During our tour of the Southeast, we will travel by boat and by bus. 

A Riverboat Tour of the Southeast

During our tour of the Southeast, we traveled by riverboat and by bus.  Check out the exciting adventures we had during our trip.

			Our first stop in the northeast was the Florida Everglades. The Everglades are made up of 10,000 different islands. We saw alligators and many sea birds.
			NASA website for kids The Kennedy Space Center was really exciting! We learned a lot about space and how rockets are launched. Our nation's first journey to the moon originated here.
			In the southeast, one of our favorite stops was in Orlando, Florida to visit Disney World. We enjoyed meeting all the Disney characters. Click here to visit the Magic Kingdom Website.
			Our third stop was Jamestown, Virginia, the site of the first permanent English settlement in America.  To better understand how tough it was for the first English settlers to survive during their first year, students played an interactive online game called The Jamestown Online Adventure.
			While in Appalachia we learned that this mountainous region covers most  of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states.  We also learned about the importance of mining and the danger involved in digging tunnels in order to find the coal. Our next stop was Memphis, Tennessee. It was here that we were introduced to "The Blues," a type of music first made popular by African Americans serving as slaves in Tennessee. We also visited Elvis Presley's home, Graceland. Each year, more than 4 million people come to New Orleans, Louisiana from around the world to be part of the Mardi Gra. The Mardi Gra is sometimes referred to as the "Greatest Free Party on Earth". We also spent time discussing Hurricane Katrina and looking at pictures of how New Orleans has changed since September 2006.
			The City of New Orleans & The Mississippi River In New Orleans, we also visited The French Quarters. The French Quarters is the oldest and most famous neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. The district contains many individual historic buildings. Hurricane Katrina did not have much effect on the French Quarters.

We boarded a ship and cruised out to see an oil rig
in action in the Gulf of Mexico. It was very interesting to learn
how oil workers drill down under the sea to find oil. Under the rig,
we visited, the water was about 300 feet deep. It's a shallow rig.
Some rigs are in water almost a mile deep. Those are floating rigs
tied to the bottom by big cables.

One of the workers showed us the pipes where the drill goes
down into the water. He
showed us the machines
that run the drill. He said that when they find oil, they pump
it out of a rock into a pipe. Then an oil tanker takes it to a refinery on shore. They are very careful not to leak any of he oil into the water because they know that oil can pollute he water and hurt the fish and plants.

That evening, we boarded a crew boat and
headed back to shore so we would be ready
to visit a cotton plantation in Natchez, Mississippi.

The Melrose Plantation

Cotton ready for harvest

While visiting the Melrose Plantation
we learned about how cotton changed the lives of many
African Americans who were forced to work as slaves in the fields.

We also visited Montgomery, Alabama and learned a lot about the civil rights movement.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MEMORIAL

In Montgomery, Alabama, we learned about the birthplace
of the civil rights movement and visited the Civil Rights
Memorial which honors the 40 Americans who were killed
during the civil rights movement. 

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