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Early inhabitants of the land that would become known as Virginia were the Powhatans. At the time the English settlers landed on the banks of what they called the James River, the Powhatans were living in villages and growing more than half their food. Jamestown Settlement, where these pictures were taken, was built in 1957 to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. The Settlement illustrates what the original Jamestown would have been like. There is a Powhatan village, a fort matching the description of the one the settlers built, and a dock at the river with three replica ships tied up at it. Those ships' names are the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery.

This Powhatan village is situated just outside the fort. The Powhatan man you see in the first picture was scraping a newly-tanned hide when Flat Teddy and I wandered by to visit with him. He put the bear skin around his shoulders so that Flat Teddy would have the bear for company while posing for our picture. In the second picture you can see how the Powhatans created their canoes out of logs. The girls at this site keep a small fire burning in the big log. When they move the fire to a different part of the log, they then get busy on the part that was recently burned, scraping with shells from the river to remove the charred part of the log. Eventually, they'll have the log hollowed out enough for people to sit in and paddle the canoe on the river. They said they've made canoes for several villages like this one up and down the east coast and sent the canoes to them. The canoes really work!

In the background in both pictures are houses like the ones the Powhatans built in those days. They called the houses "yehakins," in their language. Yehakins were used mostly for sleeping and storage.

These men are interpreters at the fort in Jamestown Settlement. They explained to Flat Teddy and to me that they came to Virginia on what was essentially a military operation. Their orders were to find gold, other raw materials, and a northwest passage to the Orient. They were to create an English stronghold north of where the Spanish had already taken possession of this new land in what is now Florida.

No women came with this first group because of the nature of the expedition. These men were not considered to be settlers on the land. They built a fort, maintained their armor, and wore it outside the fort to protect themselves from Indian arrows. The men in the first picture are wearing what they would wear inside the fort, and they've just been sweeping out their wattle and daub house, which might house as many as five or six men. The second man is wearing his armor to show us what it looked like, and he's the one who maintains everyone's armor in the company. Inside the fort there was a chapel of the Church of England, and every man was required to attend services twice a day.

Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk

Remember the Wright brothers and their bicycle shop we visited in Dayton, Ohio? This is the place near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where they came to experiment with flying the plane they had designed in Ohio. Here they found isolation, high sand dunes for takeoffs, strong winds for lift, and soft landings. The hill you see in the first picture now has a monument on top of it, built to honor Wilbur and Orville Wright. From that hill the brothers had taken off on over a thousand glider flights to learn how to control flight, before they ever attached a motor to their invention. Without control, they knew they couldn't successfully fly.

The second picture shows the strip of flat land, below the hill, where they conducted their first four flights in the plane they had named "Flyer." The date was December 17, 1903. The large granite boulder on the left marks the spot where the airplane left the ground. That first flight lasted 12 seconds, and the plane traveled 120 feet (36.6 meters) (to the first stone you see down along the paved path). Orville was the pilot for that flight; he flew the plane lying flat on a "cradle" near the motor. For the first time, a manned, heavier-than-air machine left the ground by its own power, moved forward under control without losing speed, and landed on a point as high as that from which it started. The brothers were elated! They took turns flying three more times that day, getting a feel for the controls and increasing their distance with each flight. Wilbur flew the second flight and kept the plane in the air for 12 seconds again, but traveling 175 feet (53.3 meters) this time. (The second stone down the paved walkway marks the spot.) Orville got the third try, and he flew for 15 seconds, traveling 200 feet (61.0 meters). (The third stone is nearly hidden by the second one.) Wilbur flew the fourth and last flight of the day, traveling for 59 seconds and going 852 feet (259.7 meters)! (The fourth stone is way down near the trees at the end of the walkway.)

The "Flyer" had flown! But that was its last time. After the fourth and longest flight, a gust of wind caught the plane, rolled it over, and damaged it beyond easy repair. Their flying season was over. The Wrights sent their father a matter-of-fact telegram reporting the flights, times, and distances, and traveled home to Dayton to be with family for Christmas.

The "Flyer" has long since been repaired and hangs today from a ceiling in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at a height it never achieved when it actually flew!

About a mile behind the big hill is First Flight Elementary School, a beautiful new building which I got to visit. I was able to sit in their computer lab and send some e-mails to my family from this school so close to this historic site. North Carolina license plates have "First in Flight" printed on them. Ohio is proud of its boys, the Wright brothers, and North Carolina is proud to be the place where they achieved their success.

Flat Teddy here. Hey, everybody, check this out! Here I am getting a bear hug from Story Musgrave, a real astronaut! He came to the Kennedy Space Center to talk to people, and Mrs. Pearson and I got to meet him after his talk.

He told us that when he was a boy on the farm the fastest thing he ever saw was a train pulled by a steam locomotive. He had no idea that someday he'd fly on a space shuttle. While he was on the farm he learned everything he could about machines. When he was only ten or eleven years old he was already out working in the fields on a tractor. If the tractor broke down he could either wait all day for someone to come pick him up or he could start working on the tractor. So he learned how to fix things.

