jen fogg makes pictures

When I was little my dream job was to work at St. Marie Among the Iroquois or the French Fort as we called it in my insensitive youth.  It was/is  a county park in the town I grew up in where they recreated down to the weird smells, daily life during the 1650s in upstate New York.  They had what I now know are costumed interpreters, but back then I thought you got to live there and be a blacksmith, or a carpenter, or churn butter and wear all those old timey clothes for real.  I thought you lived and died there (like a real job), and I so wanted to be one of those people.  When my parents took my brother and I to Colonial Williamsburg, I thought my life could end, "This is it - Nirvana!" and a copy of the Declaration of Independence I got as a souvenir  (my prized possession, it had burnt edges and everything), made my life  complete!  I do not quite understand why this is, I like history but not so much that I want to sit around reading large chronicles of the Crimean War or anything like that.  Maybe  it is the idea of simpler times that appeals to me, I don't know, but I am still drawn to those places where history is alive or at least can be glimpsed without all the modern day superfluousness.  So finally after two years of yearning we made a short trip to gold country.  It was the most perfect of days and the drive down historic Route 49 brought me right back to how I felt as a kid seeing history come to life.  There are a string of towns even some ghost towns that seem to have barely changed since they sprung up during the gold rush. I mean people were actually sitting on front porches talking to their neighbors, no one was in a hurry, there was a sewing machine repair shop for crying out loud!  Sitting on one of these front porches at a  cafe we half expected to see people on horseback instead of cars and Devin made me sit and relax and I did it!  Lucky for me there is still much more of the area to explore and Devin and I vowed to come back and stay in one of the little inns all by ourselves someday!