Wild and Wooly Texans!

In my last post I mentioned our field trip to a living history event in a nearby town. There were supposed to be 10 or more demonstration set-ups but many of them backed out at the last minute for reasons unknown(to us). The owners of the establishment felt so bad that they refunded everyone's money and let us go in for free! It was something we all agreed we'd have gladly paid for anyway. We had a FREAKIN' BLAST!!! It was all made even better with the addition of beautiful cool fall air(low 80s are considered such in east Texas), wonderful fellowship, curly fries, nachos, turkey legs, and a totally CrAzY kAraOKe train ride with insane people who shall remain nameless!!


(Traveling Texas Style, 1830s-1840s)


(Trader on Horseback)


(Civil War Saddle, the real deal, not a reproduction!!)


(Female brave who happened to have been homeschooled!)

Both of these riders are on Colonial Spanish Horses from Karma Farms near Jefferson.

I think because of my love of all things artistic, these guys were my favorite.


(Blacksmith beginning the ladle making process. The feather in his hat is forged, wish I'd asked if I could photograph it.)


(Blacksmith forming the bowl of a ladle. He was a bit farther along in the process than the other man.)


(Blacksmith wares for sale. I wanted that door knocker in a bad way but was too chicken to ask how much it cost.)


(Trapper/storyteller with a beaver pelt.)


(Learning how to use Char Cloth to start a fire.)


(Don't look Anet! The trapper was cooking his lunch, which happens to be a squirrel.)


(The char cloth guy also made lead bullets because he was the "law", Texas style. The small pail is filled with melted lead.)


(Kids hanging around the teepee.)


(Sarah and Grant tried hard but I'm not sure anyone in our entire group got the tomahawk to stick.)


(Yall watch it, Kim's got a tomahawk!)


(I wanted to take this drum home with me but couldn't quite afford the $400 price tag. That's me with the dark hair and Kim in the brown shirt. I look a bit short because I was kneeling.)


(Kids getting ready for our train ride.)


(Big Cypress Bayou. Yes we did see two alligators along the way!)


(They typically lurk in waters such as these.)


(Or these. The green and brown "ground" is actually water.)


(The tracks carried us through some "spooky" places as they gear up for their Terror on the Bayou haunted train rides. I'd LOVE to do that!)


(I didn't see this man when I took the picture but he ended up ON the train a few seconds after this shot so I guess he wasn't a bad guy.)


(We ended our day with a trek through the corn maze and haunted cemetery.)


(Corn maze)


(The cemetery)

And that concludes the field trip portion of this blog. If you are ever in
Jefferson, Texas, in early October this makes for a lovely day.