Lewis and Clark Expedition

We've spent the last two years studying US geography as well as finishing up our years-long study of American history. Our geography study ended with the reading of a great book about Lewis and Clark (The Captain's Dog). We are also listening to the book Swallows and Amazons (Godine Storyteller), which is all about children spending the summer with their little sailboat. I could hardly take all this talk about boats and adventures without having one of our own!

So I decided to buy a little blow up boat and have an exploration adventure ourselves.

We have a small creek that runs through our development and we decided that we would start at our bridge and explore right up to the other end of the development.

James and David got precedence of riding in the boat since the water varied from very shallow to above my knees.

Rachel took on the job of pulling the boys in the boat.

It was all so much fun!

Although, it was a cooler day and everyone got wet quite a bit which made for some very cold little people.

There was plenty of portaging to do around the bits that were too shallow. I was disappointed that the river was so low, but considering how deep it did get in parts perhaps it was best the way it was.

Along the way we found many, many raccoon tracks and plenty of deer tracks.

I got the job of carrying the lunch supplies and the wooden rifle which was so important to the adventure until we got to the stream at which point it seemed better for mom to carry it.

A few low-hanging tree trunks......

It was so fun to be on our own with no one nearby and just the beauty of the stream.

We followed a pair of mallards upstream.

And we stopped at our "secret beach" for a little snack of beef jerky, in keeping with Lewis and Clark.

I had to give the boat a try but it didn't work so well since I wasn't willing to actually sit down in the wet, dirty boat.

Then we pressed on,

Until people were too cold to continue. We stopped at this point and ate our lunch of nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate chips, and apples. Rachel and Andrew played around with the boat.

This was as far upstream as we could see. But, now we know that the stream continues at its full size all the way past our neighborhood.

And now school is over for two months and we are working on our summer routine. It's off to Ancient History next year!