Tag: Vacations

At the Moment, Vacations

Planning 2025 Vacations

Karen

Do you try and go on vacations every year?

We do. And we have, except during the scamdemic when no one was allowed to breathe unless given permission to do so.

Going on vacation is the light at the end of my working tunnel. It gives me something to look forward to. Otherwise, it’s the same hum-drum every day, I start feeling beat down and not exactly depressed but sort of … numb.

Though I love going on vacation, I love planning vacations almost as much. There is something so satisfying about putting travel puzzle pieces together and building a trip. We don’t use a travel agent, I’M the travel agent. I coordinate the flights, the trips, the vacation details including reservations for various things we want to do/see. Kevin hates this part, but me? I enjoy it. I’m a planner. Though I don’t get as upset when things don’t go according to plan anymore, (I used to get SO STRESSED when something didn’t go according to my carefully-laid out plans), it is nice to have some sort of a skeleton plan to begin with.

We have been on some pretty epic vacations in the past. For example, here is a list of vacations we’ve taken over the past decade …

This list doesn’t include our vacations from 2024:

2024 May Cruise to Bermuda (left out of Boston)
2024 June Camping to Branson MO
2024 Camping to Greenville MO
2024 Camping to Beaver Lake AR
2024 Camping to Crater of Diamond/Diamond Mine Murfreesboro AR

We had two cancellations – the first was supposed to be our 30th anniversary cruise to Europe. We were going to fly into Amsterdam, drive through the countryside and spend the night in a hotel near the cruise port. We were going to England, France … I can’t remember all of the places, but it was going to be EPIC. But if you notice the date, it was during the scamdemic year and we had no choice but to cancel the trip. We weren’t ABOUT to succumb to societal pressure and inject ourselves with God knew what just to go on a cruise. Our health was way more important to us than that.

The second cancellation was October of last year. We had to cancel because Kevin’s dad ended up in the hospital and very nearly died. (He’s okay right now).

We had gone on a cruise, pretty much, every year until the scamdemic. When the scamdemic happened, we weren’t about to be stuck at home all the time because life is too short to hide from it, so we started talking about buying a 5th Wheeler and going camping again.

We bought a pop-up when we were young parents. We took quite a few trips in the pop-up and though we enjoyed it, it was a lot of work and not really that safe. We got caught in a hurricane-turned-tropical storm one time and we were nearly blown over from the fierce winds. It scared us. We were basically a kite just waiting to lift off. We sold the pop-up shortly after that experience but by that time, we had used it for a number of years and we were sort of burned out of camping.

Fast forward about ten years later, and we bought our “Cub.” It was a hybrid camper. A hard shell camper with two folding tent beds on either side. It was a cool little camper and we drove it to Estes Park Colorado one year with the boys. We had a lot of fun, but it stressed me out because the canvas beds would leak and I would obsess about making sure I had sprayed enough water repellent to try and prevent waking up in a puddle of water every morning. Then we noticed it was starting to buckle and the walls were warping because of water getting in so we ended up selling it.

We were done with camping from that point forward, or so we thought.

When the scamdemic happened and it looked like we were going to be forced to cancel our cruise, we went into rebellion mode. We were not, nor will ever be, those people who kowtow to a government that tries to bully us into living our lives according to THEIR rules. So, instead of going on our anniversary cruise to Europe, we flew to Clearwater Florida and stayed at a hotel for a week. It was right across the street from the beach and it was a fun, if not weird, time. Everyone was pretty freaked out about COVID at that time, we had to wear masks, yadda,yadda,yadda, I don’t have to remind you of that dark and weird time in our history. Though we braved the hostile environment, (because let’s face it – it WAS hostile – everyone looking at each other with suspicion and with judge-y eyes), and got away for a short time, it wasn’t anywhere NEAR the type of vacations we were used to, or even wanted.

Since we had no idea when, or if, we would ever be able to get on a cruise ship again, we started talking about buying a camper again. I was surprised Kevin was even open to the idea because he wasn’t that crazy about camping to begin with. But when we started to seriously look and pay attention to how much campers were … whoa. But we were still determined to do SOMETHING for vacation every year.

