The Great Falls of the Potomac River

We liked the Great Falls Park so much that we went to both the Virginia side and the Maryland side in the same week! (Well, the Maryland side was on the way home from the temple and the entrance pass was still good.)It is a lovely place. It is amazing that it is only 12 miles from downtown DC! It is just getting greener and greener here. When you are in the woods, even the air seems green!

This is a ruin of a lock. In the early 1800's the C & O Canal Company built canals and locks on both sides of the river for a length of over 200 miles! It was a way for boats to get around the falls.

Jeffrey, the intrepid Junior Ranger. He was very serious about earning his badge and keeping all of the rules (Which is unlike Jeffrey! I loved it!)

This is a functioning lock in the Maryland side. For a fee you can ride in a boat pulled by mules and led by guides dressed in 1800's canal workers style. We just watched this time. This lock was based on a design by Leonardo DaVinci. It was built in such a way that it could easily be opened and closed by one person.

Emily was our photographer this time. She had the only functioning camera in the family. Good job Emily!

Coolest Museum Ever!

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center just about takes your breath away! It is a sister to the Air and Space museum and is part of the Smithsonian Institution. It is enormous. It has to be. There is Space Shuttle in there! Along with hundreds of other flying ships of all shape and size!There is an observation tower where you can watch planes land at nearby Dulles International Airport.

This is a stealthy Blackbird. It was in service for 24 years during the Cold War and the Gulf War. On it's last flight it flew from LA to DC in just over an hour!

The Space Shuttle seriously gave us chills. It is so large! This was the shuttle that they used for testing. It actually hasn't been in space. It was impressive nonetheless.

Yes, this the actual plane that dropped atomic bombs on Japan in World War II. One the more memorable things for the kids was watching a display film of veterans who had won the Medal of Honor talk about the events that earned them the medal. They were harrowing tales of bravery that I can hardly imagine. Yet the men who told their stories were extremely humble.

Watching the planes land.

An ice cream cone does wonders to lift the spirits of museum weary kids! Even in the coolest museum ever, we still get hungry and tired.

May 13-16

This is a "catch-up" post because I have gotten behind! I recently started writing all of our outings on a calendar so I can remember. It is all becoming a blur! The week of May 11 we started off with a "school" day. Tuesday we re-visited Mount Vernon as Emily's blog post describes. Then Wednesday we went to the Ballston Common Mall. Now, you must realize that a shopping mall is really low on my list of places I want to visit, but I was a good mom and took Hayley and Emily to meet a church friend there.

We actually had a fun time. There are some amazing shopping malls here. My favorite is the National Mall, of course--I'm really not a good shopper.

Thursday I got a surprise message from my brother Dan. He was in DC and was done with his meetings for the day. We spontaneously made plans to meet him at the Museum of the American Indian because we hadn't been there yet and neither had he. The neatest thing about this museum is the building itself. It is all curves and open spaces. The outside has areas symbolic of nature and the Native American way of living with the land.

This is a statue of George Washington and some leaders of the tribes that he originally made treaties with.

South American gold working. Sadly the Spaniards melted most of the gold artistic treasures they took from the Natives and turned it into coins. They had very different ways of seeing the "value" of gold.

Brother Dan and me! After the museum we walked through some of the Smithsonian gardens and then went back to our apartment for dinner. The most fun of the evening was Dan treating us to ice cream. We bought ice cream, cones, and a scoop from the local grocery store (after seeing how much the ice cream shop charged for a single cone!) and ate ice cream cones outside. We got Dan safely off before a tremendous thunderstorm blew through!

Friday we made our first visit to the National Arboretum. We heard that the azaleas were amazing. They truly were--even after the thunderstorm!

Isn't this a great picture? Emily took it. Our favorite part of this place was a small pond that we discovered--full of frogs!

Saturday I had a real treat. Neil dropped me off at the Library of Congress all by myself! He took the kids to the Eastern Market where they enjoyed all of the sights and smells of a busy open marketplace. I enjoyed the leisure I had to explore the Library at my own pace. It has been over a month since I've gone anywhere by myself!

That evening we went to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to watch a free concert on the Millenial Stage. It was a jazz pianist/vocalist who was playing the music of Mary Lou Williams. Neil and I loved it--the kids gave mixed reviews. It was William's sacred or gospel jazz music. She wrote an entire jazz Mass which we heard a small portion of! I loved the Lord's Prayer too. It was very soulful and heartfelt.

This is the stage. There are free one hour concerts every night at 6pm. We will have to go back again!

On the way home from the concert we pulled over when we unexpectedly saw the Navy Memorial with the famous "Iwo Jima" statue. I love that you can see the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol dome on the left.

Mount Vernon: Take 2

Hi, this is Emily. It's my turn to blog :)May 12th was our second time to Mount Vernon. We met up with the Washington family in the visitor's center.

The animals at Mount Vernon include sheep, goats, hens, and our favorite: the cows. To make the cows look just like they would have when George Washington lived there, they didn't cut the horns off the bulls. They looked awesome!

A lot of the Mount Vernon property is a woodland full of beautiful trees and green plants. This tree was really cool!

Mark, Jeffrey and Mara looking out over the Potomac river. Don't fall in!

We bought tickets for a ride on this big boat, "The Spirit of Mount Vernon". We loved it! That is one big boat!

That's me on the top level of the boat.

The view of Mount Vernon from the boat was fantastic. George Washington said it best when he declared that his house was the most "pleasantly situated" in all America. You can tell that he planned for his house to be beautiful to look at from every direction.

The second level of the boat had a stack of board games for passengers to play. Of course, Mara and Mark discovered the chess set. I love Mark in this picture- it looks like he's planning his next move (this was not posed)!

This is a re-creation of George Washington's sixteen sided threshing barn. In Washington's circular barn, horses would be made to run around and around over stalks of grain laid over the floor. The grain would come loose and fall through the slats of the floor to the room below, where it would be picked up by workers. This was really an ingenious way of separating the grain from the stalks.

Jeffrey knew exactly what he wanted from the Mount Vernon gift shop. The wooden toy gun and the tri-corner hat. And yes, he got them. Will we regret the gun? I know I do...

Chocolate Capital and Amish Country

Saturday morning Cousin David and family took us to nearby Hershey, PA for a tour of Chocolate World! The town truly does smell like chocolate. We went on a Disney-like ride to see how the Hershey company makes chocolate bars. Neil treated us all to our choice of candy bar! Mmmm!

Dream on Emily.

Next we had took a beautiful driving tour of Lancaster County, aka Amish country.

We stopped at quaint store outside of Bird in Hand (yes, that's the name of the town) for Amish baked goods and souvenirs. The Amish have learned how to make some money from the "English."

We passed many horse drawn carriages and Neil was fascinated by the draft horses and mules pulling John Dear tractor implements through the fields. It's OK to use the tractor parts, just not the engine! I wanted to take more pictures, but felt a bit like a gawker. These are real people doing their best to live a "plain" life in a very complex world. I admire them, and maybe envy them just a little bit.

An old covered bridge. In many ways the countryside was idyllic. So beautiful!

Thanks for a great day Cousin David and family. We loved getting to know you better! Our last stop was a homemade ice cream/candy store in Strasburg. Yum!