had Junior Ranger books to work on while it was going on. It lasted a long time:
Note that in the picture of the ranger talk, everyone has thought to wear jackets or sweatshirts. Note that in the picture of Abe and Dave, we didn’t bring jackets for our kids. Sorry, kids!
The ranger talked dropped us off at the recreated winter encampment, where we spent some time exploring:
On our way back to the visitor center we stopped by a big grassy, hilly, fort-y thing with cannons. I cannot remember what it was called:
And then we turned in Abe’s Junior Ranger book and got his badge, right in front of George Washington:
On our way out, we discovered that Valley Forge has storytelling benches just like Philadelphia! So we stopped for a story:
I don’t really regret doing Valley Forge how we did, because we were more focused on catching up with our friends that day and then on getting out of the cold. But there’s so much that we didn’t get to that I definitely want to get back some day. If we’d had longer, we would have:
*watched the film
*taken a trolley tour of the park: okay, maybe, because this was pretty expensive. But the property is big and it’s hard to get a good overview on foot
*brought our bikes: I didn’t realize before we went, but Valley Forge has an extensive network of paved bike paths. I’m always on the lookout for good, family-friendly bike rides (apparently not on the lookout enough for this stop, though)
*gone for a hike: there are something like 20 miles of hiking trails in the park
*done a more kid-friendly ranger program: maybe one of the living history ones offered at the encampment
*toured Washington’s Headquarters and the Train Station
So, to sum up, give yourself a full day at Valley Forge if you can!
Maybe you would like to pin this?
The weather sounds entirely appropriate for seeing Valley Forge, though. At least you didn’t get frostbite like the soldiers!
Those baskets of rocks have a name, and I used to know what it is! Drat.
We didn’t have great luck with the weather either when we visited in late May–it rained most of the day. 🙁 Fortunately we were still able to see the film, do the audio car tour, explore the museum, and the kids got to do the Junior Ranger booklet. You have much nicer and a lot more pictures than I took! 🙂