fort-unate

It was a beautiful evening in Beaufort, NC. We decided to drive to Fort Macon, a fort not in use today, but built for and used in the Civil War.

We have a little toy we keep in the car. It's a bunch of old key chains hooked together with one random long old fashioned key. We took the key chain with us for Lily to enjoy shaking as we walked around. Elliott promptly stole the key chain from her and was waving it around and a lady walking by said, "That looks like an important key."








This is one of the first signs you see as you walk towards the fort and sure enough I had an iron grip on Elliott's hand when we were near steep ledges and drop offs. The fort was beautiful to visit though. The grass was really green, the sun was setting, and a really large ship was leaving the inlet and we had a great view of it.






Nearing the end of our fort time, we visited these little rooms at the bottom of the fort set up as museum exhibits. You can see how the soldiers lived, what the laundress' life was like, the kitchens, etc. It was nearly closing time and we were in the last exhibit room. Elliott was playing with the keychain over by the heavy door to the room and I heard him say, "It's locked. It's locked!" I didn't think much of it, surely he couldn't lock the door, he's just pretending. A few minutes later we were ready to leave. We were all hungry for dinner, it was closing time, and Elliott needed to go to the potty. Brian went to open the door and I heard him say, "It's locked." Brian thought someone closing up had locked us in but I told him I heard Elliott say he locked the door.


I took this picture when it was still a little funny. I made some crack about if only I'd married someone a little more gangster, we'd be out already. But then after a couple minutes of Brian trying, and then me wiggling the key trying to unlock the lock it wasn't funny anymore. We even let Elliott try. He was the one who locked it, maybe he could unlock it. Brian tried to call 911 on his iphone but he didn't have service in the bottom of a brick Civil War fort. There was a big window near the door but the sill had been recently repainted....and was now repainted shut. We could not open it. We pounded on the window with our fists, hoping someone would hear and go get help. But there was no one. We hadn't seen any other tourists in a while. We were the last ones still visiting the fort. We were locked in a room in a Civil War Fort with no diaper bag, food, water, or potty. As I mindlessly jiggled the key in the lock I was resigning myself to sleeping on the cold floor all night when suddenly, it opened. We were FREE! Now what type of parents would let their kid play with an old fashioned key in a historic building? Can you imagine when security guards played back the video of what happened in that room? Sheesh. Maybe we can improve our parenting smarts before we visit the nation's capital next week.