Annapolis and DC – Nov 17

This week was a potpourri of pursuits and included our 1st extended stay at bad campground.  We parked ourselves in Lothian, MD because it was centrally located between Annapolis, central Washington DC, and Mount Vernon.  We spent a lot of time in the car – the lesson learned was to limit the physical circumference of your activities to have reasonable drive times, especially where the traffic is really heavy.

The first destination was Annapolis to visit the Naval Academy.  We had a great tour that highlighted the history and current life and curriculum.  Because school was in session we were able to witness the “going to lunch” ceremony which was impressive.  In addition to the campus, we spent quite a couple of hours in the Academy Museum. It has an outstanding “History of the US Navy” exhibit and a major collection of model ships made over the past few centuries.  There was probably a hundred of these “to scale” models, many made directly from the drawings for the ships before or after they were built.  Some were made by French prisoners of war out of the bones from their meals.  Check these out in some of the photos below.

We made a couple of trips into DC that week.  The first was to the Mall on Veterans Day to visit the war memorials – starting at the Korean Memorial in memory of Suzanne’s dad, Billy Martin.  He had a 9 year career in the Marine Corps and was in combat during much of the Korean War.  Billy was one of the few that miraculously survived the Chosin Reservoir siege.  It was a beautiful and brisk morning on the Mall and it was loaded with Veterans of all ages and people that had lost friends and relatives.  The experience was both sobering and inspirational.

Another day was spent at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian.  We went there a year to eat lunch as it has the best and most interesting food in all the Mall Museums but we hadn’t actually toured the exhibits.  The Museum is in a beautiful building, but is clearly young as it does not have the depth of content that the other major Smithsonian musuems have.  Nonetheless, it tells a powerful and sad story of a proud and rich heritage of a people who were/are deeply connected with nature and the environment. The way they were, and to some degree still are, treated by European settlers (my ancestors) is shameful. The Museum doesn’t rub your face in it, but the facts speak for themselves.

Late in the week we drove to Mount Vernon to see the estate of George Washington.  The estate is very will preserved and/or recreated in detail. It is quite extensive and includes the main house, outbuildings, stables, farm, and the tombs of George and Martha.  The tour was good but somewhat regimented to accommodate the volume of people there and the “single file” nature of the house.  They have an excellent slavery exhibit that is both sobering and fascinating – we spent quite a bit of time there.

Finally, a word about campgrounds.  The place we stayed was run down, muddy, looked like a shanty town, and was full of smile-less people (starting with the park office).  It became pretty clear that most of the residents were permanent.  The night time temperature went down to 25 degrees which is pretty cold for an RV (AKA plastic box) and people started covering the exposed openings below their RVs with foam board and duct tape.  It’s a tough way to live and we count our blessings that we could simply move on to our next destination.  But it was part of the “on the road experience” to see this part of America.