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Old Salem was my last trip to blog about.

I am starting back to school this week so no more trips.

I wanted to say thank you for reading my blog this summer. It has been really fun traveling and spending time with my mom while learning about North Carolina's History.

I think my favorite trip of all was my Roanoke trip. Being on the road with mom by ourselves was really fun. I loved the play and hope to go back and see it again. I loved the Sea Turtle Hospital too .

If you haven't been to some of the places that I have visited this summer, please go. North Carolina is full of history and it is wonderful to have these places to be able to visit.

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This has been a wonderful summer with my girls and I want to thank all of you also who have been following Jessica's blog. These are memories I will remember always.

We did not make it to everything we had planned, but there's always the weekends and next summer .

If you haven't already, please visit our picture gallery. We have taken tons of pictures to share with you.

Thank you again for following our Summer Travel Blog.

Jessica and I hope you have many wonderful and safe travels in your future!

Not historical, but was on my map of things I wanted to do .

After visiting Wilmington and taking the carriage ride, we went to Topsail Island to visit the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital.

We saw 5 turtles that were being treated for different problems. There are more, but on the tour, they only allow a few to be visited. My favorite turtle was a Ridley turtle named Lennie. He is not releasable because he is blind. There were other turtles in there with problems such as boat propeller wounds, fishing net injuries, sickness and other things. The largest turtle we saw was Noah. He was the second largest in the hospital. The smallest was named April. Katie and I got turtle stuffed animals and mom got a beautiful Christmas ornament to remember our great trip.
All of our purchases helped the Sea Turtle Project .

http://www.seaturtlehospital.org/

Cameras were not allowed inside the hospital, so we do not have any pictures, but please check out their website and see all the turtles they are helping. If you are able, please make a donation to help save these beautiful creatures.

This past week we went to Wilmington, NC to take a horse and carriage tour in the historic district. It was a lot of fun. Katie and I love horses and have always wanted to take a carriage ride. Our guide took us on the old home tour. We learned about open brick fences. It's not to make it look fancy, it was for air flow. We never knew that . The homes do not have their original iron gates and fences. They were used during the Civil War to make cannon balls! I also learned that the families slept on their porches during the summer because of the heat. This carriage ride was fun to do.

http://www.historicwilmington.org/

Today we are writing about Historic Stagville. Before I go on I need to apologize about not writing for a while. We have been really busy. So I am very sorry about that.

In the 1750's the land that is now known as Durham County, farmers started settling and they built small homes. The Horton House was one of them. This small plantation was home to both the Bennehans and the Camerons. One of the things that was very neat was that the research on the American Girl, Addy, was done here on the site.

When we went to Stagville I had a temprature gauge that is used to find cold spots. Cold spots can sometimes indicate ghosts and restless spirits. While we were at the site I found a few cold spots. The base readings around the outside were in the high 80's, and the cold spots would dip down to the 30's! Even in a few very sunny spots!

I think that learning about Addy on the site was really neat. I also loved searching for the ghosts of stagville which was really cool and exciting. I promise to write soon. See ya!

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Stagville was pretty neat . In 1860, Stagville was several thousand acres. The home was built in 1787 and had a dairy, smokehouse, barns, storehouses and slave houses. In 1976, the home and land was opened to the public by the Durham Historic Society.

I really love that the American Girl Doll, Addy, was a real girl and that she was from North Carolina. Jessica really enjoys the American Girl books and has gotten more interested since learning about Addy. It has been wonderful learning so many things this summer with Jessica.

I wanted to point out the picture of the bricks. These bricks were hand made by the slaves that worked the property. You can see fingerprints from where the bricks were still wet when they built their chimneys for their houses. Truly amazing. This could have been the brick that Addy's family member made

http://www.stagville.org/

http://www.americangirl.com/fun/agcn/addy/

Hi! I visited this place last week, but just now had time to write about it. Mom's been cracking the whip lol!

I saw all kinds of buildings on our tour. There was a school house that was built in 1893. It was moved here from another part of NC to show us what schools looked like back then. It had books, slates and we were told about all the rules they had back then. There was a list of how many lashes you got for talking, not saying 'mam, not staying on your side of the school (boys and girls were not to sit or play together) and even lashes for being bad at home!

The house was set on fire a few years ago, so they had to repair some of it, but most of the house and the other buildings are original. There is a smokehouse, outhouse, kitchen, pantry and barn. You'll never guess what they used for toilet paper..... GROSS!!! You gotta go to find out . We got some lye soap that they made there to add to our collection from our adventures. Pretty cool.

My favorite part was the school. It was neat to see and what they learned back then. My mom likes to watch Little House on the Prairie and this was just like it.

Gotta go to start on writing about the places we went to in Durham yesterday. We went to 3 sites in one day! We came back so tired, but had a great time. See ya!

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Charles B. Aycock was born in 1859 and was Governor of NC from 1901 - 1905. He was known as North Carolina's "Education Governor" because of his commitment to improving the state's public education system.

This was fun to go see. As Jessica said, I am a "Little House on the Prairie" fan and this schoolhouse was like being in the show . I was very surprised at how rigid the rules were. I don't have the lsit that they did, but this describes some of the rules back then... http://www.jbit.org/guide/index.htm#rules[/b] and http://teachers.eusd.k12.ca.us/encinitas/punishments.htm.

Try to get out there some time. There is a lot of information about a great man.

http://www.nchistoricsites.org/aycock/aycock.htm

Hello everyone! We are leaving early tomorrow morning on our 3 day trip! This is going to be so much fun!

We are heading up 95 to get on 64 to go to Manteo. We are going to stop in Creswell to visit Somerset Place Plantation. After that, we are going to Roanoke Festival Park, Fort Raleigh, and if we have time, the aquarium. We are also going to see The Lost Colony play. That looks really neat. My mom saw that when she was my age.

On Wednesday, we are going to visit the Wright Brothers Memorial and then go down to New Bern to see Tryon Palace, take a carriage ride and visit the Pepsi Store. After that, we go down to Morehead City and Beaufort to go fishing at 6:30 AM Thursday morning! We wanted to take one of the Haunted Tours in Beaufort, but they don't start until 8:30 and we need to get to bed early to be able to get up early .

We are going to have so much fun, but we are going to be very tired mom says. We'll try to blog either Thursday night or Friday morning!

See ya!