The baby robins are ready to leave the nest. Two of them are already gone!
Let me begin this blog with a few pictures of the sky that are from Friday night. There is a funny story behind these pictures. So, we leave Arby's and are heading home when we spot the most beautiful clouds we've ever seen. We try to drive to the edge of town where the land is cleared to get some pictures. Once we have some, we're still not satisfied because the sky just keeps becoming more and more beautiful. On the way home, we decide to drive down a gravel road that is right by the Heritage Center. We snap some pictures, and drive by the dry ice plant. We find a road that we think will take us back to the Heritage Center... and we were wrong about that. Chelsi takes out her cell phone after about 30 minutes to call Blake, but right when she was about to dial, Highway 4! Thank goodness. We had found our way back. Needless to say, we're not going storm chasing again without a GPS!
Homestead Days began on Friday, but Chelsi and I got to be in the parade on Saturday. Guess what we were in charge of? We got to ride in the Beatrice Volunteer Fire Department truck behind the horse drawn wagon. When those two beautiful horses would poop... it was mine and Chelsi's "dooty" to clean it up with shovels. So, the horses would poop, and Chelsi and I had to get out in front of all of Beatrice and scoop it into a bucket. People cheered for us and whistled, and at one point I raised my shovel over my head and pumped it up and down to please the crowd. It was humiliating! We got jokes for the rest of the day about it. At the Homestead, they say that having this task is the "SCA rite of passage". Chelsi and I are officially SCAs now! I didn't get any pictures of the parade, unfortunately.
After we scooped the poop, we got the chance to set off the air horn and the siren in the fire truck. It was so much fun! The small boys highly enjoyed the siren and would cheer when we set it off. I had a lot of fun at the parade because the sky was cloudy and it was cool. Even if we did have the most embarrassing job of all, they said we did a really good job (we worked together and used both shovels to scoop it onto one) and were really efficient. Hah! Here are the horses we cleaned up after:
Homestead Days was really fun. I tried to look past the crazy stuff they make us do and try to focus on the awesome things that happened. Chelsi and I had to lift these pieces of a stage and they weighed about 200 pounds each... and after I hurt my shoulder from lifting three pieces (and later carrying 2 speakers the same size as me) I tried to work on things that didn't require lifting. After we completed moving the stage, we got to watch horses use machines to cut grass and I apologize for not really knowing what anything is called.
The Blacksmith made me a cool thing out of part of a horseshoe:
There was a wheat thresher there made in 1928 that I was just fascinated with. I took pictures on Saturday since they couldn't get it to run. The steam engine had blown a head gasket on Saturday (the steam engine runs the thresher) and so I could only take pictures. Sunday, however, everything was up and running! I was captivated by how awesome the whistle on the steam engine was! That alone made my weekend! I have a ton of pictures of the steam engine, Chelsi and I feeding the wheat thresher, and just lots of cool things like that.
First the horses were attached to a machine that would cut the grass to make it into hay. Then the guy attached a new machine to the horses that would toss the cut grass into the air. It almost looked like a spider's legs!
There were lots of neat exhibits. There was a man who played all kinds of instruments, and he even could play a saw! I have some pictures of him playing "I've been working on the railroad" on the saw, but they aren't very good. There was a lady who spoke about the orphan train, "tatting", spinning, weaving, 1800s clothing, a rifle collection, a broom weaver, a rope maker, blacksmiths, a guy doing something with deer skins, you name it! There also was a sweet little goat named Micheal, who thought he was a dog. I went and loved on him, and he gave me a kiss! He nibbled on me a little bit also, but he was adorable.
The man who played all kinds of instruments (here is is playing a saw with a bow):
The lady who presented about the Orphan Train had a booth:
Tatting:
Spinning (we actually learned how to do this):
Weaving:
1800s clothing:
Rifle collection:
Broom weaving:
Rope making:
Blacksmith:
deer hide:
musical instruments:
Micheal the kissing goat:
After work, my crazy roommates decided they wanted to bike down to the Freeman School and back to look at the clouds and see if our baby ground squirrels were still there. I took my car and followed them for safety reasons. My roomies are crazy! It was fun though. After they biked to the Heritage Center, they decided to bike back home through the prairie so we could go visit Blake, who was on duty to protect the prairie that night until a policeman came since the bell on the steam engine alone was worth $2,000!
On Sunday, we got to watch sheep herding demonstrations and what is that smell? The guy cooked sausages in the steam engine's actual engine! How funny! After befriending the guy who ran the steam engine, he asked if we wanted to help feed wheat into the thresher. Of course we would! That was hard work, but I am proud of myself for doing it even though I was purely exhausted from the morning alone.
Hearing the steam engine and all the belts and random parts moving was something I will never forget. Hearing the sound the whistle made was so awesome, it made me wish I had my camcorder with me. The coolest thing with the steam engine, however, was yet to happen.
Suddenly, I hear Susan on the radio "Send Katherine out here with her camera to the front of the education center! She's not gonna want to miss this!!!" I grab my camera and literally run out the door to Highway 4, to see the steam engine driving down the road! HOW COOL IS THAT? Susan yells to me to get in the road and stop the oncoming traffic. Camera in one hand, I put my palm up and hope they don't hit me. They were a good sport and waited for the awesome steam engine to pull into the education center. Seeing that steam engine drive down the highway was quite possibly the most awesome thing I've seen in a long time. Everyone was teasing me for how excited I was!
The steam engine is currently parked in our driveway. How many other people can say they have a priceless piece of history parked in their driveway? I'll end this blog with some pictures of animals and butterflies I took this week. We're going to Mount Rushmore next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment