A wonderfully busy day today. Up early again, a shower, some breakfast, a chance to check email and all the rest. Was on the road for Fort Klock by 10:30 hoping that it was going to be open today..... it was.

   Got to the site and rang the bell near the half open door, just as the sign said to do, and.... no one came around. Not wishing to be thought a pain in the butt I went looking for some one and so ran into the guy who is taking care of the place over the summer. David Klock is evidently a really distant cousin who just happened to be enamored with researching the Klocks and all of their descendants. Starting about 10 years ago he and his wife started coming to Fort Klock every summer from their home in Wisconsin to keep it open, lead tours and take care of the place. He evidently loves his 'work' as he proceeded to give me a 3 hour personnel tour of the whole place.

   We started with the homestead of course, and he was able to give me a run down on the whole history of it from the year it was built, 1750, until the present. Lots of neat tidbits of information, but I am going to save most of it for tomorrow when I hope to start posting annotated pictures of it all. Needless to say it was nearly too much to take in at one time. We did the barn and the school and then the black smith shop. Then, as it was after lunch for all of us, I took off to go get some lunch, but not before David asked if I wanted to go see some other sites off the homestead this evening after the Fort closed for the day. So of course I said yes.

    Went and grabbed a bite to eat and read the paper before coming back at 5:00. Of course someone else had shown up at about 10 til 5:00 and David was nice enough to give them a short version of the house tour before meeting up with me. I ended up hopping in to the van with David, his wife Doris and grand daughter Alexis and spent another couple hours being driven around to various places in the valley that had been important to the Klock family. So we went to two family cemeteries where members of the Klock, Nellis, Lipe and other Klock relatives were buried. We all saw the original houses of Colonel Jacob Klock, Old George Klock and the Nellis Tavern building. While driving down the highways and byways, they also showed me where several current Klocks lived or had recently lived, two different 'Klock' roads, Klock Ridge and the area where the battle of Klocks Field had taken place. By then it was nearly 9:00 and I was getting hungry again, but they still insisted on showing me the Historic Indian Castle Church and some of the area that was effected by the floods last year and in 2008. All in all a very pleasurable evening.

   A quick bite to eat once back at the trailer and then a couple of hours downloading the nearly 250 photo's from today as well as doing a first sorting of them and getting a start on working on them. Will continue working on them over the next couple of days and will start posting them tomorrow. For now though it is time to stop for the night.