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Today we visited Fort Madison over in Iowa.  It's a historical site that has some long running history in the area.  Our P-Day group arranged a meeting with the on-site historical head of the organization.  He was very knowledgable and a great source of information.  In fact, virtually non-stop for 2 hours.  The fort was a far West outpost in the early 1800s and had quite a checkered past.  As an Army outpost, the tour guide had a lot of interesting stories about how life was back then.  This site was full of interesting stories about how life really was in the early 1800s.  Not some place I would want to live.  Especially when you realized that when you hit your early 50s, you had to have, at least, 2 or 3 opposing teeth so you could tear open a black powder packet to load a musket or you couldn't re-enlist.  Not that's a real standard to live up to!

The fort as it sits.  The Mississippi is behind it, to the East.

The outer fencing.  Note the posts are of different heights.  The lower one was so the soldiers could shoot down onto those that would try to attack the fort.  Also note the deck that the soldiers stood on to get them higher up on the wall.  The taller logs also afforded a place for the soldiers to duck behind when being shot at.  The logs are also pointed so the snow and rain will slough off and not rot the wood.  Pretty nifty, huh?

This is our guide telling us about the Quartermaster's building.  They had quite a collection of items from their time period.  

The next building over is the officer's quarters.  Their room was usually white washed in and out and was well appointed, I mean for the time.  Notice the "chamber pot" at the corner of the bed...

Another room in the Officer's Quarters was the kitchen area.  They made bread on a regular, daily basis but it was thought that eating fresh bread would make you sick if you didn't wait until it was a couple of days old.  Now that is weird.  

Behind the Officer's Quarters building is the outhouse, on the left, and a clay "oven" on the right.  You can figure out what the outhouse is for, I'm pretty sure.  The clay oven is made up of rock and clay.  They would build a fire, put in their food, cover it up, and let it bake for awhile until it was done.

These are the enlisted barracks in the back of the fort.  The building on the right is acting as a museum, of sorts.  The one on the right is a doctor's office and an example of enlisted housing.

They have a 6 pound cannon onsite.  It is actually on a 9 pound cannon base but this is what they have.  A 6 pound cannon uses about 2 pounds of black powder to fire a projectile.  The first time they fire this thing, they used 6 pounds, thinking that was the way it was.  The cannon fired a concrete projectile clear across the Mississippi (more than 1 mile) and it ended up clear across the field it was sitting on.  

Over in the doctor's office, we were treated to stories of what doctors did to treat patients in the early 1800s up until the Civil War.

Over in the garrison's office for the watch commander, they had a few typical uniforms on display.

Displaying the flogging devices used to punish soldiers that had been involved in some sort of infraction at the fort.  Flogging was used until the end of the Civil War.  

Plus enlisted accommodations in one of the buildings.

In one of the corner block houses there were slits to fire from.  We could see the bridge over to the rod headed for Nauvoo and a barge headed our way.

Interior view of the fort.

We had a really informative time listening to him explain way more details than I could have ever wanted.  It was quite interesting.

On another point of interest...we have our last date that we will be here working on our mission.  We had been given September 16th as our last day so we had asked to leave a bit earlier so we could visit the Kirtland and Palmyra temples.  However, after proposing this date, we found that the Palmyra temple closes for winter shutdown on September 12th, the day we would leave to go visit them.  So, Arlene asked President McArthur if we could possibly leave a week earlier so we could get there and visit that particular temple.  He approved it, as he wants us to have some good experiences on our way home, and we have a new end date of service of September 3rd as our last day in the temple.  Our rudimentary plans are to visit Kirtland, Niagara Falls, then Palmyra.  On the way back, we will be stopping at the Columbus Ohio and Indianapolis Indiana temple before heading back to Nauvoo.  So, officially, we have 46 days until we can start our trip to leave for home.  A week later and we'll be back to do our final packing and we will then head West about the 17th or thereabouts.  Now, if we can make it to that date...