I’m beginning to feel like I have my very own personal rain cloud hanging over my head, dumping on me every time I turn around. It rained three out of the seven days we were in the Washington D.C. area, two of those days so hard that we couldn’t go out and sightsee. Now we’re at the Chesapeake Bay  Thousand Trails campground near Gloucester, Virginia, and it’s been raining since we got here. Yeah, I know, it’s good for farmers and ducks. But even though I waddle when I walk, I’m neither.

We left Cherry Hill Park in College Park, Maryland yesterday morning at 9 a.m., got on the Beltway and scooted around the west side of the Washington area with moderately light traffic.

To avoid  the normal gridlock on the Beltway, we had planned to take U.S. Highway 301 south out of the D.C. area, but the more I thought about the high, narrow Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, the more I decided that the Beltway traffic wouldn’t be all that bad on a Sunday morning.

Yeah, go ahead, call me a wimp. But I drove the Mackinac Bridge a while back, so I know I can do it if I have to, but why should I, if I can take an alternative route? I kind of feel like President George Bush when he said “I’m President of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!” I may not be president, but I’m a demigod in my own mind, and I’m not driving over any more bridges if I can avoid them!

As I said, traffic was light, on the Beltway. There was some road construction, but nothing to slow us down.

We cruised right along, and we made good time to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where we got onto U.S. Highway 17 and followed it for about 75 miles through rolling hill country, with thick forests, passing through a few small communities. For the first 25 miles or so, the road was good two lane, then it opened up to divided four lane highway. There is a lot of history in this part of the country, and we passed one historical marker after another.

It started to rain about 30 minutes before we arrived at the Thousand Trails campground, but let up long enough to allow us to get backed into a full hookup 50 amp RV site and get the rig leveled out and hooked up. Then it really began to come down, and it rained all day, and the rest of the evening.

We covered 161 miles, and were settled into our campsite by 1 p.m. I like this kind of traveling!

Unfortunately, between the rain and a tree that is partially blocking our satellite signal, the TV kept going in and out. Even in the nasty storms last week in College Park, we never lost the signal, so I think the tree is more of the problem than the rain. If it were not so wet, and if we were not already all leveled out and had the slide rooms extended, and if I wasn’t so lazy, I could have moved the motorhome a little bit, since we have a big, roomy site. I may do that once the weather clears up. However, the forecast for today is more of the same, so maybe not. I’ll check my rain cloud and see what it has to say.

Meanwhile, Bad Nick took advantage of the rainy afternoon to write a new Bad Nick Blog titled I Don’t Need Facts, My Mind’s Made Up! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.

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We must have been worn out by a week of sightseeing, because yesterday we slept in much later than we expected to. But since we had not planned to take the Metro back into Washington, it really didn’t matter.

We puttered around the motorhome for a while, checking e-mails, reading some of our favorite RV blogs, and grumbling because Greg White got lazy and didn’t post a blog. Come on Greg, inquiring minds want to know what the heck you guys are up to!

Then we drove to Edgewater, Maryland to check out the Annapolis Elks Lodge. They allow RVing Elks members to dry camp, and we wanted to look at it as an alternative to commercial campgrounds when we get back in this area. We wanted to spend some time touring Baltimore on this trip, but two days of bad weather made us put that off this time around. The Elks lodge will be a good base for exploring that area when we return.

I also wanted to go to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, but they had some sort of security restriction in place and we were not going to be allowed on base. So instead, we drove back to Cherry Hill Park, and spent the rest of the afternoon at home.

That’s when I discovered that Dish Network had dropped the FX channel. What? No Sons of Anarchy? That’s not acceptable! I get really ticked off when companies change their programming and don’t give me what I signed up for and paid for. I have been a Dish customer for years, but last December when our motorhome was burglarized the thugs trashed our receiver, and Dish wouldn’t replace it for us, even though new customers get all kinds of freebies. Obviously loyal customers do not matter to Dish. I wonder if I can get my Winegard Trav’lr automatic rooftop TV dish adapted or reprogrammed to DirecTV?

