As I had mentioned earlier, I spend my birthday last week taking the day off work and heading down to Minute Man National Historical Park in Massachusetts.

I had more fun than I probably should have. I think I remember going on field trips to places like this when I was in grade school and not really liking it too much. I never would have thought that I’d willingly want to go learn about history on my birthday. I probably just always assumed I’d be cooler when I was 26. XD

Oh well.

I had a really great time taking photos and seeing the actual places I will be drawing in the next issue of the comic. I also picked up some cool books about 18th century clothing and one specifically about April 19, 1775 with reenactment photographs taken throughout the park. Pretty cool.

I’m definitely going to head down there again in April for Patriot’s Day. I hear they have some cool reenactment stuff that’d I’d love to go to. If you’re ever in the area, I would highly suggest a trip to this place. I dorked out ALL DAY. Make sure you check out the photo gallery I put together below this post. There are stupid captions and everything!

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This past weekend I went to visit Geroge Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate in Virginia. Despite my least favorite season starting early and blessing us with what was probably the coldest day… ever, I still went. Snow and wind aside, I was still determined to go to Mount Vernon because I’ve never been… and I heard there was a camel there for Christmas. :3

I really enjoyed the museum portions of the estate as well as the mansion. I was unable to take pictures inside, but their clever thinking made me buy a book with pictures in the gift shop.

There was this one exhibit which opened to remind me of something like “George Washington CSI.” There was a fake lab where they showed a video of how they re-created George Washington’s appearance at different ages in his life. Kind of freaky, as there were like miscellaneous legs and arms laying around… and kind of extra creepy when you turn the corner to see the 19 year old Washington at his first job as a surveyor. Weird. Cool, I guess, but still weird. XD Kinda too real.

Other exhibits included George Washington and His Generals which included pistols, cannon balls, swords and other artifacts. One of the items we stopped to look at for a long time was Washington’s Diamond Bald Eagle which the weirdo guard guy said was only on display to the public for the third time ever. Kinda neat. Don’t know when I’d see that again.

Despite being such a crappy day, weather-wise, it was still pretty busy there. I think I want to go back again in the spring or summer when the gardens aren’t so dead looking. The place is huge! When I managed to get my frozen claw of a hand out of my pocket, I took some terrible photos I’d like to share with you. You can see them after the cut. Just click the link ’cause I even put some good descriptions with each image and there are also some informative web links.
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For Patriots’ Day weekend, I headed down to Lexington and Concord for the reenactment events they have at Minute Man National Historical Park in Massachusetts. Not being able to actually take the Monday of Patriot’s Day off from work (*grumble*) I went down for the events on Saturday.

It was a lot of fun! They had reenactors from both sides as well as the civilian type such as children and women in the houses. Also, from looking at the pictures I took (behind the cut) you can see that there were some female reenactors in the battles too! Almost makes me want to get involved with doing that myself! (I would totally want to be a redcoat!)

It was super fun recognizing which uniforms I give to the characters in the comic. I instantly recognized the Dragoons Benedict is supposed to be from. They have a website you can check out too: 16th “The Queens” Light Dragoons Of course I’ve taken a lot of liberties when drawing Benedict’s uniform and cut down on some of the details. The British reenactors were so cool! They answered any questions we had and if we were walking too slow in front of a bunch of them they’d yell, “Make way for the Queen’s soldiers!” This was on their “retreat” back to Boston, so we let them pass. Good riddance! XD Yeah, I was a huge dork all day.

Despite being cold and rainy, it was a really fun time. Someone mentioned that in 1775, the weather was very similar that day so it was pretty authentic. So cold! I have to draw some more miserable looking people in my comic. Looks like I gave it nice weather instead. I think I’m more of a puffy clouds kinda person.

Anyways, I’d really recommend visiting Minute Man National Historical Park when they have the reenactors and even when they don’t. If you remember, I also posted a blog entry about when I visited the park in October of last year. There’s some cool pictures in there.

However, this time I got a lot more action-y type pictures. The reenactors were awesome!

If you want to see the gallery, click the link below! There’s a bunch of pictures… and there’s horsies!
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