He went to college lots of times and got lots of degrees. You can read all about those on his website www.spacestory.com.

He asked all the kids in the audience, "Who wants to be an astronaut when you grow up?" I saw all the kids raise their hands. Story told them that what some of them will be when they grow up hasn't even been thought of yet. Just like being an astronaut was only a job in some people's imaginations when Story was a boy. Nobody knew we'd actually get people up into space. He also told us that whoever will be the first person to walk on Mars is in elementary school right now. So study hard, everybody. Learn everything you can about every subject. You never know what you'll need to know in your new job--or on your walk on the surface of Mars!

Flat Teddy here. This guy sitting next to me is Owney, a stuffed dog who traveled around the United States twice in the last two years. He didn't travel around the same way Mrs. Pearson and I are doing, however. He was boxed up and mailed from school to school. Two years ago he visited Mrs. Pearson's and my classroom, and our principal, Mrs. Reid, pinned on his vest a Bennett Bronco pin. You can see it under his ear, near me. Last year he came to Bennett School again, and that time he visited Miss Osborne's fifth grade classroom. We're sitting in a rocking chair in the reading corner of Mrs. Carter's first grade classroom in Key Largo Elementary School in Florida.

Now this particular Owney has retired and stays here in this classroom all the time, because he belongs to Mrs. Carter. She started the project that year Mrs. Pearson and I participated. (There are other Owneys out there being mailed all over the United States right now, however, helping children in schools all over the United States learn geography, meteorology, history, and other facts about each town and state they visit.) For the story of the original dog named Owney you'll have to go to our report from the U.S. Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. And check out the website for Key Largo Elementary School. What a happenin' place!

These two photos were taken in the part of Louisiana that was settled by the Acadians, who were driven out of Nova Scotia in 1755. The Acadians in Nova Scotia were French-speaking and seemed to be a threat to England after it won possession of Canada. The English expelled the Acadians, who migrated to several places around the Atlantic Ocean that were controlled by the French. Some came to this area of Louisiana around St. Martinville and have been here ever since. Over the years the word "Acadian" has been slurred into the term "Cajun."

The first picture is of a wealthy landowners' house who wasn't Acadian at all. The original owner and his descendants were Creoles, a term designating people of non-native descent who were born in that part of the country. When the plantation on the Bayou Teche, just outside St. Martinville, came available to the Louisiana state historical society in the earlier part of this century, the society bought it for two purposes: to preserve the old house, built in 1815, and to provide a site to commemorate the settlement of the Acadians in this area. On the grounds of the estate is a small cabin like those the Acadians first built when they came to this bayou country. There is also a museum telling the story of the Acadians being driven out of Nova Scotia and how they settled and created their new life in Louisiana.

The second picture is of the Evangeline oak tree in St. Martinville, the legendary meeting place of Emmeline Labiche and Louis Arceneaux, the counterparts of Evangeline and Gabriel in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem " Evangeline." (Obviously, Flat Teddy visited this wonderful old tree with me.) There is a sign near the tree telling the story of a young man from St. Martinville, Emile Edouard Simon, who went to Harvard in the 1840s to study law. Simon family tradition holds that Emile told Longfellow, who was on the Harvard faculty at that time, about the Acadian exiles and described for him the geography and traditions of the Bayou Teche country. Longfellow wrote "Evangeline" while at Harvard, and it is entirely possible that his inspiration for the poem did indeed come from the story that Emile Simon told him.

Hi, it's me, Flat Teddy, once again. This time I got to jump on a machine (with Mrs. Pearson's help) to see how far we could jump if we were on the moon. The machine lifted us just a little each time Mrs. Pearson jumped up. It was really fun! The three pictures were all taken in Houston, Texas, at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). You really can't see much of me in the picture of the Lunar Leap, because I got turned sideways in the leap, but I'm there! The other two pictures are of the X-38 that's being developed and tested now for use in the International Space Station, once it's fully operational. There is room in the X-38 for all five astronauts that will be in the space station at one time. They will use it if they are sick or injured and need to come home quickly or if there's a big problem at the space station that they can't handle. If they need to escape the space station, they can do that in this vehicle. They will have to lie down in it, and it will be controlled entirely from the NASA control center right here in Houston. (That's in case the astronauts are too sick or hurt to fly it.) It can return to Earth in five hours, and the final descent it makes to Earth's surface will be by slowed by a huge parachute that will let it drop gently onto the ground, so it can land practically anywhere. The X-38 is made to fit inside the shuttle cargo bay, of course, so that it can be taken up to the space station and locked onto it.

While we were touring the different buildings at the JSC we got to see the control room where the shuttle flights are coordinated. Remember when Mrs. Pearson and I got to see the shuttle launch from Kennedy Space Center last November? Just a few minutes after its launch the control center here in Houston took over all communications with it, and we saw the very room where all the scientists sat that night while they were talking to the astronauts. While there's a shuttle up, there are always people in that room to help the astronauts that are aboard the shuttle.

