Saturday, June 18, 2011

Manti's 21st Birthday Adventure

I have it in my head that this is the last time I'll get to spend a birthday with my "little boy". His next birthday will be spent away from home, somewhere in the mission field. The one after that should be out there too. The 24th birthday, he should be home, but he could easily be engaged or *choke* married then! He'll be a man, he'll be his own person,.... he won't be home with the mindset of being a child. So this was my last chance. It is so bittersweet.

Anyway, what he wanted for his birthday was to go visit Etowah Indian Mounds State Park. Did you know that (at least in the state of Georgia) you can go to the public library and check out a park pass? This lets you park at any state park for free, and another pass let's 4 people have free admission! That is super cool! So it cost us gas to drive a little more than an hour from home to visit a historical site with our kids!

What makes this is even more cool is that the little bitty teeny tiny museum has pictures inside of one of MY ancestors- Menawa! Now that's even MORE cool!

Let me explain a little. The mounds are actually a lot like the foundations of buildings. The largest one is the Temple Mound. This is a large mound (132 steps to walk up) and at the top is where the chief lived. The other mounds had other purposes too. One of them was an area where the council members would go to tend to important things...perhaps ceremonies or maybe council meetings, or who knows what else. It wasn't "open to the public", but was an "invitation only" type of place. There used to be several other mounds that somehow "disappeared" when the government purchased the land. Don't ya hate that? The land and field around the mounds would have been similar to the small cities we still have in America. People lived close to each other and interacted constantly, a lot like our neighborhoods. The river was right there also, and they had built a fishing trap area to let them fish well.

It's all really neat to see.... and we took 99 pictures altogether! 30 of them turned out extremely well, but I won't post quite that many. I'll show you a few so you can see our experiences as well as the area.


We're at the top of the Temple Mound looking across at another mound. That's Manti coming down from it.

This is a wattle and daub hut, the kind Cherokee people lived in way way back. Manti wants to move in to this one.


We're at the top of the Temple Mound. The wind is blowing in her hair and I couldn't resist taking a picture of her like this. It was a profound moment on top of that mound.





So many good pictures came out of this trip. The best of all is the unity we felt as a family. It was hard on Tommy and I to do all the walking and climbing those horrendously steep steps, but it was worth it. We will likely be waddling in to church in the morning, but we'll be proud of each step!

1 comment:

  1. We got some really good pictures and even better memories there.

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