The Old Portage Path

Monday was a gorgeous February day.  

We had beautiful blue skies and sunshine, 

and a high of 52 degrees.  

Since the day was going to be so nice, I decided 

it would be great to be outdoors, 

and so I spent a little time looking for somewhere interesting to visit.

We ended up on an adventure to find two bronze statues of an Indian carrying a canoe, one at each end of the Old Portage Path.

The directions on the websites weren't very specific, and I wasn't so sure that we were going to be able to find them, but then we found someone at a local historical society who told tell us exactly how to find each one.

And we were off!

This map shows the canoe portage between the two rivers.

Here we are at the survey marker of the north terminus, with
the Cuyahoga River in the background.

Eureka!  Bronze Indian #1 emerging from the river, heading south with his canoe.
It's an 8 mile portage.

No, it's not exactly wilderness anymore.
The modern road basically follows the historic path and is appropriately called Portage Path Rd.

Next, getting onto Manchester Rd., we finally made it to the south terminus.

The new survey marker based on the original survey from 1797.

Here we are with the south terminus Indian who's looking to the north.
The Tuscarawas River is behind him.

This area is also interesting because it crosses a continental divide.  The Tuscarawas River flows south to the Ohio River, and the Cuyahoga River flows north to Lake Erie  Here is some information on the significance of the portage and the divide.  The lady at the historical society said that at this point you could see the water flowing in two different directions, but I guess we didn't know quite where to look for that.

We had another great Ohio field trip, on a nice winter day.
And if you've never stopped to check out the bronze Indians, now you know why they are there!

Valentine Cookies

I love preschool helpers.  They want to try everything.

Valentine party for school today?  

Well, I wouldn't call it a party, but we did do some Valentine-related learning.  BigJ and I watched the history of Valentine's Day (via history channel videos on the web) and about St. Valentine for whom the day is named after.  We also watched videos about the history of chocolate and how chocolate is made.  Then....

...we headed to the kitchen for some cookie baking.

Sounds like a good excuse for some cookie baking, doesn't it?

LittleJ likes to help me in the kitchen, and BigJ humored me,  and the three of us had a grand time rolling, cutting, and baking.

Little J chose hearts and bears and tried his hardest at rolling some dough.

Big J enjoys cutting out the cookies, but will gladly leave the rest to me.

These cookies are SO good just plain, so we kept it simple and didn't frost them.  Mmmmm.... soft and yummy.  We had a very nice Valentine's Day.