Fort Clark Days!

It was cool this morning, but we were up and out in time for the early morning reveille. We heard the bugle call bringing the troops together for the opening ceremony and flag raising here at Fort Clark Days. When we made our reservation, we lucked into being here on the one weekend that they host this annual celebration. We added an extra day to our stay so we could enjoy the festivities.

An interesting blend of military uniforms lined up for roll call. We're looking forward to hearing from this group that has assembled to celebrate everything from the cavalry to present day military, with even a couple foreign military groups represented.

Plain white tents provided a bit of shade for the artifacts and educational materials. Yesterday this group hosted a field trip for area school children, but today the booths are open to the general public.

We wandered through the exhibits, talking to all of the re-enactors. This man has a nice wardrobe of military clothing from the 1800s. He showed us all the hats, explaining why they changed and how they were worn. Likewise, he has originals or replicas of all the military ammunition and fire-arms from this era. All his things could be locked up in a museum, but he prefers to wear them and share them with others.

Denisa stopped in to watch a spinner, making the wool thread for those military uniforms.

Those soldiers have to be fed, and a rolling military chuckwagon was also on display. This was like walking through an outdoor museum.

One of our favorite displays included these two camels.

The soldier in charge of these unique military beasts loves to share their story in American history. We listened for 45 minutes to his colorful tales of the camels' brief but successful part of the U.S. military.

Afterwards, we got to meet these docile giants up close.

We had never really noticed how uncomfortable those long back legs look when they are resting.

These camels can carry three times the weight of an army pack mule, and don't have to be watered for days. 

We also attended the cannon firing demonstration on the hill. The soldiers were readying the four cannons for battle . .  .

and then they woke up the entire neighborhood of Fort Clark.

Fort Clark was originally built as protection for the white settlers in this land of hostile Indians. But today the cavalry and the Indians co-exist peacefully. Teepees were set up in two different parts of the Fort grounds.

The tribe scheduled a dance with a long line of drummers. We thought it was interesting that they painted their bodies white and wore hoods over their heads for their dance. Instead of head gear made of feathers, they wore elaborate wooden head dresses and lots of bells.

We enjoyed country music throughout the day, and a street dance in front of the commissary at night. That's another fun part of Fort Clark Days!

A small museum is open for a few hours each week, but it was open all day for the celebration. We lucked into having our own personal tour guide when this guy intercepted us as we walked up to the museum. We normally would have spent 10-15 minutes browsing through a few highlights of a museum like this. But our new friend told us detailed stories of interesting things that have happened at the fort and pointed out the newspaper articles or artifacts that go with those stories. He played the gramophone for us, and let us handle some of the museum pieces. It turned into a very interesting 45-minute tour.

While we started out in jeans and long sleeves because of the cool weather early in the morning, it was warm by the middle of the afternoon. We wanted to see the fort's swimming pool again, now that it was all filled with spring water. So we dunked our hot feet into that 68-degree water and cooled them off.

While we saw a hand-full of people swimming in that water, it was really cool even on an afternoon that was approaching 90 degrees.

That was a cool way to end a cool day of events at Fort Clark Days!