And then, both Kevin and I stumbled on to some YouTube videos of people who had converted a cargo trailer into a camper and it was like a lightbulb moment.

Wait a minute … COULD WE DO THIS?!

Before I knew it, Kevin had bought a cargo trailer and was making plans to convert it. We watched a TON of videos on how to convert a trailer, came up with a layout that worked for us and Kevin started scouring the city for pieces he could use to build it. He found all of our cabinets at Habitat for Humanity and various other pieces at thrift stores … he did such a good job of keeping the cost down and he built everything himself. I’m so proud of him!

We’ve used it about 18 times over the past three years. We’ve been taking about four camping trips a year, though Kevin has used it a few more times than me as he has taken LeRoy on some camping trips, too. We love it. The trailer is very comfortable, is holding up really well, hasn’t leaked, so far, and it was the best $13,000 we’ve ever spent. (That includes the trailer). We plan on continuing to go camping for the next 5 years or so … until either we can not physically handle it anymore, (because camping is a lot of work), and/or, we just get tired of it.

Which brings us up-to-date. It’s that time of year again when I start throwing vacation ideas against the wall to see what sticks. I want to plan one long camping trip, a few short camping trips, and one cruise. We have some pretty strong contenders, now it’s just a question of figuring out the logistics.

I won’t actually start booking anything until January – we need to get through the holidays and cool our credit card off a bit, but I’m making plans, doing some research and getting excited for this year’s trips!

Bring it on, 2025!

Life

D.C. Trip – Day Five (Final Day)

Karen

Need to catch up?

Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four

_________________________

Day Five – Wednesday

Did you breathe a sigh of relief when you read the title of this post? Go on now, you can admit it, you’re getting tired of hearing about our trip, right? 😀

I apologize if this has been boring for some of you, but considering I blog to journal my life, and our vacations are a big part of our lives (because we’re homebodies, for the most part, and when we get out, it’s a big deal to us), I, of course, have to chronicle our adventures and record my thoughts about said adventures.

That and if I don’t write it down? I’ll forget it in like two weeks. *sigh* I WISH I were kidding.

We had done so much by this time that we were sort of at a loss as to what to do next. I had mentioned something about the National Geographic Society’s Explorers Hall (NGSEH) being fun because the book described it as such:

It’s like walking through a couple of National Geographic TV specials. Located on the first floor of the National Geographic Society’s headquarters, this small collection of exhibits showcases weather, geography, astronomy, biology, exploration, and space era castles under siege, to imaginary monsters and manipulated photographs.

Doesn’t that sound like something a couple of teenage boys MIGHT be interested in, if only for an hour?

Uh, no. Either the person who wrote this review was on crack and IMAGINED all of these cool things, or the NGSEH changed their exhibit because when we got there? It was the entire history of China.

Now, nothing against China, or it’s history, but we weren’t expecting to see huge photographs of cute little China children or read about the history of trade relations with China. We were expecting … well, I’m not sure what we were expecting, but it wasn’t what we saw.

Oh sure, the model ships were cool to look at …

National Geographic Museum

… but other than that? Snoozeville.

To top it off, this exhibit was on the ground floor of the NGSEH headquarters, which meant, it was swarming with business people … trying to go about their, er, business, and here we were, in the middle of them all, smelling like warm flesh, gritty from sweat and dressed comfortably (i.e. like tourists, i.e. sloppy and without one thought to fashion).

Can we say … AWKWARD? I couldn’t WAIT to get out of there. I felt so embarrassed and totally out of place trying to be a tourist and navigate myself through the sea of suits. I think we might have stayed for 20 minutes, tops. We zipped right out of there and back onto the streets faster than it takes you to fast forward through a National Geographic special (oh come on, you KNOW you do it).

We found ourselves back on the streets of D.C., in the business district, with nary another tourist in sight. I’m telling you, it was weird and we all felt pretty uncomfortable. And we were getting that snooty once over that people give each other whenever they are feeling superior to one another.

It was close to lunch by this time so we thought we would grab a bite to eat. We went to Potbelly. This was a new place to us, we had never even heard of the franchise before laying eyes on it, but we went in, ordered some sandwiches (which were DELICIOUS, btw. I had a tuna sandwich on toasted wheat bread – doesn’t that just make your mouth water??), and sat down to eat our meal. About ten minutes later, the whole place was crawling with suits. And our table was near the door, which meant we were literally surrounded by D.C. business people.

