Owen Sound

Today we drove up to Owen Sound. It was a destination for many escaping slaves. We went to the visitors center first and found a tour through town of historic spots from the time of arriving runaway slaves. We visited these spots and took some great pictures. Some of the spots still talked of secret rooms and underground arrival tunnels which we couldn't figure out. Why have secret spots when the slaves were free here? We couldn't find an answer. Tomorrow we are going to several museums and perhaps they will have some more information.

One of the neatest things we saw was a cairn as a memorial to the slaves who traveled the UGRR and made it to Owen Sound. This cairn is designed to reflect the entire route that the slaves traveled from Africa to Owen Sound. In the walls are rocks from Africa, southern former slave holding states and northern states that slaves would have traveled through. The "floor" of the cairn is quilt patterns from a signal quilt. They used 8 quilt patterns - they are beautiful!

Besides the UGRR sites we also went to a waterfall and found information about several more that we hope we have time to visit tomorrow.

No quilt shops today! But with the cost of fabric I'm not sure that's a bad thing!!