Several readers have written to ask why we didn’t visit Colonial Williamsburg during our recent trip to Virginia, suggesting that it would be a good story for the Gypsy Journal. We have also had e-mails from readers in the last couple of weeks wanting to know why we didn’t tour this place or that place during our week in Washington D.C., and asking how we choose which places to write about.

Several factors play into it, including our personal interests, the time we have available, whether or not we have covered something similar in a recent issue, and whether or not the attraction, museum, or whatever will give us complimentary admissions, and a media kit to help us develop a story.

We have no interest in theme parks, so you’ll probably never read a feature about Dollywood, Disneyland, or Silver Dollar City in the paper or the blog. Besides which, those places have been done to death. When possible, we prefer the lesser known attractions and places to visit. That’s not to say we don’t hit some major stops along the way – in the new issue of the Gypsy Journal we have stories on the National Holocaust Museum, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Newseum, and the American Indian Museum, to name a few.

Terry and I love history, and we could easily fill every issue with just stories about this famous Revolutionary War or Civil War battlefield, that old fort, and those historic homes. But not everybody is a history nut, so we have to try and temper our interests and include different kinds of stories to make the Gypsy Journal meet a wide variety of interests.

Some readers wanted to know why we didn’t tour the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum while we were in Washington. Well, first of all, we just didn’t have the time. And, we have done stories in the past on the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida; the Pima Air Museum in Tucson; and the Mid-America Air Museum in Liberal, Kansas. Not to mention a couple of rocket museums along the way. 

We also have a policy of not paying to tour an attraction that we are then going to write about and give thousands of dollars worth of free publicity to. We visit a lot of places in the course of a year, and paying $15, $20, or more each for the two of us to get into all of them would not fit into our budget. We’d have loved to have visited Colonial Williamsburg and included a feature story for the paper, but they declined to supply us with media passes, or even a media kit to work with. Hopefully we can work something out with them the next time we’re in that area.

This may sound like we’re looking for a handout, but that’s not the case at all. Every publication, indeed every business, has a budget that they work within.  When we work together with an attraction, we both win. We feel that we give the places we write about a lot of excellent exposure, and judging by the feedback we get from them, they do too.  If an attraction or museum won’t provide us  media passes, and we don’t have a deep enough interest or desire to pay to see it, we’ll look for someplace else to write about.

There is never a shortage of places for us to discover, and the good news is that if we don’t got to some attraction this time around, we have a great excuse to go back again someday!

Thought For The Day – Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once.

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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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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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Our plans to play tourist in Washington, D.C. were rained out yesterday. It started raining just after midnight and came down all day long. Not just a drizzle, but a hard, pounding rain that was not fit for man nor beast. So we spent the day in the motorhome at Cherry Hill Park, watching TV, cruising the internet, and being lazy.

I’m pleased that the Winegard Trav’ler automatic rooftop TV dish we had installed on our motorhome last December doesn’t suffer from rain fade nearly as much as the old tripod mounted dish we used to use. I don’t know if that is because the dish is bigger than the old one, but whatever the reason, it sure is an improvement.

A blog reader wrote yesterday to ask me about rooftop dishes, and if there are any major differences between DirecTV or Dish Network. We had DirecTV in our home and during our first few years on the road, before switching to Dish Network. I believe that the programming choices and prices are about the same overall, though personally the Dish support folks have been just a tiny bit more helpful, in my opinion.

I’m curious, what type of antenna do you use for TV reception, and do you subscribe to Dish or DirecTV, rely on over the air programming, campground cable TV, or?

We had a couple of orders to mail out, so about 4 p.m. we left the campground and ran to the post office, then stopped at Home Depot to look for some cabinet latches to replace a couple of broken ones on our kitchen drawers. No luck there, so I guess I’ll have to order original equipment replacements from Lichtsinn, a great Winnebago repair shop and parts supplier in Forest City, Iowa. Winnebago will sell you replacement parts if you go to their service facility in Forest City, but otherwise you have to order from a dealer. Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea how or why any company makes the decisions they do.

Back at the motorhome, it was still raining, so we did the same thing we had done all day. It seemed a perfect day for a nap, so I stretched out on the couch and did just that for a while. I woke up in time for dinner, but I’d have been just as happy snoring away until morning. Rainy days make for good sleeping.

Today the weather is supposed to be a little better, and we hope to spend the day touring the Newseum and whatever else we can squeeze in. We covered most of the major monuments and a couple of the Smithsonian museums during our last visit to Washington, so this trip we want to get to some of the attractions we missed the first time around.

Thought For The Day – If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you tomatoes, make Bloody Marys.

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Yesterday was another short driving day for us, just 77 miles! I could get used to this laid back lifestyle!

We left Round Top Campground in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania just before 10 a.m. , got on U.S. Highway 15 and followed it south to Frederick, Maryland. U.S. 15 is a nice, divided four lane highway that crosses through some very pretty country. At Frederick, we picked up Interstate 270 and followed it about 30 miles to Interstate 495, better known as the Beltway around the Washington, D.C. area.

I had hoped that on a Sunday morning, traffic wouldn’t be too bad, but I was wrong. It got noticeably busier from Frederick south, and as soon as we got onto the Beltway, it was petty much bumper to bumper all the way to College Park, a distance of about 9 miles. We got off in College Park, and then had just over a mile of surface streets to drive before we arrived at Cherry Hill Park, less than 90 minutes after we hit the road. Did I say I could get used to this laid back lifestyle?

Here is our Winnebago in our site at Cherry Hill, our home for the next week while we tour Washington.

Cherry Hill is the most expensive RV park we’ve ever stayed in, at $58 a night (less 10% discount for FMCA members), for a back-in, full hookup 50 amp RV site with cable TV. But, I think it’s the best location for visiting Washington. We can buy tickets for the Metro in the park office, and a city bus comes through every half hour and delivers us right to the station.

We know folks who stay at outlying county parks, private campgrounds, and Elks and Moose lodges, then drive to a Metro station and park there, but for us, the convenience is well worth the extra cost. I know my motorhome and van are in a secure place, and all I have to do is get on the bus and go.

Once we were hooked up and settled in, we drove to a nearby Five Guys for lunch, and then went in search of a Best Buy to get a spare battery for my Olympus digital camera. The GPS took us several miles to Wheaton, Maryland, and then when we returned to College Park, we saw a Best Buy just down the road from the campground! Terry got a chuckle out of that.

We stopped at a grocery store for a couple of items, then came back to the campground and spent the rest of the day at home, just relaxing before we start playing tourist again today.

We weren’t hungry when dinnertime rolled around, but about 7:30 p.m. we wanted a treat, so we walked across the road to the campground’s Conference Center, which includes a TV room, pool, hot tub, laundry, and cafe. We ordered ice cream sundaes, and were shocked at how big they were. This is a “one scoop” sundae!

Terry originally ordered a two scoop sundae, but had to cancel that after she saw how big it was! Even so, there was no way I could finish mine. It must have had a pint of ice cream in it, along with whipped cream, nuts, cherries, and sprinkles. And then we were shocked at the price – just $3.80 for two of these monster desserts!

I had several blog comments and e-mails from people wanting to see me in my new hats, so here you go. But don’t blame me if your kids get born cross eyed or something!

Just like Gettysburg, there is so much to see and do here that we know we can only scratch the surface this trip. But we’re looking forward to visiting several of the museums and monuments we missed on our last visit. It’s going to be a fun week!

Thought For The Day – I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days get together and gang up on me all at once.

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