*sigh* I’ve never felt more self-conscious in all my life.

We quickly finished our meal and headed back to the Metro station. We hopped on, transferred lines, and hopped back off at the Archives Station (we really were becoming pros at the whole Metro system).

FINALLY. We were back in the land of tourists and I began to relax once more. We walked to the National Archives and got in line. The line wasn’t too bad when we got into it, but as per usual, the line increased about ten-fold shortly after we arrived. (This ALWAYS happens to us – we arrive someplace, it’s not that crowded and then *BAM*, suddenly the place is packed! It’s like, “Oh look! The M family has arrived! And they are so cool! We MUST do what they are doing so their coolness will rub off on us!” Seriously folks, it’s kind of creepy how everywhere we go, it gets busy. I’m sure it’s a coincidence, or is it ….? Sort of like how every time we go to a new restaurant, and we like it and we SAY we like it, it goes out of business three months later. Weird.)

So, we’re in line at the National Archives and we’re about to see the Declaration of Independence. The Archives hadn’t been on my list of must sees and I don’t really know why. I guess I was thinking the boys wouldn’t really be all that interested in seeing actual documents of our nation’s history …

Oh, how wrong I was.

Continue reading “D.C. Trip – Day Five (Final Day)” →

Washington D.C.

D.C. Trip – Day Four

Karen

Need to catch up?

Day One
Day Two
Day Three

_________________________

Day Four – Tuesday

I’m a big walker, but I have to admit that by day four, I was getting just a BIT tired of doing it. And I can’t imagine how the guys were holding up. I routinely walk six miles about four times a week, so I was semi-prepared for this “walking” vacation. But the guys …the hubs is an accountant, therefore, he has a sit-down job. He’s in pretty good shape, he works out on the Total Gym, but I don’t think his endurance was where it needed to be for this trip. In addition, he wore his sandals the whole trip, the man doesn’t own a pair of sneakers, so I can only imagine how his shins were holding up by this time.

Even though I walked the boys on the treadmill, (yes, sort of like dogs – what, you don’t treat your children as pets? *grin*), they should have walked, i.e. conditioned, more. GD has flat feet and wears arch supports. This helps him whenever he has to walk/run short distances, but not so much whenever he walks long distances. I worried how his legs and back were holding up.

However, my guys were/are tough. None of them ever complained, (though MK reached his endurance on days four and five and would just plop down in the middle of the street or a crowded aisle just to rest his legs for long seconds. One time, I freaked out because I couldn’t find him in the Air & Space Museum – he ended up being in an astronaut’s bed.) And they were real troopers about keeping a stiff upper lip about their discomfort.

But then again, they knew that complaining would only irritate me so really, what’s worse? Complaining or enduring my snappy coldness. Exactly. 😀

The day dawned bright and beautiful. We had shuffled our touring schedule around so that the day we went to Arlington Cemetery would be nice.

It was. In fact, the weather the whole time we were there was just perfect (thank you, God).

We hopped onto the Metro, yet again, and headed to the Metro Center station. There, we planned on transferring from the blue/orange line to the yellow/green line. Only, when we got there, we didn’t see the Arlington Cemetery station on the lists of stops. We were a bit dumbfounded for a bit until the hubs figured out that we would have to go down to L’Enfant Station and make the transfer – apparently, the Metro Center station only transferred to the red line.

Sound confusing? It was. But we figured it out and arrived at Arlington Cemetery in one piece.

We walked to the visitor’s center to get our bearings. The cemetery was HUGE and quite frankly? We were getting sick of walking everywhere. Plus, we had planned on going back to the Air & Space Museum in the afternoon (thereby escaping the hottest part of the day – we’re so freaking smart) and walk through the second floor. We swallowed our cheap gene and checked out the tram tours. We could ride the basic tram to JFK’s gravesite, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers and Arlington House for $7.50 a person.

It was a small price to pay to conserve our energy.

There were a lot of people there, but not so many that we had to wait an insane amount of time before we caught the train. It was SO NICE to be able to sit down and enjoy the cool breeze.

