Well, we busted out of Pikeville in the rain on Monday morning, July 12, 1999, headed for the classic tourist's vacation.  Hey!  I can't remember the last time we took a tourist's vacation and besides, the boys had never seen Washington D. C.  It's one of those places that every kid ought to see.  So we did.

Don't ask Delorme when you travel!  Before we left, I checked on the Internet at www.delorme.com for the computer travel advice and maps for the quickest way from here to D. C.  It suggested going the back way down 460 through Grundy, Virginia turning at Claypool Hill toward Bluefield then taking 219 from Rich Creek up to White Sulphur Springs where we would catch I-64 and have freeway for the rest of the trip to D.C.  Said that was the quickest way and should take only 6 hours 50 minutes.  Don't believe Delorme.

What Delorme didn't recognize was that those little by-ways went up and over and down and around every mountain in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia before depositing us on flat interstates some four hours after leaving home.  But hey!  We saw how the hillbillies of KY, VA, & WV lived!  And we saw it and we saw it and we saw it.

Finally, we crossed over to I-81 which ran up the Shenandoah Valley by the Blue Ridge Mountains all the way up to I-66 over to Washington.  It was a pretty fascinating study in the diversity of mountains.  Those around us are short and steep covering the whole windshield making you feel rather claustrophobic while driving.  Then you break into the Blue Ridge Mountains where the mountains slope gently away from you with lots of sky and lots of rich cattle and tobacco country leading to the upper reaches covered with smoky clouds in the far distance.

We arrived in Washington about 3:00 p.m.  Thanks to Andy's eagle-eyes (he has far better than 20-20 vision and can read street signs blocks before anybody else in the car), we had no trouble with traffic or following the map right to our hotel, checked in, and jumped on the subway for our first sight-seeing adventure.

Since I had been to Washington four times in as many years, I was the proud papa showing my family how to work the subway ticket machines and how to figure which direction the subway was going.  But while I was trying to explain the ticket machine, and having a little difficulty getting change, Will punched buttons right and left, snatched his ticket, and came over to explain to Da-ad just how the ticket machines worked.  Then he proceeded to glance once at the map on the wall and quickly announce that we needed to take the Yellow Line to L'Enfant Plaza.  Which we did.

Our first stop in light rain was the Air and Space Museum.  We had a couple of hours to explore that one.  Much to my surprise both boys were satisfied to take their time and carefully read all the signs by the exhibits.  And even more surprising, Andy was the one with the most patience wanting to take it all in before moving on to the next exhibit.

See, I'm the type who sprints through museums glancing right and left while muttering, "Yeah, yeah, I know about that already.  I wonder what's around the corner."  I figured Will would be the one to read everything, but alas, he seems to have inherited the run-through-museums gene from his father.

But Will did stop and take notice when he saw that he had been to the moon.  That's right in 1968, William (A.) Anders was aboard Apollo 8 in the first mission to circle the moon and return.  Of course, he was long forgotten after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, but hey!  Will was impressed with his namesake and wanted to learn all he could about Apollo 8.

After two hours of Wright Brothers, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Hubbell Space Telescope, Skylab, and dozens of space capsules and even touching a moon rock, they ran us out.  So we took the subway to Union Station where we shopped and had a pleasant dinner before returning to the hotel.

Tuesday dawned with clouds but no rain.  The cool rain-free weather lasted all week in spite of predictions to the contrary.  We got an early start, grabbing a bite of breakfast in one of the underground shops by the subway, then heading for the Mall.  Our first order of business was the Tour-mobile, which like everything else on the whole trip, was more expensive than I remembered.  We examined the Washington Monument, Jefferson Monument, Lincoln Memorial, touched the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, drove by the White House, and finally landed at the American History Museum (America's attic).

There we enjoyed the bicycle display, the automobile display, the marine display with its hundreds of model ships, the display and refurbishing of the famous flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner, and several other exhibits before moving on to the National Aquarium.

Somebody should have told us that the National Aquarium was not a part of the Smithsonian system and therefore had a charge and therefore wasn't worth going to see.  But Will had seen that they fed the piranha's at 2:00 so we HAD to be there by then.  Well, these piranha were about one inch long and the guy feeding them talked down to everybody in the room.  This was probably the biggest disappointment of the trip.

Then it was on to the Capital Building where they now (since the fatal shooting of two Capital guards last year) require you to wait in line even if you are going on a self-guided tour.  After paying homage to modern bureaucracy, we finally walked up the historic steps, stood in the historic rotunda, viewed the historic statues, read about the historic building and remodeling of the historic building and even took a whiz in the historic bathrooms before heading for the next museum.

Which was the Museum of Natural History, the personal favorite of our favorite Tour-mobile tour guide.  And ours as well.  The 13 foot stuffed African elephant would have been enough to rate it high in our esteem, but the Hope Diamond and the unbelievable gem display simply took our breath away.  The gems and incredible rock formations displayed are truly awesome.  We also enjoyed the dinosaur exhibit, especially the shark jaws from a prehistoric shark measuring 40 feet in length!

We finished the Paleolithic Era about 6:30 and decided we would follow all those historic rocks with a trip to Hard Rock Café about three blocks away.  There we dined to the music of the Sex Pistols, Jimmy Hendrix, and Elvis while Andy bought a T-shirt.  That's when we noticed that he had on a Hard Rock Café T-shirt from St. Thomas.  Now he has a Washington D.C. one to match.

After the fine meal, we hiked up E street, crossing at 7th toward the Metro station near the Navy Memorial.  When we got there we found a large crowd of people and the Navy Band and choir tuning up for their 8 o'clock concert.  So we plopped right down and enjoyed a wonderful variety show featuring Sousa marches, show tunes, country hits, and, of course, concluding with a rousing rendition of God Bless the USA.