We have had a good time visiting College Park and Washington D.C., but we are both ready to leave. This area is just too busy for us. The streets, the sidewalks, the stores and restaurants, they are just packed with people all of the time. I like people, just not that many people, all in one place!

Today is a travel day for us. We’re heading for the Chesapeake Bay Thousand Trails campground near Gloucester, Virginia. It looks like it will be about a three hour drive, so we should have an easy day.

We have not been to that area before, and we’re looking forward to seeing some new places. There is a lot of history in the region, from historic Jamestown, the Revolutionary War Yorktown battlefield, Civil War battlefields, plantations, and lots more.

But it won’t all be sightseeing. I need to get the next issue of the Gypsy Journal read to print while we’re there, and I’m really behind schedule in updating our websites. After being on the go pretty much non-stop ever since we left Arizona back in June, Miss Terry needs some downtime to decompress, get caught up on her projects, and maybe I can even talk her into making me some decadent dessert or her delicious cinnamon rolls while we’re there. Diet? What diet?

Thought For The Day – When somebody tells you nothing is impossible, ask him to dribble a football.

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As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, when we were in town on Wednesday, we spent some time at the National Museum of American History, which is one of the dozen or so museums that make up the Smithsonian in Washington. This is our favorite of them all.

We saw all kinds of interesting exhibits and famous things, including the original flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the siege of Baltimore in the War of 1812, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the Star-Spangled Banner, which became our country’s national anthem.  No photographs are allowed of the flag to protect it for future generations.

But I did get some pictures of a few other things you will recognize, including Archie and Edith Bunker’s chairs from the sitcom All In The Family.

And here’s some memorabilia from another favorite old television show, the jacket worn by the Fonz in Happy Days. Next to the jacket is country comedienne Minnie Pearl’s famous hat, complete with dangling price tag!

And for the ladies who like cooking shows, such as Miss Terry, they even have Julia Childs’ kitchen on display!

As well as the ruby slippers that Dorothy wore in The Wizard of Oz.

The museum’s collections include everything from musical instruments to coins, dresses worn by America’s First Ladies, weapons, computers, and anything else that tells the story of America and Americans.

We’re supposed to leave here Sunday, and our original plan was to go to the Thousand Trails campground in Gloucester, Virginia for a couple of weeks. But we have a new issue of the Gypsy Journal to get out, and I’m having trouble finding a newspaper printer in the area who uses the same size paper we do, and who can do the job at a price we can afford.

Newspapers don’t get printed at quick print type places, they require a specialized press that is about three times the size of your average motorhome, and cost about 100 times more. We really don’t want to go to the new size of newsprint, which is about two inches narrower and three inches shorter per page than our current format, but sooner or later we may be forced to.

So we’re up in the air right now as to our next move.  I have some feelers out to other newspaper printing plants in the region, because our only other option is to go all the way back to Elkhart to get printed at our regular printer in that area. We really don’t want to backtrack that far if we can help it.

The big storm that has been pounding the east coast certainly pounded us here at Cherry Hill Park in College Park, Maryland. We decided to just stay home yesterday and take a day off from playing tourist, but if the weather gives us a break, we’ll be back at it today. We only have a couple of days left here in the Washington D.C. area, and there is so much to see and do that we could never get to all of it. But, it sure is fun trying!

Bad Nick took advantage of the rainy day yesterday to write a new Bad Nick Blog titled Why Didn’t They Resist? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

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Yesterday we were up and out early, riding the Metro train back into Washington D.C. for more sightseeing. We had a great time, but playing tourist is darned hard work! After two days in a row, we are worn out!

We started the day by visiting the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where the nation’s money is printed. We saw displays on the history of currency, and a took a free tour that was very interesting.

Being an old newspaper man, I’ve spent a lot of time in print shops over the years. It’s one thing to watch newspapers rolling off a press, and something else entirely to watch money being churned out. But the pressmen seemed like pressmen in every shop I’ve been in, and not at all impressed that they were printing huge sums of money every day.

No photographs are allowed during the tour, but we could take pictures in the lobby and in the gift shop after the tour. Here is a stack of $1millon in $10 bills! That’s a lot of money!

