We stayed in camp for the morning, planning on a late night so relaxing to start. Laundry and lunch, then into town. Started with a tour of the Holocaust Museum. Pretty intense and it got the kids kind of down. I don’t think they have really seen much evil in this world, this showed them that it exists.

The moment we stepped outside there was a HUGE thunderstorm. The only shelter was back inside, but the museum was trying to close and they didn’t want to accommodate the crowd that was trying to stay sheltered. They were very confused, some of the security guards were trying to get us back inside, some of the staff were directing us one way and then the other. Nobody seemed to know what was going on, but one thing we saw… the staff (not so much the guards) was very rude. We weren’t impressed with them.

The storm passed quick, good thing, too. It was quite a storm and if it lingered it would have caused problems. We got back on the subway and went to a food court attached to the train station at the Pentagon. Ruby Tuesday has good food, but the service there was really poor. The area was off that path I mentioned earlier and the attitude of the locals was poor. A lot of ‘loud-talking’, baggy clothes, sideways baseball hats, all the signs of a Bill infestation around there.

We dawdled to make sure the storms were gone then headed back to the Mall. We joined 500,000 of our closest friends to watch fireworks on the National Mall, right behind the Washington Monument. I don’t know much about fireworks, but this was an amazing show. They had some of the neatest fireworks I had seen! Really good show.

Got up early thin morning. Another congressional tour, this time the Library of Congress at 0830. Nice building, but not very exciting for the boys. The only thing that got them interested is that they filmed part of National Treasure there.

Next stop was the laceName w:st="on">SpylaceName> laceType w:st="on">MuseumlaceType>. The boys really liked this one (so did I). Wendy did some shopping and saw a movie while we explored. A quick walk through the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery, saw some of the most famous paintings of the presidents. Didn’t spend a lot of time there, the kids only saw a few things they were interested in. There was a really cool painting that was winning some competition (http://www.portraitcompetition.si.edu/exhibition/PeoplesChoiceAward/EntryDetails.aspx?RID=25). The painting was so well done you had to look VERY close to see it was painted, not a photo. We also saw the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Sure were a lot of names on that wall.

Had lunch in Chinatown… burritos(!). I got another t-shirt, DC Fire this time. Next we went to Virginia to the laceName w:st="on">MarinelaceName> laceType w:st="on">MonumentlaceType>. It is a whole lot bigger than it looks in the pictures! Probably a good spot to watch the fireworks tomorrow, but the commute to get there would be a pain in the rear.

BBQ for dinner and two hours in the pool. Everyone slept good!

Drove down to Mt Vernon, George Washington’s home. Beautiful area. Our Senator got us into a 'pre-tour bus' tour. Same tour everyone else gets, we just get there early! By the time we were done there was a huge line waiting to get into the mansion. The early tour worked out well.

The camp has a very well set up plan to get the folks into DC. A bus comes right to the campground every 20 minutes or so and takes you right to the Metro station. The Metro is a VERY well run system that takes you anywhere in DC easily with only a few minutes wait at any station. The staff was extremely helpful and friendly. Can’t say enough good about the Metro system.

Today we hopped on a tour trolley. Another well run system! We spent a lot of time at the Smithsonian Air and lSpace Museum. Of course I could have spent another day there.

We also went to Arlington and saw the Changing of the Guard, JFK’s grave and walked around for a while. 290,000 folks buried there. Wow. Even saw some names I recognized… One of the Commandants of the Marine Corps, some WW II Generals and Admirals.

The touristy areas are very nice and clean, but once you stray a bit off the beaten path… Hmmm.

And, yes, they got the electricity back on.

Left Jersey and drove straight to our camp just outside DC in Maryland. Cherry Hill Park is a very well set up camp, made pretty much just for DC tourists. But… the weather has been nasty in the area and it seems there is a power outage in the area, they are waiting for some parts sent from out of state. So, even though we called at least three times to make sure there was no flood damage, the lack of power was news to us. Oh well, we’ll deal with it. It is supposed to be back on tomorrow (Saturday) night. We’ll see.

We needed to get some laundry done, and the staff directed us to a laundromat nearby. I went to the market while Wendy stayed and did the laundry. She was a bit out of her element and probably the only person who spoke English there! She made it out safe (without any problems) and I stocked us up. So much for day 1 in DC!

Got up early and followed the directions given to us to get to the local train station. We missed the train by minutes… figures! There was no parking for anything the size of my truck. I played around trying to get in to a spot that a roller-skate would have found tight, but I gave up after a few tries. We pulled around the corner and there was a police station. I went in to ask where I could park and they said I could stay there! The watch deputy (or whatever they call him) was pretty cool. I was wearing a Nampa Fire shirt, that probably helped!

We made it into the city relatively easy. We had to ask staff at every stop to figure out where to go. The subway system was not very intuitive, nothing like London (or we will see later; DC). Saw the Statue of Liberty, went over to Liberty Island on the ferry. Everyone had a good time, but we found out that the only way to get into the statue is to get a timed pass, which you need to call for at least the day before, so we got to go up to the base, but not inside. Still pretty cool! Had lunch over there, my advice for anyone heading out to Liberty Island… eat before you get on the island! Food was pretty plain (at best!).

