Mormon Battalion Visitor Center

For date night this weekend (i have such good ideas, ha ha) we went to the Mormon Battalion visitor center in Old Town, San Diego. It recently reopened after undergoing extensive renovation and upgrade. I'd never been before it had been redone, but it's apparently VERY different from the way it was before. It was super high tech, so it makes sense. It was really cool! You take a tour and go through different rooms and watch films that tell the story of the battalion. At the very beginning you see some antique style portraits of some characters you'll see later. As the sister missionaries begin the tour, all of the sudden, the portraits come to life! (it's basically TV screens with frames around them, you get the idea) but it was fun to watch them, they start to talk to you and then suddenly get up and leave their frames. You follow them through the story of their march. John got outfitted for the march and we felt the tremor of a stampede that the battalion experienced. After the tour you can pan for gold, look out from the tower or watch movies. We had a lot of fun!

Westward ho!

Onward! NOW!

John is all ready for the march

Probably shouldn't trust me with the cannon...

we tried to find some gold...

didn't happen...

at the top of the tower

Honorary Members! We got to get our picture taken with a really old fashioned looking camera (but it had a computer screen on the back)

We had a great time and highly recommend it to anyone in this area. it's a great free date!! :)