On Tram in Arlington Cemetery

We rode up to JFK’s Eternal Flame gravesite and spent a few precious minutes soaking in the humbling experience.

JFK Gravesite

In fact, the whole Arlington Cemetery experience was humbling. We talked, at length, about the importance of appreciating, and maintaining our freedoms. It was awe-inspiring to see the thousands of gravestones of men and women who sacrificed their lives for our country. And we talked, at length, about how important it was to honor their memories and their endeavors to insure that no one tried to take those freedoms away from us – either foreign OR domestic.

After the JFK gravesite, we rode to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. We were fortunate to witness the changing of the guards and I admit, I teared up at the sheer beauty and respect everyone displayed for these soldiers.

Changing of Guards at Tomb of Unknowns

We also walked over to look at the (original) mast of the USS Maine

Original Maine Mast

from the ship that began the Spanish/American War. The Americans thought the Spanish sunk it when it fact, it had been an accident. The boys thought that was pretty interesting.

We also saw the memorials of the astronauts who died in the name of science.

Challenger's/Columbia Memorial.

Do you remember when the Challenger exploded? I’ll never forget that day. I had tears running down my face as I looked upon their memorial.

We then visited the Arlington House …

Arlington House

… which unfortunately, was being renovated and was bare. All of the furnishings had been removed to be restored so we walked through an empty house. However, it was still interesting to read about the history and to enjoy the spectacular view.

View from Arlington House (Robert E. Lee's House)

We rode the Metro back to Foggy Bottom and ate lunch at Wendy’s on the George Washington University campus. The hubs actually found the restaurant quite by accident when he was searching for the campus bookstore to buy some t-shirts and hats. It was the only fast food restaurant we ever saw in D.C.

After lunch, we rode the Metro back to the Air & Space Museum and paid to visit the Albert Einstein Planetarium. We watched a NOVA special about black holes and I think the boys really enjoyed experiencing the whole 3D effects.

By the time we neared the end of seeing everything on the second floor (complete with walking through a simulation of the space station, which was interesting), we were beat. We ended our fourth day at our hotel room, with our feet up, eating organic pizza for dinner.

We saw so many interesting things that day, but what really stuck out in my mind was the fact that the kids finally understood what it meant to be an American citizen and it was evident, by their questions and interest, that they developed a very real and passionate devotion to our great country. It was amazing, and satisfying, to witness their patriotic maturity.

(To be continued …)

______________________________

null

Washington D.C.

D.C. Trip – Day Three

Karen

Need to catch up?

Day One
Day Two

_________________________

Day Three – Monday

There are moments in my life when I can safely say, “I’m a smart cookie.”

This wouldn’t be one of those moments.

I mentioned last time that our first night in Washington D.C. sucked – royally. I got virtually no sleep what with the sirens wailing, the horns honking, my husband sawing logs right in my dad-blasted ear and our possessed refrigerator making this weird, shuddering, popping/grinding noise every 45 minutes – it was truly bad.

But did I think about how I was going to get through the next night? No. Did I prepare myself for all of the night noises that would surely keep me up for a second night in a row? Of course not.

But GD did, God bless the boy.

When we found the Safeway and bought groceries to feed us for the remainder of our trip, GD suggested we buy earplugs. BRILLIANT! Why didn’t I think of that?! Because I was brain dead from lack of sleep, that’s why. (Or I’m an idiot … that works, too).

Luckily, Safeway had earplugs and I stuffed those mommas so deep into my ear canal the only thing I could hear was the beat of my own heart.

I slept sounder than a cat drunk on catnip. Wait, do cats pass out from too much catnip? Sorry, I wouldn’t know, I’m not a cat person …

Where was I? Oh yeah …

Monday rolled around and my physical and mental batteries recharged; I was ready to face another full day of walking my shins off.

And that’s exactly what we did. We boarded the Metro and headed to the Smithsonian station. Another thing we bought at Safeway was a detailed map of Washington D.C. (and for future reference, if I start talking about going someplace for vacation, especially someplace NOTORIOUS for confusing streets and horrendous traffic, you have my permission to knock me out cold AND THEN remind me to buy a detailed map of the area when I wake up). So, we exited the Metro, pulled out our handy-dandy map and found our way to the Air & Space Museum.

