Boston, New York, and Washington DC

We went to these places.

Massachusetts!

Let me expound! After leaving Acadia we headed down to North Grafton, MA to spend some time with Jeff and Sarah! While we were staying with them we were able to get away for a weekend of... camping... it was fantastic! We went backpacking in the White Mountains, slept in our hammocks, enjoyed a peaceful night of quite stargazing, and basically just soaked in the solitude.

Unfortunately, we had to leave before too long because we have lots more boxes to check before the end! (The end being when there are things like holidays that we want to spend with people... it happens.) It was super nice being able to spend almost a week with Jeff and Sarah before we had to take off... sooo good! Real beds! Showers! A dishwasher! It was glorious!

From North Grafton we headed out for Boston (where all good revolutionary stories begin.). Yes, yes indeed we were in Boston in the fall! We didn't spend too long in Boston, but we did stop at the historic location of the battle of Bunker Hill, which actually mostly happened on Breed's Hill (they were still working out this whole naming system back then, we were a new country.) The battle was technically a loss for the colonists, but it was a devastating victory for the British who lost a very significant portion of their troops and a good deal of troop moral. Then we departed.

-------NYC------
We drove through Rhode Island (we think) and through Connecticut (we are pretty sure) on our way to New York City. Pretty much the two things we wanted to see in NYC were the Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, and Central Park. Since we have been to quite a few parks recently, we narrowed it down to the first two.

We got off the Subway at the stop for the Statue of Liberty and were immediately offered a (totally legit) chance to take either a 2 hour tour or a 5 hour tour (there were no 3 hour tours available). Since we had done some research we quickly deduced that this was not an official park representative who was so forcefully providing us with this opportunity, so we let the opportunity slip through our fingers. We walked down to the actual ticket location, got our tickets, boarded the ferry, and headed out to Liberty Island!

Upon arriving at the island we grabbed our free (with the ticket price) audio tour devices and sat down to listen. 20 minutes later, after listening to the tour, we walked around and saw all the things the audio tour had provided us while we relaxed in the shade. It turns our the statue is actually pretty sweet. I would like to have seen it when it was new copper, but the green patina gives it a feel of time and perpetuity that is also good. Also the green is pretty iconic and people might get confused if it changed colors all of a sudden. We didn't opt for the pedestal or crown tours (because they were sold out) so we just walked around the base. It was neat-o!

From there we went to Ellis Island where many other people went through the process of becoming Americans (when I say many other people I don't mean that we also went through the process, I mean many people other than us did so. Just wanted to clear that up. You're welcome.) We didn't take that long to explore around the island (it was getting close to the last ferry departure) but it felt like we were connected to all the immigrants who came through when we walked where they had walked.

As we left on the ferry we could see the World Trade Center towering above the rest of the NYC skyline, it was a good way to end the tour.

The Empire State Building is really tall. We made the choice (mistake?) of going to the base of it to take pictures with it. Turns out, you can't see how tall it is when you are standing next to it. So we walked a ways away and tried again. Then walked farther and tried again, finally with some success. It really is an amazing feat of architecture and engineering.

New Jersey!

Delaware!

-----Washington DC-----

Maryland!

With our NYC tour done we headed off to Washington DC, home of the street vendors. We really wanted to see the White House, the Smithsonian (yes, I know there are several museums that make up the Smithsonian, however, instead of listing them all here, I will list them as we visited them.), and all the monuments and memorials. So we did. It was a lot of walking.

We started off by visiting the White House, which is shockingly, painted white! (They were getting better at that naming thing when it was built. And yes, I know it was painted white after the war of 1812.) The secret service had blocked off Pennsylvania Avenue in case something exciting were to happen. Nothing exciting was happening. In their defense they do this from time to time so that people won't know when some exciting is actually happening based on local street closures. Probably a good idea. We also took a picture while we were there. It just so happened that there was a secret service agent in the same location! He was kind enough to inform us that if we wanted to take a picture he couldn't stop us. However, he was not allowed to pose for pictures with people. He was also super nice and we talked to him for several minutes.

Then we started the long walk. Our first top was the Museum of American History. It had lots of cool things about the history of the United States. Paul really liked the exhibit on the development of electricity and the electric light bulb in the US. Julie's favorite was the exhibit with the flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner during the war of 1812.

The next was the Natural History Museum. Which was right next to the American History Museum. Naturally. Definitely cool to walk through all the animals that were hanging out there (they even had some live ones in some of the areas!), Julie liked the mammals exhibit the best. Paul was a fan of the geology section, some of the rock formations looked really amazing.

Finally, we headed to the Air and Space Museum. We flew through that one since it was almost closing time. We originally had a plan to visit it one floor at a time, but decided to just wing it. I will tell you the tail of our exploration now. There were many planes, space capsules, and rockets. We got to walk through Skylab which was neat, and saw some WWII planes, which is always cool to see. Our favorite was seeing the command module where the Apollo astronauts spent their flights to/from the moon. Crazy to think that 3 guys could live in that small a space for that long, but they did!

After that we went for a walk around the Tidal Basin, stopping at the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR memorial, the MLKJ memorial, the Lincoln memorial, and the Washington Monument. As we were trying to leave the Washington Monument we ran into a bit of a problem. Because the very next day they were having the grand opening for the African American History Museum, all the roads were closed to all traffic in the direction we needed to go. In fact, we weren't even supposed to be where we were, but somehow we had gotten there without getting the memo. But nobody would let us leave either... so... we wandered around for awhile until we "happened" to walk past one of the roadblocks pretending we didn't know what we were doing. Finally we made it to the Metro and escaped.

We were planning to go back to DC again the next day, but that night, at the TA Truck Stop that we were staying at (and where we had stayed the night before) a friendly security guard woke us at 3:00 a.m. to tell us we weren't allowed to sleep there. Paul responded "Oh, was that posted? We didn't see the sign." The security guard got a confused look on her face and said, "No, its not posted, people don't just sleep in parking lots." After which we both got VERY confused looks on our faces, because that is exactly what people do at truck stops, and was exactly what we had done the very night before. She graciously offered for us to stay in the TA hotel which we declined just as graciously (well, we tried to be gracious... but it was kinda tough.) Instead of finding another place to park (which is actually pretty difficult in the DC area) we just decided to head out for our next destination. West Virginia, here we come!