NEWSLETTER #3 (2009)
ON THE ROAD with Bill and Anita
On Saturday, June 6th, we arrived in the Washington DC area from Delaware. We are staying at a very nice RV Resort in College Park, MD that has cable TV, internet, and is easily accessible to the city. A city bus (fare only 60 cents, one way) is available every ½ hour within the resort. A twenty minute ride takes us to the Metro (subway) (fare is only $1.35 one way) and we are in the center of DC in another 20 minutes.
I am sure almost everyone on our mailing list has been here. We hope some of our experiences will bring back some good memories. It is the city of beauty and grace with its great public monuments and leafy promenades. For Anita and I, there has been the pride in the beauty as well as the heritage that these magnificent buildings represent, an awareness of our country’s purpose and its history.
Would you believe there are over 2 million people in the United States with the same last name as our first president, Washington, as well as 26 mountains, 740 schools and 155 cities!
Changing of the Guard at Arlington
We spent a full day in the new Museum of the American Indians, showcasing Indian life from North, Central and South America. Our lunch consisted of Indian food… the buffalo taco was delicious.
I spent three hours in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and saw Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis plane, the original Wright Brothers first heavier than air plane, and several space capsules that returned our astronauts to earth, while Anita visited the National Gallery of Art. The guides told me the A&S Museum was the leader in total attendance year after year.
I visited the Newseum, a new six story museum featuring newspaper and television news history. There were 26 films to view, one of which was a spectacular news reel of the tragedy of the twin towers. National media should run it worldwide often, to remind us of the reason we are fighting our enemy in Afghanistan.
We visited the National Archive Building and viewed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, all signed by the courageous men who knew they were signing their possible death warrant. I bought a copy of the Constitution which has been good reading and has answered some of the questions I had harbored for years.
Our 40 mile visit by car to Mount Vernon was a highlight. We stood in line for one hour for a ten minute tour of Washington’s home, and spent the rest of the day touring the grounds, visiting Washington’s tomb, the wharf and the many outbuildings. There is a new museum consisting of an educational center and history of the General. We learned so much more of this great man, who had the choice of leading our new country as a king, or an emperor, but instead, chose to accept the honor of being our first president of a democracy. And he set a precedent of serving only two terms, as he could have served for life.
On a beautiful Sunday we took the metro to the center of the mall and walked about a mile to the Washington Monument and listened to a jazz concert for awhile. From the monument we walked on the mall grass to the World War 2 Memorial. I had eagerly looked forward to visiting it, as I am veteran of that encounter. I expected much more and was disappointed. We lost 435,000 lives and the only message to that effect was one gold star for every 1000 lost with no explanation as to what each star stood for…and perhaps 75 children and their parents were sitting at the edge of the pool with their feet dangling in the water talking, and laughing, as if they were at Disney World! I read the other day that there are less than 2 million of us left out of the 16 million that served. We then walked another mile to the Vietnam Memorial wall that has 58,246 names of those that did not come back. You could have heard a pin drop there. From that memorial we walked to the famous Lincoln Memorial and sat on the steps for awhile looking across the reflective pool to the Washington Monument. From there we strolled over to the Korean War Memorial honoring the 54,426 Americans who lost their life. There are 19 cast iron life sized statues of our troops reflected in the marble wall, totaling 38, to commensurate the 38th parallel. It was a day to reflect!
Anita likes to visit zoos, so of course we visited the DC zoo. The high light of our visit was watching the 5 month old baby gorilla with her mother. The zoo also had two Panda’s, but we only saw one, which was sound asleep. The visit, along with a nice lunch at a Lebanese sidewalk café, was all the time we had for that day.
A visit to Washington, D.C. would not be complete without a visit to the nation’s capitol. We took an hour tour and marveled at the many honorary statues and the fantastic painting on the top of the dome, 180 feet above us. We then walked what seemed like miles through the Russell, Dirksen and Hart Senate buildings to get a couple of tickets to the gallery of the Senate. We heard two senators give a speech, one on the proposed health bill and the other regarding the Iranian rioting situation…. only the senate president, Ronald Burris, (our newest senator from Illinois) along with pages and stenographers were present. We then walked across the street to visit the Supreme Court Building and heard a 30 minute presentation about the top judicial court while sitting in their courtroom.
This past Wednesday we took the day off to catch up on things. We left late in the afternoon for an evening at the Kennedy Center on the Potomac. We arrived in time for the last tour of the beautiful building, which houses 4 theaters, all with spectacular chandeliers. Two of the theaters, the Opera and the Concert, have seating for 2300 and 2400 respectively. Then we attended the performance of Brujo de la Mancha, and his fellow Aztec dancers in one of the theaters. After 20 years of extensive research, Mr. de la Mancha presented the music and dancing that the Aztec people enjoyed 517 years ago, well before the arrival of the Spaniards. They danced wildly while playing traditional music on a wide variety of handcrafted drums, flutes, and conch horns. The men wore enormous feather headdresses and colorful costumes. After the performance, we went to the theaters roof top restaurant for Anita’s belated birthday dinner. It was a delightful evening!!
MoMo
Mother and baby gorilla
We spent another full day at the Museum of History and the Museum of American History. The former has excellent displays of all of our wars including the original flag of 1812 war. The latter museum specialized in our earth and its early inhabitants, including skeletons of many dinosaurs. The other half of the museum featured the Hope diamond and a great presentation of the structure of our planet.
Our last day of touring was yesterday. Anita spent the day at the Dumbarton Oaks Museum & Garden and Tudor Place in Georgetown while I visited the National Geographic Museum and the Spy Museum.
It is time to leave after 15 days in our Capitol City. We had a wonderful time and now are in great physical shape after all of the walking. Tomorrow (Sunday), we will drive a short distance to Harpers Ferry and spend a couple of nights there before we leave for Gettysburg. We were there three years ago, but the weather was awful. We will than head for the Catskills and Adirondacks in the state of New York and may go to Canada from there.
To date we have driven 1401 miles in the RV, 792in the car and 14 miles on our bikes.
Thanx again for traveling with us…drop us an email, we would like to hear from you.
Bill, Anita and Hunter
