After a good night sleep we went to the old homestead.  The park was donated by the Rowley family that originally homesteaded the property and the old homestead is set up as a museum.  They had period clothes that we could dress up in and have our picture taken.

It is a neat place and the guide was fun to talk to.  She was very knowledgeable.  They had an old hunters lodge that was moved up to the site but the barn and the house was original to the site.

The hunting lodge was small but serviceable.  It had a stove in it but with the burn ban they couldn’t fire it up.  They make cookies in it when they fire it up.

In the tool shed they had an old gas engine that was used to turn a belt that turned a saw blade.  The engine was in working condition and we got it working and it could use a governor while idling.  It was a great simple engine.

She then showed us the barn and got our picture taken in the hay loft of the barn.  The barn has logs on the floor for the manure to fall between the logs and every so often the owner would remove the logs and the manure and use it for fertilizer and then replace the logs.

The barn was made from two barns.  The Just family was moving out and they sold the barn to the Rowleys and the bottom of the barn is the style Mr. Just used (square beams) and the hay loft is the style Mr. Rowley use (Round logs with notches).

The barn also has a place for milking cows and goats.

Around the site are some old farm equipment.  Mainly for harvesting hay.  The grasses in the valley are good for hay.  it is a hay that has an “M” shape in the leaf.  It is good to use as a reed between your thumbs to make a noise that can be alittle eery in the echos of the mountains.

The house was nice and was originally a one room house and then was expanded to have a living room.  To add some privacy curtains were hung around the rooms to break them up into some smaller rooms.

On the site were a smoke house and a root cellar.  The smoke house was for smoking meat.  The fire was not in the smoke house but about 20 or so feet away and the smoke was tunneled into the smoke house to cool as not to cook the meet but flavor it.

After lunch we played around of mini golf.  The course is free to play.  The kids didn’t keep score and didn’t play by the rules very well but had fun. 

Later in the afternoon we had signed up Caleb and George up to do the climbing wall.  Caleb and George were too young to do the zip line so they did the climbing wall and the rest of us did the zip line.  The climbing wall had four levels of difficulty.  Green, yellow, blue and red.  George started with the Green and Caleb the yellow.  George is alittle young for it and didn’t go too high but wanted to do it. Caleb was a monkey and went straight to the top.  Caleb did one of the red walls that had an overhang then attempted to do a blue wall that tilted inward and stopped when he needed some chalk but didn’t have any and couldn’t hold on any more.

Mary did alittle roller skating during this time but wanted here own skates that were in Austin so she didn’t skate long.

It also rained really hard while at the climbing wall.  Thankfully it was indoors at the kiva center.  When we were done the ground was wet but not under the truck.  The ground was so dry that it just soaks in.  We saw rain every day we were on our trip.  We didn’t get rained on every day but did see it.

After dinner we went to the store for an ice cream desert.