I can't believe I haven't finished telling about our DC trip. There are still two days of sites we saw to report on.Friday, October 17 ~~ the weather turned decidedly fall-like, at least for the DC area. Where daytime temps had been in the low 80's, this day proved to be in the low 60's with a fairly good breeze blowing. Rod and I ventured north across the Pennsylvania border and visited a battlefield site from the Civil War -- Gettysburg.
July 1-3, 1863, 165,000 soldiers met on the 6,000 acre battlefield. More than 51,000 became casualties. This was the northern-most point the Confederate Army fought. Just over 3 months later, Pres. Lincoln came to dedicate the new national cemetary at Gettysburg delivering his most famous speech.
I'll leave you to look up any information about this conflict but I found it very interesting. I understand it can be very hot and humid in this area during the summer and knowing how hot and humid it can be in Arizona in July, I tried to imagine what fighting conditions were like back then; having to walk miles, fighting under terrifying circumstances, and the smell of the thousands of decaying bodies. Hopefully you can read some of the information panels shown in the photos I took
Later that evening we picked up Martin and Sybil and drove to Vienna, again, to visit my cousin David Van Valkenburg and to finally meet his family. It had been over 10 years since I last saw him. We were treated to a wonderful Chinese dinner (his wife is Chinese). He has been doing research on the Van Valkenburg line and said he did not have a photo of our Grandfather who died while our parents were very young. I knew I had one from Grandma Van's family photos now in my possession. When I got home, I actually remembered to look for them and was able to send him copies. He is getting ready to publish a book on his findings.
Saturday, October 18 ~~ Departure day. Our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 3 PM so we were able to go back to the Mall and visit two museums. We briefly visited the National Museum of the American Indian and then went to the National Air and Space Museum. Having grown up during the "space race", I was interested in seeing the displays. We could easily spent hours there. There is an auxillary museum located in Virginia with larger displays and planes.
I saw 
the space capsule in which John Glenn first orbited the earth on Feb. 20, 1962 (the day I was baptized) -- seen here ---------------------->
the space capsule in which John Glenn first orbited the earth on Feb. 20, 1962 (the day I was baptized) -- seen here ---------------------->and the Apollo 11 capsule for the first walk on the moon. Talk about being claustrophobic. I remember watching the moon walk happen with my family.
Take a minute and view my photos http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=18s0ijij.9yl3duqz&x=0&h=1&y=x9kis8&localeid=en_US
1 comment:
It sound like you guys had a great trip.
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