Atkin's Senior Trip

 

In May, Atkin and I went on a trip to celebrate Atkin graduating from High School.  We flew to Buffalo, New York and took the rental car across the Niagara River to the Canadian side and followed the river to the falls.  The cherry trees were in bloom - it was beautiful.  After viewing the falls we headed back to New York and spent the night near Palmyra, New York. 

It was a fairly cold day, so there weren't a lot of people at the Hill Cumorah or Sacred Grove – we got great tours from the guides.  We also visited the building where the Book of Mormon was first printed.  On a tip from the Sister missionaries we ate lunch at an obscure, local drive in.  We discovered that they serve incredibly delicious ice cream and that a kid's size cone is 3 scopes (regular is 5 scopes, large 7).

From there we drove to the Peter Whitmer log home near Fayette, New York, where Joseph Smith translated much of the Book of Mormon and where the Church was formally organized on April 6, 1830.  We then headed toward Philadelphia and well after dark took a little side trip to the site on the Susquehanna River where the Aaronic Priesthood was restored.  We hiked down to the river with flashlights and just after we arrived, the full moon came up!  It was really neat.

We made a brief stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, (for all you “Office” fans) and then spent the night near Philadelphia.

The next morning we drove to Independence Hall but couldn't wait 6 hours for a tour of the building, so we saw the Liberty Bell and went to the National Constitution Center – very much worth the time. 

After eating the obligatory Philly Cheese Steak sandwich we drove to Baltimore, dropped off the rental car and hopped the train to Union Station in Washington, DC.  We got on Metro and took it to our hotel in Rockville, Maryland.

The next day we spent at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum until closing and then went to the Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln and Vietnam War Memorials.

The next day, we tried to go on a tour of the White House and discovered that you need to make reservations 6 months in advance, for security reasons.  So after taking pictures of the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue, we returned to the Vietnam War and Lincoln Memorials.  We also visited the Korean War and World War II Memorials.  We then discovered that all the tickets for the day had been given out for Capital Building tours, so we went to the Library of Congress, where we had to leave after about 15 minutes because of fire alarms.  So we went next door to the Supreme Court building, took a tour and had a very good meal in the cafeteria.  From there we looked around the new National Museum of the American Indian in the Smithsonian complex.

After checking out the next morning, we ditched our bags at Union Station and got tickets for the Capitol tour.  We had to wait a while, so we looked around the National Gardens before the tour.  After the tour we went to the National Gallery of Art for a couple of hours.  Then we walked to Union Station and got on the train to Baltimore Airport and the flight home.  It was a wonderful, invigorating, exhausting trip – you could easily spend weeks in the Washington, DC area.