Fort Du Bois

This past weekend, I was invited to a private reenactment at Fort Du bois in Wood River, Illinois. I think there was around eighteen that attended. My friend Dale and I arrived Friday night around 8:00 in time to meet our friend Simeon, with whom we shared a cabin.
The fort was constructed with a cabin on each of its four corners plus a building in the middle of the compound had two separate rooms. A stockade linked each corner cabin and they were made up of a room with a table and fireplace, plus a room that had four bunk beds, so eight people could occupy each cabin.
We passed all our gear in thru the outer window of our cabin since it was easier than packing everything around thru the front gate. The night was pretty chilly so we got a fire going in the fire place as quickly as we could. Simeon, Dale and I each chose a top bunk and got our gear laid out.
The bad thing about the cabins was that the heat from the fire had a hard time passing thru the doorway that led to the bunk room. It got down to about 27 degrees and I was chilled most of the night. From where I slept, or tried to sleep, I could see the glow of the fire on the ceiling rafters. I knew about 1:30 in the morning that the fire was about out when no reflection was on them. I got down and coaxed the fire back to life. I did the same at around 5:30. By that time I decided I might as well stay up.
Eventually, Dale and Simeon got up and we fried up some ham steaks for breakfast. We’ve made ham steaks before many times at events and you just can’t beat them for flavor, especially after you’ve dropped them in the fire ashes..
They are best with some biscuits enveloping them but we didn’t have the blessing of biscuits this day.
A fellow reenactor friend of ours, Gordon and his wife Donna, arrived Saturday morning and Gordon put on a small seminar on building a ground loom, fire starting and also his master bow making skills. They actually live just a few blocks from my house and we’ve been to many events together.

I took some of my lanterns but never really got the opportunity to sell any. But, I did get the opportunity to try out different ones in our cabin. I got to see how my candles burned; comparing burn time and brightness. The grungy style that I use does have a longer burn time but does not put off but about half the light of the typical wax candles.

Saturday, afternoon we had a shooting demonstration and I let a number of guys shoot my flintlock. Thankfully, it fired the majority of the time. Simeon even hit the target with it.
I got to meet some Christian brothers there that I had never met before and I believe it turned out to be a great event. Great events don’t always have to be large and the smaller ones usually are better, in my opinion. My hat’s off to Dave, the organizer, and I hope we can do it again soon.