This past Saturday was the first that Geoff has been off in months. (Seems like there was one some time, but few since this semester started.) We had a big family day in Camp Verde. (Who would've guessed???) Here, our family of 5 stands atop a hill that is at the corner of two major roads trying to "stealthily" find a geocache (which we eventually did, but not without attracting quite a bit of attention). There is also a letter box in this same general location which the kids and I found a while back, at rush hour with quite an audience parading by.
The geocache was in route to the Fort Verde History of the Soldier event, which would explain the girls' attire, in case you were wondering. They don't regularly go out in pioneer garb, but in a moment of temporary sanity it occurred to me that this might be a great place to wear it. They received several compliments and fit right in!
How many give-aways can you spot that reveal the true time period of this photograph?
Here the girls' are stationed at their favorite part of the event:
Little G's favorite was the automatic weaponry. Great. But he got to listen to and ask a lot of questions of a WWII vet about a machine gun that was on display that was priceless. Unfortunately, no picture.
Some of the earlier American "soldiers" parading.
They announced that a Navajo man was going to be speaking about the code-talkers, which little G has been interested in, but for some reason it didn't end up happening.
This was something else that little G was pretty interested in - an old shovel from the salt mine. It made us all think of Mike Mulligan...
As can be seen in the previous two photos, the lens cleaning we have attempted has not resolved the problem as of yet. Will have to get the cloth out and scrub at that thing a little more.
Now we are off on the next part of our day, which was finding another geocache at an old salt mine. We never knew about this till we saw it on the geocache website. Great little historical site and fun adventure. It was good to go now. It will be too hot before long, but was about right this day.
Bunny was there, but guess who ended up carrying him.
A hill of salt.
Found the cache! (No rattlesnakes.)
On top of a hill of salt.
It made unusual formations and made the dirt into unusual shapes as well.
Some deteriorating mining equipment.
Climbing a mountain of salt and dirt, and hunting for interesting crystal formations.
Being herself in the car afterwards.
We came upon an access to the Verde River and stopped there for a bit, then finished the day off by meeting Grandma in Camp Verde for dinner! It was a great day, marred only by a lengthy wait on the highway on the way home due to an accident (during which of course 2/3 of children had to use the bathroom, so daddy hightailed them into the woods and made it back to the car just in time for the traffic to start moving). When we passed the scene, it was very sobering, and kind of subdued us all.
Parke County is known for its covered bridges, and we happened upon two of them.
There is also an Amish population there, but we only saw two of these:
This is the first sugar camp we went to:
It was the most state of the art, with lots of modern equipment.
Their system used reverse osmosis to remove a significant portion of the water from the sap, before boiling.
They had tubing running from their trees at this site, that drained into a plastic tub which they would pump it out of when it was full. (Little G took a video of that and it is at the bottom).
The second sugar camp we went to, also was home to a pair of bald eagles. We only saw this one, though they said both of them had been sitting there earlier. He was watching for fish in the creek below.
Their nest:
This was the most "primitive" of the three camps we stopped at.
At the last place we went to, they had a bucket on a treecollecting sap.
At times the steam was so thick you couldn't see anything.
Drip, drip, drip...
This man, along with two others (each has a different color), gets a scoop full of the melted glass and carries it while bouncing it around in the scoop so that it all cools at a uniform rate on the way over to the table ...
where another man is waiting to gently mix (swirl) the three colors together, and then feed the big glob of glass through large rollers that flatten it into a sheet, and create a texture on one side of the glass. They have the capability of making millions of combinations of colors, textures, and thicknesses. 
Once rolled out, it is fed through a machine that slowly cools it down to 140F. At that point it is cut into sheets by two men (as you can see in the video if you check it out) and this is an end piece showing what that glowing red blob in the picture above looks like when cooled and in sheet form.
In the area behind her, a man was packing crates of glass to be shipped out all over the world. There were several crates ready to be shipped out to England, Japan, Canada, and elsewhere. Here is some glass in the storage area:
These are just some of the shades and variations of white:
She showed the kids how to cut glass. 
The man working in this room makes glass paperweights, including intricately created glass sea creatures and other designs.
This is one of the glass blowers who work there. Being one of the tallest, I wasn't able to get close enough to get the best pictures of this process, but the kids all seemed to like watching this kind of glass work, too.
I have not had a chance to read it myself yet, but little G seemed to be learning a bit about the Amish as he read it, so it was perfect timing that the cow show we went to last weekend was right in the heart of Amish country. We passed a horse and buggy on the road on the way to the show, then the kids and I decided to go home by a route that would enable us to encounter some more. 