What an exciting day for me! This is Flat Teddy, signing off in Houston. Over and out.

Hi! It's Flat Teddy back with you again. Exploring this cave is the coolest thing I ever did! And I do mean cool! It is only 56 degrees F (13 degrees C) in Carlsbad Caverns. Luckily, I have my fur coat to keep warm, but Mrs. Pearson had to wear a sweatshirt and a jacket.

See that huge hole in the rock in the first picture? From May through October there are millions of Mexican free-tail bats that fly in and out of there when they come up here to this cave to have their babies and live for the summer. The bats swarm out of the cave in the evenings, and all those seats you see in the picture are for the tourists who come to watch. In the early morning the bats come back after eating bugs all night, and they return to the part of the cave where they hang out. (Literally, they "hang" out!) The farmers around the area love the bats because they eat the bugs that eat the farmers' crops. Mrs. Pearson and I walked down a trail right through that dark opening into the cave. There weren't any bats around then because it was February. We kept walking down and down on a paved trail that was very steep. Finally, we got too far into the cave to see any more sunlight, and then there were electric lights along the way.

In the second picture you can barely see me because it is really dark in the cave, except for the formations that are lit up. People who explore caves call the formations "decorations." We learned to call them stalactites if they hang down from the ceiling and stalagmites if they grow up from the bottom of the cave. All the decorations are formed from water seeping down through the limestone above the cave and bringing minerals with it that are then deposited on the decorations. In fact, the whole cave exists because of water. First, there was an ancient coral reef that formed here millions of years ago at the edge of an ocean. The shells and coral from the reef piled up hundreds of feet deep and got pressed into a rock called limestone. Then the reef was pushed up to become a mountain range called the Guadalupes. Then water got into the limestone with some acid in it and ate away the rock until this big cave was formed. And I mean big! The Big Room has fourteen acres (5.7 hectares) of space in it and a ceiling hundreds of feet high. It's awesome in there! That's where we were when this picture was taken of me. There were lots and lots of decorations that we looked at in the Big Room. We were in the cave for three hours, walking more than two miles (3.2 kilometers) of trails.

The best thing happened at the end of all that walking, when we were ready to go back up to the Visitor Center. We stepped into an elevator, way down there in the cave, and whoosh--in a minute we were back up in the sunlight and walking to our camper!

Here I am in sunny San Diego at the world-famous zoo. I’m with my friend Chris. Mrs. Pearson and I went with his family to tour the zoo. Chris and I are standing near the entrance to the children’s zoo, where Chris got to pet some goats and sheep. In the second picture we’re seeing one of the pandas in a different part of the zoo. The pandas are a very popular attraction at the zoo, and there were a lot of people waiting in line to walk past their enclosure and see them. We had to use quiet voices in the line as we got close to the pandas’ enclosure. This panda in the picture really put on a show for us! She climbed up in that tree and did a sort of wave to the crowd. Everybody laughed--quietly, of course. We rode a double-decker bus on a tour around the zoo, and we got to sit up on the top deck. When we went past the giraffe enclosure we were as tall as the giraffes’ heads!

Part of San Diego Zoo is on a hill, and other parts are in the canyons that come down off the hill. We visited Bear Canyon, Elephant Mesa, Horn & Hoof Mesa, the Tiger River, Reptile Mesa, and Primate Mesa. In the gorilla enclosure the baby gorilla was playing with an older adult gorilla and climbing on the adult’s head and trying to get him to wrestle him. Sometimes the baby would run and pound on the thick windows where we were watching him, and he seemed to enjoy making us jump. The baby orangutan was playing a game of chase with an older orangutan, and they were wrestling, too, while they were hanging from ropes.

We had to walk a long ways to see just these favorite animals, and still we didn’t get to see everything. I think it would take two days to see the whole zoo.

Mrs. Pearson and I got to enjoy a whole day in the newest park at Disneyland. California Adventure had only been open one month when we got there. Here was Mickey Mouse all set to greet me just inside the entrance. He was dressed as a tourist, wearing beach clothes and carrying a camera.

All over the park we saw shows and rides about California. There was a theater where our seats moved to make us think we were actually flying in an airplane over California and seeing all the great sights from the air. That was pretty real to me!

In another part of the park we saw a lot of things about Hollywood. The best theater in that part of the park was the Muppets Theater. We had to wear 3-D glasses in there. We also wore 3-D glasses in the show about the Bugs’ Life, and in that theater we got our faces sprayed by some mist and felt some termites crawling in the wood under our seats. Well, there weren’t really termites, but the special effects sure had us thinking that there were for a few moments. It was a really funny, exciting show!

I was glad Mrs. Pearson liked the roller coaster, because we got to ride that twice. It was SO much fun to go in a circle, upside-down for just a second or two. Wheee!

This report wasn’t to teach you anything about history or geography. We put it in here to show you that we finally took a day to just have fun!