Troy

This week we have been doing a little exploring, close to home. Monday we explored Troy. The town of Troy is about 10 miles from our house. We went to Oakwood Cemetery. This is one of the oldest cemeteries in the area and has so many beautiful large mausoleums and grave markers. It was a great opportunity to teach the kids that no matter how much your have or what you do in this life it is temporary. The words written on your headstone and the monuments to man will fade. In less than two-hundred years, the names, dates and words are worn off the stones making them unrecognizable. We need to make sure we store our treasures in heaven where time can not wipe them away.

We saw the grave of "Uncle Sam". Those who don't know the story Samuel Walton was a local butcher that would bring barrels of meat to the soldiers in the war of 1812. He would mark the barrels with U.S. The men knew that Sam had provided the meat and mistakenly thought the us stood for Uncle Sam. Soldiers began to refer to all government owned things as "Uncle Sam's" this trend caught on and stuck. Samuel Walton died in 1854. His grave was marked with a humble 2 ft. piece of stone that simply read his name, birth, and death. A larger monument was built later by his grand-daughter and a flagpole was added by our government. About a hundred yards from his grave was a gorgeous panoramic view of the city of Troy and the Hudson River.

Next we went to the Cohoes Falls. The Cohoes Falls are 75 feet high and 1,000 feet wide. Their flow is most impressive in springtime, sometimes running at 90,000 cubic feet of water per second. It was beautiful. It is the second largest falls in the State of New York.

The temperature outside was a warm 34 degrees outside so we decided to finish our day by warming up and taking naps before playing at the park.