John and I have done so much since the last time I updated. We did go to the Hershey chocolate factory but it wasn't really anything great. There was a tour of how they make the chocolate. It was a little bit interesting but a lot lame because, of course, it was all geared towards children. It was fun but not something I would do again. The most disappointing thing about it was that they didn't offer any type of candy that you can't get in Michigan or anywhere else.
On Friday, my birthday, we got to tour the Fort Hunter mansion. It was built in the 1700's and renovated and added onto in the 1800's. It was so interesting to hear about all the history and see how the people lived back then. There was an outhouse of course, but in the master bedroom there was a wooden chair with a hole in the seat, and below that there was a container. This was a toilet for them if it was cold out or if they had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. We also saw the clothes of a woman who grew up there and then owned it with her husband. I think her name was Helen, I can't really remember. But we saw her house coats and then also her dresses that she would wear out on the town. The dresses were beautiful. The tour guide also told us that archeologists dig somewhere around the property once a year. Last year they found a cannon ball from the civil war. We didn't see it because it belongs to the state but they are hoping that the state will let them house it when it becomes available. Also, they had a "summer kitchen" where they would do their cooking, ironing, butchering of animals and things like that to keep the heat and dirtiness away from the main house. While we were in there a saw shifted and almost fell. The tour guide made a joke about it being a ghost, of course it wasn't but it was a little creepy. After we saw the mansion we tried to go to the National Civil War Museum but it was closed for some reason. We ended up just coming back to the hotel, eating at the hotel restaurant and having a couple drinks. It was an absolutely wonderful birthday!
Saturday we drove two hours to get to Washington DC. The silly GPS came through again! We were looking for the Capitol so that we could tour it but the GPS had us on one side of the river and we needed to be on the other. Finally I punched in the Lincoln Memorial and that at least got us over the river and into a parking area. We started at the World War II Memorial, walked to the Washington Monument, then found a place for lunch. We found a food court which was inside a large building that we had to go through metal detectors to get to. It was crazy. After lunch we went to the White House which was nothing grand. We didn't expect to get to go in but we asked about it, apparently you have to book your tickets six months in advance. From the White House we made our way to the Smithsonian Castle which had a replica of the "Pile of Loot" from the new Night at the Museum movie. We then went to the Museum of Natural History which was absolutely insane! There were so many people! We saw a ton of animals from all over the world, and an exhibit of ocean life (and when I say exhibit I mean a room about 10x the size of my house), dinosaurs and so much more! It was our favorite part of the day. After that we finally made our way to the Capitol. Nothing too exciting from the outside. We still wanted to tour the inside but the tours were done for the day by the time we got there. On our way back we stopped at the National Gallery of Art where we saw paintings by Rembrandt, DaVinci and Monet. We didn't spend very long in there though because we were getting pretty tired by this time. Then we made our way to the Lincoln Memorial which was great but also packed with people. That was our final stop before getting back to our car, where we were pleasantly surprised to not see a ticket. We were parked in three hour parking, which is about all there is, and when we asked a National Park Service lady about it she said it was "strictly enforced." Then later we asked another guy and he said it depended on how bored the people were, because who's really gonna walk around and try ticket each car? And he said even if we did get a ticket it would only be about $23 so we didn't really worry about it after that. When we got back to the hotel we swam in the pool for a while.
Sunday we woke up and did some laundry. It took a lot longer than we thought but we were glad when we got done. Then we ate lunch at the hotel restaurant, a chicken ceaser salad pizza! It was really good! Then we went to Gettysburg. We bought tickets which included viewing a film, seeing the cyclorama and touring the museum. The film told all about the battle and the Gettysburg address, the cyclorama is a painting that is 377 feet long, 42 feet high and 360 degrees around. It depicts the battle of Gettysburg and the painter, who fought in the battle, even painted himself into it. The museum was very cool too. There were cannonballs, shells from guns, guns, belts and belt plates that the soldiers wore, diary entries and tons of other interesting things recovered from the battlefield. After that we got in the car and took an auto tour of the battlefield. There were 16 stops on the tour where we got out and took pictures. Well, we didn't get out at each one but when we saw something really interesting we got out. There are monuments all around dedicated to all the different troops from all the different states the helped during the battle. New York had a lot of monuments but Michigan only had one so of course we had to get a picture by it. We also went to the top of every observation tower. That was really amazing because we could see so much and we got (hopefully) some really great pictures. We did a lot of walking over the weekend. When we got back to the hotel after Gettysburg we got into the pool. We had it all to ourselves after a while so we had a lot of fun. After that we got into the hottub where we had a long and wonderful talk about a lot of things. It's one of the best talks we've had in a long time.
We're going to try and go to a movie this week, probably Night at the Museum. We're also going to try and take a tour of the John Harris Mansion!
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