Ocali Country Days

Today all the first grade classes at South Ocala took a field trip to Silver River State Park and Museum for Ocali Country Days. Mommy got to tag along as a chaperone for Parker's class. She had two other kids in her group besides Parker - Tyler and Makayla.

Ocali Country Days is a chance to experience life in our area from the late 1800s. One of the first things that we got to do was try to rope a "steer."

Then the kids saw how people used to wash their clothes and wring the water out of them. Parker asked Mommy if this was how they washed clothes when she was little. Um, not that old sweetheart!

Playing checkers with Makayla.

The one-room schoolhouse and schoolmarm.

We toured a couple of old log cabin houses. The kids thought that the mosquito nets were really cool.

Moonshine the horse.

Cowboys in camp plus cows and a demonstration of how to crack the whip.

Bringing up water from the well. There were also a couple of other places around to pump water into buckets.

Extracting juice from sugarcane! The kids waited in line to do this and had an absolute blast!

The blacksmith shop. We got to watch the blacksmith in fashioning a piece of metal into a really elaborate hook.

Visiting the Seminole camp section...checking out the animal hides drying, as well as the handmade clothes.


The animal show in the big tent with animals from Silver Springs Nature Park...a red rat snake, a bard owl, a kestrel and a baby alligator.

Learning how to grind up corn.

The telegraph station....way before email, blogs and text messages!

One of the glass bottom boats from Silver Springs Nature Park on display.

Inside the Silver River Museum.....

Everyone had a really nice time and the kids seemed to enjoy the day out in the fresh air and sunshine. It was nice to take a little step back in time and made us appreciate all of our modern conveniences even that much more.