Mount Vernon: Take 2

Hi, this is Emily. It's my turn to blog :)May 12th was our second time to Mount Vernon. We met up with the Washington family in the visitor's center.

The animals at Mount Vernon include sheep, goats, hens, and our favorite: the cows. To make the cows look just like they would have when George Washington lived there, they didn't cut the horns off the bulls. They looked awesome!

A lot of the Mount Vernon property is a woodland full of beautiful trees and green plants. This tree was really cool!

Mark, Jeffrey and Mara looking out over the Potomac river. Don't fall in!

We bought tickets for a ride on this big boat, "The Spirit of Mount Vernon". We loved it! That is one big boat!

That's me on the top level of the boat.

The view of Mount Vernon from the boat was fantastic. George Washington said it best when he declared that his house was the most "pleasantly situated" in all America. You can tell that he planned for his house to be beautiful to look at from every direction.

The second level of the boat had a stack of board games for passengers to play. Of course, Mara and Mark discovered the chess set. I love Mark in this picture- it looks like he's planning his next move (this was not posed)!

This is a re-creation of George Washington's sixteen sided threshing barn. In Washington's circular barn, horses would be made to run around and around over stalks of grain laid over the floor. The grain would come loose and fall through the slats of the floor to the room below, where it would be picked up by workers. This was really an ingenious way of separating the grain from the stalks.

Jeffrey knew exactly what he wanted from the Mount Vernon gift shop. The wooden toy gun and the tri-corner hat. And yes, he got them. Will we regret the gun? I know I do...