Foto Friday: What did you do on your summer vacation?

Rangers muster the troops at Gettysburg National Military Park (Photo by Sabra Smith)

What did we do on our summer vacation?

Hopped in the time machine, of course!

We visited the Civil War and thought about what life was like 150 years (or so) ago.

And here’s the thing about these young whippersnappers, these kids we lament because all their newfangled gizmos are ruining their attention spans and making them dumb and all the other fear-mongering end-of-the-world predictions we’ve been hearing since the rise of facebook and twitter and texting……

I kept meeting kids who love history.

The kid waiting under the tent with his “enlistment papers” raised his hand to tell the Ranger that the reason he was there was because he picked the family vacation destination this year after watching Civil War shows on the History Channel.

The girls in the pool at the hotel went on and on (and on and on) about all the great things there were to do in Gettysburg — every single one of them history-related.  The older daughter recapped for me what she’d learned about troop movements and decisions made by various generals and commanders.  She described the role the landscape played in the battles.  Her imagination had been sparked by all she’d seen, and, when I asked her if history was one of her favorite subjects at school, she said that it hadn’t been before, but that she thought that it might be now.

My kids have no choice in the matter and by now they are both tolerant and enthusiastic.  Since graduate school I’ve been dragging them to old houses, graveyards, city streets, and landscapes.  We’ve stared at  Roman sculptures, swords, cannon, castle walls, Roman numerals carved into old beams, letters, jewels, and muskets.  They fire up the time machine in their imaginations and off they go.

We went time traveling this summer.

What did you do on your summer vacation?