May I just say – WOW. This place was entertainment pay dirt for my guys. We could have easily spent our entire vacation in the Air & Space Museum – it was not only gigantic, but LOADED with cool facts and of course, AUTHENTIC artifacts.

Case in point:

Red Baron
The Red Baron

Original Spirit of St. Louis
The Spirit of St. Louis (A personal favorite considering I’m from Missouri)

Apollo 11 Capsule
Apollo Capsules

Air & Space Museum
And the original Wright Flyer (Well, the canvas was replaced, but the frame was original).

In addition to the above cool stuff, they had the Cray computer, turbines, propellers, heat sensors, rockets, hands-on experiments and all sorts of interesting facts about our air and space history. We arrived at the Air & Space Museum about 11ish? We FINALLY finished the first floor about 2ish.

And we still had another floor to explore. That’s how much fun we had at the museum. We also ran into a dog tag booth. As soon as I saw the booth, I knew what was going to happen – I braced myself for the beg fest.

I wasn’t disappointed. As soon as MK spotted the dog tag booth, he went into full charm mode. “Mom, you said we could buy souvenirs at each place we visited.”

“I said that?” Of course I said that, but my boys are teenagers now and charm mode? Doesn’t come along very often, so I’m going to milk the opportunity as much as possible when they come along.

“You did. So,” MK nodded toward the booth, “can we get some dog tags?”

I threw up my hands and caused a huge scene explaining the down side to having dog tags. I raised my voice, smoke billowed from my ears and when I finally calmed down and was sufficiently sure that I had embarrassed my boys as much as I possibly could, I said, “Why yes son, you certainly MAY have dog tags.”

HA! I had you going, didn’t I. I didn’t cause a scene. In fact, I had my credit card out and was in line before the boy even finished his begging.

I’m awesome like that. 😀 MK wore his dog tags the rest of our trip. In fact, you can see the dog tags in the slideshow I put together, if you’re interested.

Our stomachs, which had been grumbling for the past two hours and which we had dutifully ignored so we could absorb some more history goodness, finally caught our attention. We headed to the food court only to slam smack dab into a wall of people about twenty bodies deep and as far as the eye could see.

We didn’t really want to wait in line for an hour and pay a butt load of money on sub-par food, so we exited the museum, walked across the street and ate at a rather largish kiosk and paid a butt load of money for sub-par food.

*sigh* Food is not cheap when you’re on vacation.

After stuffing our faces, we decided to leave the second floor of the museum for another day – our brains simply couldn’t take anymore information overload. In the meantime, as we were in the park eating our grub, a park police helicopter flew overhead several times. Then, a slew of sirens wailed and nearly every single EMT vehicle in D.C. descended upon us.

We threw our trash away and began walking toward the commotion. We stopped a guy in a business suit and asked him what was going on. “Oh nothing,” he replied. “They are just showing off for the public.”

We raised our eyebrows, looked at each other and said, “D.C. is so cool!”

We were in The National Mall park. It’s a long strip of land that separates countless museums (along with the Smithsonian Castle …

Smithsonian Castle
… isn’t it cool?!)

and that has the Washington Monument at one end and the Capitol at the other end. To walk from the Capitol to the Monument, end-to-end is half a mile. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re walking it, at the hottest part of the day, in 90-degree weather and after walking for four straight hours in the museum, it’s not something you really want to do on the spur-of-the-moment.

And yet, that’s exactly what we did.

We walked down to the Capitol to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently, it was some sort of publicity thing and after allowing the public to get close and take some pictures, they shooed us away so they could have some professional photographers come in and do their thing.

In the meantime, we took some pictures of the Capitol.

In Front of Capitol
(As you can see, I wasn’t QUITE ready for him to take the picture. And I was hot, hence the reason my sleeves are rolled up and I look like a hick from the sticks. Oh wait, I AM a hick from the sticks – never mind).

After the excitement died down, we walked the half mile to the other end and visited the Washington Monument. By the time we got there, we were extremely hot, tired and I had a sweat mark slashed across my shirt due to the book bag I carried the whole trip (it had all of our cameras, water and money in it).