This musical treat was an unexpected delight, but Sarah spent the whole concert explaining to me that you could see the Navy guys' boxer shorts through their white uniforms.  Scandalous!  And right here within five blocks of the White House!  (No comment.)

By Wednesday, we decided we had had enough of standing and reading and walking and standing and reading some more, and decided to turn toward Annapolis.  We arrived well before noon to this wonderfully quaint town with its narrow streets and beautiful harbor and the glorious Chesapeake Bay.  We took a self-guided walking tour of the Naval Academy with me telling Andy that he should have gone there every other breath and saying that I wish I had gone there the other breath.  The sailboats were everywhere on the bay.  We walked slowly by the midshipmen aboard their own 30 foot Newports preparing for a day's sail.  We walked by the famed statue of Tecumseh which brings good luck during finals to all who salute him.  Then we viewed the beautiful chapel with stained glass windows dedicated to the various classes of the 40s.

After a short walk back to the harbor, we stopped for lunch at the Market Square where everyone else ate the usual boring hamburgers, or turkey sandwiches, but I had the Chesapeake Chicken.  Like I always say, "When in Rome, do as the Romans.  When on the Chesapeake, eat as the Chesapeakeans!"

Then we split up so that Sarah could shop, I could stroll the harbor eye-balling the thousands of sailboats, and the boys could feel free to do as they chose.  They chose to stick with Sarah and shop.

I found Fletcher's Boat Supply Shop and examined every aisle, every cleat, every boathook, marine toilet repair item, and book.  I was almost tempted in the book department where I coveted Best Boats by Frenc Mate, This Old Boat by Don Chase, and The Self-Sufficient Sailor by Larry and Lin Pardee.  But I resisted temptation and continued walking around the harbor where I coveted J-22s and found the Junior Sailing Club beginning their lessons in boats about the size of mine.  For an hour or more I watched those 9 and 10 year olds, maneuvering their boats back and forth under the watchful eye of instructors in their powered dinghies.  Finally I sat down at the end of the pier and watched through my binoculars until the appointed hour to rendezvous back at the car.

Then we drove over the Bay Bridge down along the Eastern Shore to St. Michaels and the Chesapeake Maritime Museum.  We climbed the lighthouse, examined the skipjacks, looked at all the variety of crab boats, and toured the waterfowl exhibit.  There we saw the punt guns, monster shotguns mounted on tiny boats used (quite illegally) by old time commercial duck hunters.  The boys really thought that exhibit was cool.

We then drove for a couple of hours more before stopping for the night at Salisbury.  The next morning we continued our southerly route toward Norfolk.  The Bay Bridge and Tunnel was as good a ride as we had seen to date.  The 21-mile bridge is one of the longest with two tunnels in the middle making way for ships to cross above it.  We stopped at the Café and rest stop in the middle of the bridge and walked out on the pier.  There we could observe big Navy ships, boats, and even a hovercraft scattered all over the Bay.  A nuclear submarine cruised right over the tunnel we had just passed, pushing a monstrous wave of water over its nose as it moved off toward the docks.  We stayed for a long time soaking up the salt air and observing the fishermen and many activities surrounding us.

Then it was on to Norfolk, which I had picked out as a vague I-wanna-go-there place on our itinerary.  I didn't really know anything about it, except that I had heard there was a Naval base there.  I wanted to see the ships so that's where we went.  We followed the excellent navigation of First Mate Sarah and found ourselves at the Naval Base Visitor Center where we took the 12 o'clock tour for $5 each.  And it was a great tour!  We rode an air-conditioned bus right by the navy docks with up-close views of destroyers, submarines and two aircraft carriers – the George Washington and the Enterprise.   We loved seeing all the ships, and touring the rest of the base was interesting too.  At the end of the tour, the guide mentioned that they were having Open House that weekend and that a destroyer was open for free visits downtown at the Nauticus Maritime Museum.  Hey!  That was all the tip we needed.

Sarah helped us navigate to downtown Norfolk where we found the huge Nauticus Museum, which featured fantastic aquariums (which put the National Aquarium to shame) and wonderful interactive displays with lots of computer technology.  Sarah and the boys even got to pet a live nurse shark, which I dutifully recorded on film.  It was a wonderful museum, but the USS Laboon was waiting out back.  After waiting in line again for about 40 minutes, we had a fabulous tour of the ship.  We saw the five inch gun up front, the doors where the Tomahawk missiles emerge, the tiny 8 inch steering wheel, and the control room with banks of computer screens on every wall controlling everything from course, to cruise missiles, to radar, to sonar.  It was really amazing to be on a working Navy ship with all the bells and whistles.  This one was built in 1995 so it had lots of the newest gadgets.

After the destroyer tour, we headed out of town for Williamsburg.  We arrived, checked into a motel, found a good place to eat (Second Street Café – which was the best and cheapest place we ate all week), then hustled over to Colonial Williamsburg just missing a musical concert on the square.  But we still had time to walk around and check out some of the stores before returning to the motel for the night.

On Friday, we turned the Blazer toward home.  On the way, we started day-dreaming about Sarah's home cooking and decided we wanted her special spaghetti for supper.  That's when Andy reflected on the many cooking lessons he learned while staying with Steve Summers in Jacksonville for the month after the rest of us came to Kentucky.  He asked, "Mom, how do you know when the spaghetti is done?"  She replied that she just watches the time on it.  To which Andy replied, "Steve says you can know it's done if you throw it against the wall and it sticks.  If it falls off, it's not done yet."  And he assured us that Steve demonstrated the technique and showed him the splotches on his kitchen wall from previous meals.  After that wonderful bit of humor and lots more of its kind, we arrived home about 5 p.m., tired but happy.