Our trip to Locust Grove was laid back and relaxing. We had a general plan on what we wanted to do when we set out, but we ended up just following the kids' lead. Sometimes that can be the best kind of adventure.

The mansion (in the background below) was closed for renovations, but the kids didn't seem to mind at all. They enjoyed climbing the walls and rolling down the hills.

We meandered around and checked out several of the outbuildings. The kids seemed to be most interested in the springhouse, which is built like a bridge over the top of a creek/spring. Then we walked down behind the house and let the kids get a little muddy. 

At the direction of the gardeners, we walked up to the beehives. One of the hives had just been found the day before and put into one of the boxes. We were told we could get up fairly close, but we didn't really want to encourage the littles to do that so we stayed a safe distance back.

We got some good information from the gardeners (nods to Sarah). For one thing, those funky shiny beetle things that are eating lacy patterns into my green bean leaves are fairly harmless and will go away in about another week. For another, they grow Concord grapes at Locust Grove. While they're not ripe now, they will be before too long. And grape vines are kind of fun to climb on.

On this particular trip, it seemed like mamas were showing up all through the morning and early afternoon. We picnicked near the parking lot under some lovely shade trees and were joined by several more friends. We had wanted to walk down past the barn where there are some walking trails through the woods, but the kids were having fun running and playing so we hung out and let them make up their own adventures.

If you go: Even if you don't want to pay to tour the main house, there's a lot to do and it's a pretty wide open space for running and rolling and being silly. All the staff members were very friendly and happy to share information about the property. In fact, we were encouraged to come back around Christmas-time when they have a special celebration by candlelight. If you take a look at their Events Calendar, you'll see they have something going on almost every weekend.