If you look closely, you can see my sweaty slash mark …

View from Washington Memorial
Never let it be said that I ONLY post flattering pictures of myself. I think we can all agree this one is anything BUT flattering.

We spent quite a bit of time at the monument, catching our breath and praying to God for strength to get us back to the hotel just sort of soaking in the atmosphere and we took some pretty awesome pictures of the flags that encircled the monument. Again, you can see those in the slideshow.

After taking our pictures and catching our breath, we started the LOOONG trek back to the Metro station and stumbled back to our hotel room. Our leg muscles were screaming bloody murder by that time, but we were happy and that’s all that mattered to us. (And I’d like to add, brag really, that the boys never ONCE complained about all the walking we did – 1. because they are the coolest boys on earth and 2., they knew it would do them no good and why waste their breath? *snort*).

We ate our TV dinners and fell into bed early because we had yet another full day of walking ahead of us the next day.

(To be continued …)

______________________________

null

Washington D.C.

D.C. Trip – Day Two

Karen

(Did you miss day one? No fear – it’s right here.)

May I just say, at the onslaught, that I miss Washington D.C. I miss the noise, I miss the madness and yes, I miss the ENERGY! People here are so SLOOOW in comparison. Everything is too quiet, our space is, well, too spacious. I honestly think I prefer the compact crazy intelligence (is that an oxymoron?) of D.C. to our scratch-our-heads-and-say-“huh?” mentality of the Ozarks. (Hey, I can say that, I’m FROM the area – Yo).

Er, maybe. More on that later …

Day Two – Sunday:

Our first night in Washington D.C. had to be the WORST night I’ve EVER spent in a hotel room. I got virtually no sleep – none. Well, I dozed off at irregular intervals but jerked awake at every horn (there were PLENTY), sirens (there were MANY), snores (the husband’s snores could wake the dead – seriously), and this crazy jump/jarring/shuddering noise that occurred every 45 minutes and nearly gave me a heart attack each and every time it ripped through the dead of the night. After hearing it several times, I finally hazarded a guess at what it might be – it must have been the housekeeping staff (who had their hub right next to our hotel room), jerking their cart over the inch platform that framed each doorway’s threshold. I found myself cursing the staff for their inconsiderate behavior.

So much for THEIR tip.

I later discovered, quite by accident, when I was in our kitchenette grinding up coffee beans to make some coffee, that the horrific noise, the one that had kept ALL of us up that first night? Was our refrigerator. Whenever the thing shut off, it shuddered and shook so violently that it vibrated the walls. Why previous guests never complained about the evil refrigerator before is beyond my comprehension but we certainly planned on lodging a complaint when we checked out. (And for the record? We totally forgot to do so when we checked out. My apologizes to the guests who next stay in room 801).

We all awoke Sunday morning groggy, tired and disoriented. WHERE were we? Oh yes, Washington D.C. WHY were we here? Oh yes, to tour the numerous museums and see The White House.

It was time to get our bearings and have some fun.

I had originally planned on touring Arlington Cemetery on Sunday, but after looking at the weather and noting that there was a 30% chance of showers (which means it was GUARANTEED to rain in Missouri, but apparently, this was not the case in D.C.), I didn’t want to be caught out of doors, in the middle of vast tombstones with no where to go for shelter with our cameras, so I rearranged our itinerary and we headed to the National Museum of Natural History instead.

National Museum of Natural History

The day was beautiful (in fact, the weather cooperated with us the whole trip – we had a few showers, but they were in the evening and when we were back at our hotel so we didn’t have to deal with them), and though it was hot, it wasn’t that muggy, sticky hot we endure in Missouri this time of year.

We walked to the Foggy Bottom Metro station, which was across the circle (our hotel was on Washington Circle) and stuffed between a hospital (which would account for all the sirens we heard – duh), and the George Washington University. We rode the escalators down into the bowels of the city.

We purchased four Farecards,

D.C. Farecard

slipped the cards into the gate and walked down to the trains. The air was stale, the lighting was poor and there were bored people with their noses in various reading materials everywhere. We looked at the stops the different trains made, determined our train and waited for the monster to slide out of its hole and pick us up.

