July 6, 2005 - Wednesday
I just couldn't pass up taking Harry to see a couple of the monuments before we left Washington this morning. He's seen them in books and knows a least a little about the Revolutionary War that started our country. Besides, when's he going to be in Washington again? I wasn't hoping for much more than him just seeing a few big things and maybe remembering them enough to ask questions later, but it really worked out great.

First of all, I thought for sure that the boys would run around the columns of the Jefferson Memorial, but they didn't. They sat down on one of the benches inside and acted appropriately reverent staring at the huge black statue of Jefferson. But what was even better was that Harry started asking questions about the King. I'd told him that Thomas Jefferson wrote the King a very important letter, he noticed the words on the wall and astutely asked if that was the letter. But he also seemed to recall our talk several weeks ago about the causes for the Revolutionary War and how the King wasn't being fair. On the way back to our car we had a very thoughtful discussion about how war and fighting is a very bad thing, but that sometimes you need to stand up for what you think is right. We'd talked about that before in other contexts, but he's getting into the inevitable gun and sword play of young boys and I kind of wanted him to understand the seriousness of war and fighting. I'd actually thought about bringing him to the Vietnam Memorial, but on our way to the Lincoln Memorial we walked right by the Korean War Memorial and that was even better because it has that wall of faces, faces, I told Harry, of people who died in the war and didn't get to come home again. That was enough. We did not get into the Civil War at the Lincoln Memorial. Harry was pensive and it seemed like enough war talk for a while. Still, overall, the morning went as well as I could have hoped. I think Harry, at least, perhaps not Jeremy, will remember Washington.

The other stop for the day was the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Center out near Dulles Airport in Virginia. It's amazing place just for the shear magnitude of things. I suppose it's really a lot less of a museum and a lot more of a huge airplane hangar filled with real planes: fighter planes, cargo planes, helicopters (inlcuding Ike's first helicopter), an actual Concorde, the real Enola Gay, and the real Space Shuttle Enterprise off in a side hangar (visible in the background of the SR-71 Blackbird picture, below right). The only interactive activities there were two virtual reality rides inside simulation pods. We did the fighter pilot simulation.

In a classic family-with-kids way, we got stuck buying the boys model space shuttles. Harry spotted them first, other kids holding models and, wouldn't you know, there was the kiosk right on the way out of the Space Shuttle hangar. Harry saw it and very, very courteously pointed it out to us. There was no turning away. Actually, the kids have been so good for these first few days of our trip that they absolutely deserved the space shuttles.

Well, that was true until Jeremy had a meltdown about the lunch we bought at a Quiznos sandwich shop. Maybe it was just that we were eating so late, after 1:30, and we were all hunger. Tonight we camped in a secluded campsite in western Maryland's Green Ridge State Forest.


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