We finished up our week in the East with a bang. Sunday saw us in Frederick, MD touring the local sights. The age of the communities around us here is still something we are coming to grips with. The places we visit seem so much older than what we see back home. The fact really hit home when we walked thru a graveyard that had a grave from 1797. We in the west just don't have that depth of community history that the folks in the East do. Not the Anglo communities, the native communities do. We did the walking tour of Frederick and enjoyed the architecture. One thing that we noticed was that most of the old houses have signs on them that read, so and so slept here once or so and so lived here for a short time. I guess it makes it more attractive for the tourists if honest Abe bedded down here once way back when. It was interesting none the less. We took the back roads home and toured the last three covered bridges in MD.
Monday the 8th was the big day for D.C.. We woke early for the 40ish mile drive into the city, we were commuters for the day. Traffic is amazing thru the older parts of the suburbs, tiny lanes with all sorts of vehicles crammed in. We drove around the city for about 15 minutes trying to find a place to park, it sounds harder than it was. Once we found the lot we were golden. Not a bad price either, $15 for the entire day. We dropped the truck and hit the streets. Our first stop was the Smithsonian museum of natural history. A huge museum with just about every kind of natural life you could want to see. Mummies, birds, stuffed animals of all kinds. We found the items that the kids wanted to see and headed out to the capital mall. Off to the Washington monument. Holy Moses that thing is tall. Something like 555 feet tall. From the monument we hoofed it out to the Lincoln monument. Again, that thing is giant. Seeing the pictures just doesn't do it justice. It was a wonderful feeling to be standing where so much has happened. From the Lincoln monument we had about an hour and a half until our tour of National Geographic so we swung by the white house and said "whats up" to Obama. I don't think he liked any of my ideas on how to fix the country. By this time my beautiful little girl was looking like she was going to pass out from the heat and hunger. I mean she had the look. It was either get her into a cool place or she was going to bonk! We cooled her off and fed her so she was now good to go. Now off to the highlight of the day. Mr. Carroll had been nice enough to hook us up with Mark Theisson, an incredibly gifted and quite famous photographer with Nat. Geo.. We met him at his office and got to spend a bit of time checking out his studio and getting a glimpse into what it takes to get the shots for the magazine and the channel. It was a really interesting visit. We were all floored. Definitely the top! From our visit we had enough energy to hit one more museum before crashing. Back to the mall and into the Smithsonian museum of American history. Floor upon floor of American history. More than we wanted to see at that point. We were pooped! Hit the road and enjoy a cold one back up in the hills
Tuesday the 9th was a prep day. Got the trailer and our personal things lined out for the trip West.
We headed out around noon on the 10th back thru the panhandle of MD and down thru the hills of WV. I have described the hills to a couple of folks this way. It is like standing on a boat and looking out at the rollers in the ocean. Just picture BIG rollers covered with hardwood trees, as far as the eye can see. You get to the top of one, only to drop back down into the belly and have to get back to the top again. It was beautiful and maddening all at the same time.
Today was trucking thru KY and right on into IN again. We are shooting for Denver for the weekend. We would love to see the Broncos training camp. Keep your fingers crossed.
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