Going to the Ball

The base commander and his wife were busy the night of the Bright Lights Ball in Springfield so we got to attend as "second string" for Westover. 

The event was at the Sheridan, very elegant and magical.

I wore the dress Patrick made Danielle for her prom- it was so beautiful!

H. Newman Marsh Memorial Trail

On the way home from visiting the Keystone Arch Bridge Trail

we saw a sign for this trail and decided to explore.  

It was a .6 mile uphill climb to a waterfall.

It turns out that this was built during FDR's New Deal by the Civilian Conservation Corp.,

kind of a cool piece of history. 

These engineers lived here for almost a year clearing a trail and building three small bridges.

Ken climbed up the falls.

My feet hurt- I sat :)

It was a worthwhile use of our last bit of energy 

after several hours of hiking the Keystone Bridges Trail. 

There's so much beauty in this world!

Field Trip

It's good to know important people in high places! I arranged for my third grade class, along with the fourth and fifth grades to visit the Air Force base.

We got some very cool demonstrations from the firemen.

We hopped in a bus and headed for the runway & a tour of a  C-5

The aircrew were so good with the kids.

How amazing to get to sit in the pilot's seat of one of these big boys!

These are a few of my students :)

Everyone had a great time- kids and adults alike!

Keystone Arch Bridges Trail

Ken and I were looking for a place to explore a few weeks back. The weather was beautiful and the leaves in full color. I stumbled across this place on the web, it was only about 30 miles from us . We packed up our backpack and went for an adventure.

This trial took us to some of the first Keystone Arch bridges made in America along the Westfield River. The Western Railroad, longest and highest railroad in America, connected Boston with Albany in 1840. The arches were as tall as 70ft high.

It was an amazing sight! Pictures just can't even begin to show the beauty we saw that day.

I have posted many :) because it was such an inspiring experience.

Ken was tasting the water coming from the rocks :)

Some of the trails were broad (with many rocks) and some more like paths through the woods. We walked for about 4 hours- needless to say, our feet really hurt near the end.

We crossed over the modern railroad a few times. Some of the bridges are still in use.

Everywhere you looks was so beautiful.

The trail took you to 4 arch bridges and one that was in ruins.

We sat on a stone wall and ate lunch- this was our view

And this, we were quite high up!

 These walls were blasted with gunpowder, it was before dynamite was available- amazing!

The trail was very remote and we only saw a hand full of hikers throughout the day.

To give you an idea of the size of these bridges, that's me up at the top left side of the bridge. Ken climbed down to the bottom.

This bridge had a modern one built right next to it to reroute the trains.

View from the top

The bridges, side by side

The whole day was like heaven, only except for the peeing in the woods part :)

We did the entire trail, not sure how many miles but we slept pretty good that night!

On the way home we found another spot to explore so we stopped and used up the last bit of energy we could muster- that blog will follow!