You can even buy some shredded money to take home with you. I wonder how long it would take to paste this all back together again?

They also have a tall tube of shredded $100 bills and you can see how much money it would take to match your height. According to this, Miss Terry is about $1,491,000 tall, but I wouldn’t take a thousand times that for her!

Since I couldn’t convince the folks at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to give me any samples, we left and stopped in at the U.S. Forest Service headquarters, where we met this furry fellow.

We toured the Museum of American History during our last visit to Washington, but we couldn’t resist popping back in for a while, since we’re big history nuts. But I’ll save that for another day.

It started to rain, but we didn’t let that stop us as we walked several blocks to the National Museum of the American Indian. This was another very impressive place!

There were four floors of galleries devoted to Native American history, culture and folklore. Displays included everything from sculptures and artwork, to this beautifully beaded cradleboard.

There were exhibits on every major American Indian tribe, on Indian mythology, and on how today’s Indians live in the modern world but hold onto their traditional values and culture.

We left the museum about 4 p.m. and caught the Metro back to the College Park station, then took the bus to Cherry Hill Park. We timed it just right, because we only had about a two minute wait for the train, and the bus was waiting for us when we got off the train, so we were back at the campground by 5 p.m.

The weather reports are for heavy rains today, with as much as four inches predicted within the next 24 hours. The rain is supposed to be accompanied by strong winds; the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole. If it’s going to be that nasty, we’ll probably batten down the hatches and just sit tight today. Besides, after two hard days of playing tourist, we need a break!

Thought For The Day – I’m not a complete idiot, some parts are missing.

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Yesterday, we toured two great museums in Washington D.C., the Newseum and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Both were excellent, and I highly recommend both to anybody who has not visited them yet.

The bus picked us up at Cherry Hill Park and took us to the Metro station, where we rode the Green Line train into Washington. It was less than an hour from the time we got on the bus until we were walking on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Metro is fast and easy to use, the trains are very clean, and every line is color coded and keyed to free maps available everywhere to help you get around.

The Newseum is devoted to the history of news gathering and reporting, from the earliest town criers to the first printed handbills, the evolution of newspapers, television and radio, and new technology such as online news sources and blogging.

From the Newseum’s observation deck, we had a great view of the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Federal Trade Commission Building, as well as other Washington landmarks.

The museum’s seven floors of galleries include permanent and changing exhibits of major news stories, including several graffiti covered sections of the Berlin Wall, extensive video and print coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and studios where visitors can try their hand at broadcasting the news.

There is even a Bell news helicopter hanging from the ceiling!

The G-Men and Journalists exhibit includes such rare items as John Dillinger’s death mask, the Unabomber’s cabin, and the electric chair Lindberg baby kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann was executed in.

We spent several hours at the Newseum, and could have easily spent all day, but we still had more to see and do.

Our next stop was the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and it was one of the most moving experiences we have ever had. The Newseum was a bright and overall uplifting place, but nobody is smiling when they tour the Holocaust Museum, because there is nothing to smile about there. Frankly, it’s a really sad and depressing place. But everybody should see it, if for no other reason than to honor those who perished under Nazi rule, and to be sure that it never happens again.

Photography is not allowed in the museum, but they did allow me to download this photo of the  gate museum visitors pass under, a cast taken from the original entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, inscribed with the ironic phrase Arbeit Macht Frei, German for Work Makes One Free.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Holocaust Museum, and we saw a lot of tears in the eyes of people seeing the horror that man can bring upon his own kind.

When the museum closed, we walked down to the World War II Memorial, which was still under construction during our last visit to Washington. My dad and several of my uncles served during that war, and one of my mother’s brother’s died fighting in North Africa, so I appreciate this memorial to their service and sacrifice.

It was a gray, cloudy day, but we managed to get a few decent photos of the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool.

It was a busy day, and by the time we rode the Metro and bus back to College Park, had dinner, and got back to our motorhome at Cherry Hill Park, there was just time to download our digital photos, write this blog post, and get ready for bed. Today we plan to do more sightseeing, gathering stories for the next issue of the Gypsy Journal.

Thought For The Day – Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

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