Last week Geoana and I joined a group of 27 junior high students and 10 parents on the annual 8th graders trip to Washington, D.C. Since we’re traveling out of a small town on the Kansas prairie the journey is rather involved. We began the excursion late Sunday night. And by late I mean leaving town on the high school bus (the nicer of the two owned by the district) at 11:30. Not a.m.
Adult leadership anticipated the ride out of town with a destination of the Omaha airport would be a quiet one. Not so. The young people engaged in various types of conversation well into the wee morning hours. Overall us adults weren’t quite so talkative. However because I find it difficult to sleep in an upright position I was awake for just about all of the ground journey which means when we all arrived at the Omaha airport I was dead tired.
What about a morning dose of coffee? I’d rather not drink a diuretic right before I get on an airplane if you know what I mean…
Then it's time to get on the Southwest Airlines flight and as Southwest is well known to do (my family calls it cattle car airlines) every single seat was sold. Since I had a group C boarding pass I wound up in a middle seat. Turned out OK, still could relax just a bit. Still, no sleep. My cup of hot bean juice during the flight would’ve prevented that anyway…
After a short flight we land in Chicago, get off the plane, and I go in search of breakfast.
Then it's time to board the plane again, this time we're headed for Reagan National Airport. After having my second cup of coffee on board the plane I normally would look out the window to enjoy the view but due to the clouds I just couldn't see much. Pretty uneventful flight overall, then land, get off the plane, get the baggage and then it's time for us to truly have some fun. Let the sightseeing begin!
First we are welcomed by the coach driver who establishes the rules right up front: he runs a clean coach and we are to keep it that way. Then we meet our guide— a knowledgeable woman who has lived in the DC area for 28 years and loves it.
They didn't waste any time as right away we were over the Potomac River into the District of Columbia and right to the Jefferson Memorial.
After that it was to the Martin Luther King Junior Memorial then we had to rush back on the bus and head over to Ford's Theatre.
Standing in line for Ford's theater we noticed that DC is quite hot and humid however once we got inside it was good to learn the powers that be didn’t adhere to pure historical aesthetic in that air conditioning was present and strong. Our group viewed a lot of the exhibits and then it was time to get seated in the actual theater itself. Shortly afterward a park ranger came and gave about a 30 minute talk on the events of Lincoln's assassination. Nothing against the Ranger, but I nearly dropped off a few times during his talk and in talking to students and parents afterward I wasn't the only one. Keep this in mind: we were seated, it was air-conditioned, the lighting was subdued and we were all sleep-deprived by that point.
Still Ford's theatre was fun. Then of course we go across the street to Peterson House. Just prior to our going into Ford’s Theatre our guide mentioned one thing we need to see at Peterson in addition to the room in which Lincoln died. This is a stack of books that reaches four stories high. In total about 7000 books. All devoted to Lincoln in one way or another. Our guide pointed out Lincoln has had more books written about him than any other historical figure save for Jesus Christ. I tried my photographic best in the rotating staircase but these pictures just don't do the stack justice.
And then after a respite at a souvenir shop it's back on the bus and we're headed down towards the Lincoln Memorial and west end of the National Mall. The weather also decided to do its normal late afternoon DC rainshower so break out the rain ponchos! (You did bring them, right?) Next up is Lincoln Memorial which was wall-to-wall people. You always want to take good pictures in a place like this however due to the crowd there's no way you could either take a good shot without somebody walking into it or you yourself walking into someone else's picture. I finally decided to stop trying to get that elusive wonderful photo and just take pictures wherever I could.
Staying on foot, and still raining by the way, we then headed to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. This, the King Memorial, the WW2 Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial all were very meaningful for me because they didn't exist back when I lived around here. The Korean War Memorial just like all of them is a wonderful work of art unfortunately because of the rain pouring and still a whole lotta people I didn’t get a great picture.
After that we all walk across to the other side of the mall to the Vietnam War Veteran's Memorial. It's not just the wall by the way, it includes two statues—one near each end. One statue commemorating the soldiers and one commemorating the nurses.
Time to get back on the bus, take off those rain ponchos, try to shake out the water then we head over the Potomac to Virginia. We dropped off our tour guide then stopped for supper at an Italian buffet (could it be that teenagers like to eat pizza? A lot?) Afterward we're on Interstate 95 headed down towards the Williamsburg area. By the time we got to our destination for the night all of us were so exhausted we probably couldn't even have told you what day it was. It didn't take me long get to sleep.
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