Next we headed over to Ground Zero. Walked around the site, stopped in to pay our respects at the station right across the street. I bet they get tired of the public coming in. Said "Hi", but that was about it. They had just had a memorial dedicated on the side of the station dedicated to the firefighters from 9/11. Nicely done. One of the guys there said we should think of heading out because there was going to be a pretty big rain coming in. We said our good byes and headed to the train station. About one block away it went from dreary to deluge. Glad we had our new Wal Mart rain jackets!

We thought we would have dinner in the city, but the weather was nasty so we just headed back to the camp in Jersey.

Don’t know if we have forgotten big city life or not, but we sure didn’t see many folks smiling in New York (or New Jersey). One of the only nice folks we found sat next to Wendy on the subway. He was from Lima, Peru and lived in Colorado for a while. He understood what we meant about the people, but he assured us there were plenty around, just busy. Glad there were a few nice folks!

Ended up getting dinner at Mc Donald’s, stomachs got the better of us on the way back! Eager to be on our way. DC is next!

Figured out the electrical problem this morning… blown fuse. That was easy. Good thing we were at a Wal Mart! Want to get to New Jersey this afternoon, but we NEED to stop at Hershey! We took the tour (but didn’t go into the amusement park area) and had lunch, followed by Hershey’s treats!

Drove to a campground in Jersey. They said they had easy access to the trains to New York. Interesting camp ground, had to drive through a work trailer graveyard to get to the camp area. Some folks around there seemed a little inbred, but I didn’t hear any banjos and they all seemed to have the correct amount of toes on their feet, so I slept fine. We didn’t have any problems.

Weather looks a bit threatening… hope tomorrow is OK! Gonna be a long day in New York!

They have a very nice set up to take tours of the battlefield. We bought our tickets, then had 2 hours to kill so we went to the National Parks Service museum. It has a great collection of stuff from the battle. Uniforms, guns and rifles, pictures etc. One of the neat things I saw was two musket balls had collided in mid air! Two lucky soldiers (for that moment anyway!). It must have been an incredible time in our history.

So far no rain…. But! As we got back the trailer the rain was falling pretty hard. We finished dinner and saw that many of the fellow campers were packing up (fast) and leaving. What were we missing? Well, it seemed the creek was overflowing its banks, the tent camping area was flooded so we decided to be like everyone else and pack up… just in case! By the time I was bringing up the jacks I was up to my ankles. Things were going pretty smooth until I unplugged (A good idea to keep 30 amp electricity away from ankle deep water) and found that there was some sort of electrical problem. I had to hand crank the landing gear up to get my truck under it. No time to try to figure out the problem, so I used the silly little crank that I thought I would never have to use. By the time I got the trailer high enough to get the truck under it I was up to my knees in creek water. Wendy was upset that she didn’t have time to finish the dishes and she put a pan in a plastic bag and left it in the sink. This really bugged her! We got all hooked up and left with the water just touching the underside of the trailer, we almost had a boat!

The campground staff was working fervently to pull trailers out that the owners weren’t there to do it themselves. They may have been out touring or on a day trip somewhere. I don’t know how many were left, but they were trying to get them all. Kudos to them.

There was a Wal Mart up the street a ways, so we joined 4 other trailers and spent the night on high ground! We also bought some rain jackets… it was sure looking like we were going to get some use out of them. The weatherman on the radio said it was supposed to clear up tomorrow… heard that yesterday, didn’t we?

Pretty quick drive today. Ohio was pretty nice. There were tons of beautiful homes, nice farms. We liked the area. For some reason we didn’t see very much in PA that impressed us. Countryside was nice enough, but it just didn’t have the charm that we had seen so far. Maybe it was just poor route selection. I’m sure there are plenty of beautiful areas there, we just missed them!

When we left this morning the weatherman said things should be clearing up and most of the flooding should be over. Sure enough, today seemed nice enough, let see how that holds up!

We arrived at the “Gettysburg Campground” and set up for the night. Nice place, but we didn’t see much of it. I BBQ’d again (never too much of that!) and then I started catching up this blog! We finally had a good internet connection. I made the picture posting site and then we called it a night. Tomorrow is going to be a long day of touring (and work!)

Pretty easy drive today, so we thought we would take a detour through Amish country. We didn’t time it well though, by the time we were driving through, most of the shops were closing. We did see several Amish in their buggies and the country was beautiful. Wendy tried to take a picture or two of the Amish folks, but we didn’t get anything good as we passed by. As we were nearing Canton we called a campground to ask if they had space. They said, yup, but the tornado last night wiped out their power! YIKES! Soon after we passed through a town that had obviously been hit. All kinds of trees were down, clean up crews working all over and a lot of the streets were detoured. Glad we missed that!

We stayed at a place near Canton (that had not been hit!). Got a huge amount of laundry done and the kids played with a nice family from Pennsylvania. Wendy and the boys had their first ever experience with lightning bugs! Weird how their bug-o-phobia evaporated when they captured the fireflies! The next day we drove into Canton to visit the NFL Hall of Fame.

Even Wendy thought this was a neat place! It was neat to see what passed for equipment when football started! The guys that played back then were pretty tough! Colin loved it (so did Dad!) Wendy and Weston roamed through for a while then sat and read in the hallway outside the actual Hall.

Back at camp it was BBQ’d chicken then a campfire with the folks from PA. Lot’s of s’mores perished that night! The boys captured about a hundred fireflies and stored them in a jar for a flashlight (they were freed later!)

Starting to get really humid and hot. We are also hearing of severe storms on the East Coast. Hmmmm….