Dumbfounded
(Apparently, I’m dumbfounded judging by my expression *snort*).

We lucked out that first day. Though there were a lot of people, we began our Metro experience at 10 in the morning, which meant that most everyone was where they needed to be by that time – work/home/school, and boarding and exiting the train wasn’t that big of a deal. However, later in the week, we got caught up in the snarl of human rush hour and it was pure chaos trying to jostle our way on and off the train and still stick together.

But we’re not to that part of the story yet …

Our train arrived and we boarded. We stepped in and noticed all of the seats were occupied. No problem, we would just hang onto the overhead bars. The train jerked to life and within seconds, we were SPEEDING down the tunnel. We were quite surprised by how fast the trains travelled. Picture a cartoon character being whisked off its feet by a strong gust of wind, one tiny hand desperately clutching a bar, its hair being whipped away from its face and you’ll have a general idea how fast these suckers went.

We arrived at our destination: Federal Triangle Station. We stepped off, inserted our tickets into the gate, the system deducted $1.65 from our total and we rode the escalators above ground and back out into the throng of fresh, different crowd of people once again.

We had survived our first Metro ride. And we were thrilled. In fact, I think it would be so cool to live someplace where you didn’t have to have a car, like D.C. Oh sure, there would be the inconvenience of not having a place to store bags of groceries, but think of the benefits: no car payments, no insurance, no gas fill-ups. You would be forced to walk everywhere, thereby getting exercise and living a healthier lifestyle. And that was something else we noticed about D.C. right away – there was virtually NO OBESITY! How could there be in a “walking city.” And the fact that NOTHING was clearly marked, meaning you really had to search for someplace to buy food and it wasn’t hitting you over the head, nearly every corner you came to, that you need to eat or drink fatty substances like we have here in Springfield. Everything was more subtle in Washington D.C. Life was about working and being productive in D.C. as opposed to gluttony and slothfulness here in Springfield. The healthy lifestyle really appealed to us and I wish Springfield would incorporate the same sort of subtlety.

We’re VERY spoiled here – but I digress …

We’re at Federal Triangle. We consult our map and locate the National Museum of Natural History. We walk in and see a huge elephant in the rotunda.

Continue reading “D.C. Trip – Day Two” →

Washington D.C.

On Our Way Home

Karen

Well, it’s over. Our Washington D.C. vacation is over and I totally failed to keep you all up-to-date on our activities. My intentions were good – I sat down, I stared at the screen, my fingers curled in anticipation of typing, but … I simply didn’t have the energy to write down my thoughts. I’m a big walker, but I have to say, if I don’t do any more walking for the next several weeks, it will be too soon.

We covered A LOT of Washington D.C. ground. We rode the Metro so many times that I now feel like a DC native. We got caught in rush hour foot, and Metro, traffic and I have to admit, I’m glad we don’t have the same hectic pace at home – people were running to catch the subway, which didn’t make any sense to me considering the trains ran on a five minute schedule. People were tense, snappy, and on a mission and I wish I could have spent a few hours watching them. The car traffic was INSANE and there wasn’t a fifteen minute interval that someone didn’t honk their horn in anger. Washington D.C. has diagonal streets, circles and squares and you MUST BE ALERT to keep up. Sirens wailed every half hour (the EMT guys must be EXHAUSTED), there were policemen EVERYWHERE and essential roadways were blocked due to construction. I had to sleep with ear plugs in to block out the noise and activity; Washington D.C. is a convoluted snarl of humanity … and I loved every minute of it. I could easily live here.

We’re now biding our time until it’s time to go to the airport. We could make a run down to the memorials and take a few more photographs of the magnificent structures honoring our brave military men and women, but we’re toured out and it’s nice to just sit here and catch our breath (and I’m sick of sweating – it would be nice to arrive at the airport looking halfway decent as opposed to halfway melted). We’ll be leaving for the airport soon – we’re scheduled to leave at 2:55 and will be trapped inside the madness we call air travel for most of the afternoon and early evening. I hope our flights are on-time and problem-free.

I’ll post details about our trip soon – we did a lot and there’s a lot to talk about. In the meantime, have a great day and I’ll see you back in Missouri!