A Candlelight Tour

  On our wishlist for a while has been the Fort Scott Christmas Candlelight Tour. We had never been, but had heard wonderful things about it.  This was our year!  Tickets go on sale Nov. 1st and the tour is only offered for 2 days.  Our tour took place on a drizzly night this past weekend, but really it wasn't too cold for December.  Dress warm! It was perfect timing because we're covering the Civil War for our history in school right now. 
  Our tour guide was one of the rangers (Ft. Scott is a National Park) and he gave background information prior to and after each station we stopped at where volunteer actors re-enacted Fort Life.  Mookie whispered to me about a dozen times, "this is SO cool!" They don't like photography, but I did snap this shot while one of the skits was going on inside one of the buildings and I was out running Shorty around. Beautiful!

  It all ended with a dance with live historical music, food and drink, and activities for the kids.

  Because of the distance from home we stayed overnight.  The kids would not have allowed us out of town anyway since Ft. Scott is a National Park and had a Junior Ranger program anyway :)
   We had printed off our Junior Ranger booklets ahead of time and the kids had worked on them on the way down South.  This was great because the next morning was as drizzly as the night before and even chillier!

We were there about an hour and a half working on our Ranger booklets and wandering.  Definitely one of the more intensive ones.  Not that I minded, I'd rather one of the tougher ones be in local history.
  One of the things that stuck out to me on this trip was the fort jail.  This year for Christmas I am getting the pension record for who we think is my ggg-grandpa George Marshal.  George is one of my black sheep in the family and was in the Arkansas St. Penitentiary for stealing.  He also was naughty during the war and was caught stealing.  So he would have ended up someplace like this I imagine.  

 Doesn't look very comfortable.  I'm not sure if that cured Grandpa George of his problem, but it probably put an end to it temporarily. :)