Blueberries, Bees & Boys

We next went to Burg (castle) Hohenzollern. It was a wonderful place to visit. The castle that sits on the site now was built in the 1850. It has been an important part of the the Prussian royal family. You park a little ways down from the castle. There is a large parking lot (you do have to pay to park). There you buy your tickets,we chose to do the guided English tour. You can take a shuttle bus or hike up to the castle. We always walk, it was about 15 minutes. View of the castle as we hike up to it. The views from the castle are wonderful. The picture above shows a little white church in the forest. Legend says that it originally sat on the hill where the castle was. Angels came down and moved it out of the way, so the castle could be built in 11th century. There are two places to eat. We ate at the outdoor restaurant. It was very windy. We took the guided tour, but picture of the interior are not aloud. It gave some great history of...

Next we adventured out to Heidelberg Castle (in route to Frankfort). This is one of my favorite German Castles. It is about 2 hours from Stuttgart. The Castle has a rich history though out the ages. Construction started on it in the 1300's. It had been expanded and a center for the local area until it was destroyed  by the French Army in 1689, after the war with the French. In 1764 what was left of the castle caught fire when it was struck by lightning, leaving it in ruins. In the 1883 preservation and partial rebuilding efforts were begun. Today it is partially in ruins, some has been rebuilt. It is a wonderful place to visit. Heidelberg Castle A part of the castle that has been restored A part that is still burned out. We read the book Castle Life, by Struan Reid. It has great information about the parts of old castles.  So it was fun to be able to see some of those parts come to life. These were not chimneys... they were the old potties. They ...

October was a very busy month, so I kept it very simple. October Cover Page  Weekly layouts...

Our next adventure was to the Kurt Kromer Quarry . My oldest JD, love dinosaurs, this was a dream come true. This place allows you to chisel out fossils. We all had a great time hunting for the fossils. You just have to pay a small fie and you can dig as long as you like. You also get to keep whatever you find. We now have buckets of fossils. We bought our own hammers, but you can also rent a chisel and hammer there. This one of the fossils we found. JJ breaking apart the slate. JD taking apart a big piece of rock.   More digging fun...