DC and NY trip

And what has Beth so dismayed, while Stephen and Hope have big smiles?  Why, the Wade Clock Museum (https://www.visit.msstate.edu/clockmuseum/) at Mississippi State University!  We walked through this neat if rather unusual venue while waiting for Kenny's campus tour at MSU.  This was the first stop on our Thanksgiving week adventure east...

After a long drive in a driving rain, we arrived in Virginia.  Because of how much driving we had to reach our first main objective, we didn't stop and see too many places.  We did, however, make a stop at a curious (if underwhelming) winery near "Peaks of Otter", and then a short drive to Thomas Jefferson's nearby personal retreat called "Poplar Forest" (https://www.poplarforest.org/).  While most people will be more familiar with his main home, Monticello, Poplar Forest is an architectural gem that provided us a number of insights into this complicated man:

The picture above is in the dining room in his Poplar Forest home.  This house, with its octagonal shape, high ceilings, slave-operated tobacco farm, and impressive views of the surrounding landscapes (including the mountains called Peaks of Otter), undoubtedly had a big influence on Jefferson's later years (post-presidency).

Our first destination objective was Washington, DC, and we arrived at our AirBnB by Saturday evening.  After a good nights rest, we found our way the next morning to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum...not the one on the National Mall, but rather the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center out at Dulles Airport (https://airandspace.si.edu/udvar-hazy-center).  This is a bigger space, where they could store and display a number of the larger items, such as the SR-71A Blackbird spy plane from the Cold War (one of my favorite airplanes):

In addition to having LOTS of different planes, including a Concorde jet, they also have the Space Shuttle Discovery:

The Discovery is in some ways bigger than I expected, and smaller, too...  Below is a picture of the ceramic tile skin on the space shuttle that was both its protection and one of its most fragile pieces:

This museum also has a air traffic control building you can climb up and get a broad view of the surrounding area:

We found time this day to squeeze in a visit to Mt. Vernon, President George Washington's home just south of D.C.  We took one of the last tours of the day through this impressive structure:

And had a chance to visit his crypt:

Given that it was late afternoon, that was all we could do that day.  The following day we hopped on the Metro (D.C.'s commuter train system), and much to our surprise had a brief encounter with a friend we first made in Arkansas, a historian named Blake Wintory!  Some of y'all have met Blake--until recently, he was the director of the antebellum plantation home called Lakeport near Lake Village, Arkansas (we've taken a number of you there).  Blake recently moved to Tennessee to take over a different facility, but happened to be in D.C. that week to do research at the National Archives...I don't even want to think about the odds of us running across each other on that particular Metro car!

Alas, we couldn't visit with Blake long, as we had to disembark for our first stop of the day--Arlington National Cemetery.  It was a spectacular late fall day, brisk but warming, and perfect for a solemn morning on this hallowed ground:

It was impressive to see how many recognizable names there were, like the section below that had a number of Supreme Court justices:

But I think I was more impressed by the vast majority of less dramatic memorials with hundreds of thousands of dedicated patriots who gave so much for this country.  We also had a chance to catch the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier, and some wreath-laying ceremonies:

After Arlington, we went into downtown D.C. to spend the rest of the day on the National Mall.  We first visited the Smithsonian Museum of American History (it was too dark in there to get good pictures with my cell phone).  We also went to the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (https://americanindian.si.edu/), which I found to be just as impressive:

Below, Stephen takes a picture of a prehistoric effigy pot that was made in Arkansas:

We lingered on the National Mall until after dark, which is a neat time to see some of the monuments, as they are lit up during the night.  Below, Stephen and Beth head towards the Washington Monument:

And here is the outside of the Lincoln Memorial:

And the Washington Monument, across the Reflecting Pool, from the Lincoln Memorial:

Inside the Lincoln Memorial:

We then trudged back to the nearest Metro station for a ride back to our car, with a brief detour to a really nice seafood restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia's historic Old Town district. 

After our quick visit to D.C., we got an early start out of the area (to beat the traffic) and took a more leisurely route through parts of more rural Maryland, Delaware, and eventually New Jersey.  We happened to stop on a bit of a lark in a small town called New Castle, Delaware, that also turned out to be quite a gem.  There is a national historic site there called"First State National Historical Park" (https://www.nps.gov/frst/index.htm), which of course relates to the fact that Delaware was the first state to ratify the US Constitution.  This is a very old town (by American standards), having been settled in the mid-1600s.  We went to the town's historic center, which had a lot of neat old buildings, including the Immanuel Episcopal Church, pictured below:

The cemetery that surrounds this still active has many old graves (late 1600s and early 1700s), including the grave of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and another gentleman who's epitaph was written by one Dr. Benjamin Franklin...yes, that Ben Franklin!  Below, Hope and the kids read one of many markers scattered around this town:

As neat as New Castle was, it was not our ultimate destination.  We were head for Jersey City, New Jersey that evening, to visit my brother John and his husband Jim.  We picked a fortunate time to arrive, as we missed the bulk of rush hour traffic.  We dropped Beth off at John and Jim's (she stayed with them two nights), and then checked into our nearby hotel.  Below is a picture across the Hudson River of the Manhattan skyline that evening, looking at the Freedom Tower:

Arriving as late in the afternoon as we did, our destination was not New York City, but rather we got tickets to a New Jersey Devils/Minnesota Wild pro hockey game in nearby Newark.  Jim navigated us via the PATH train system to our destination, and John met us there (he had to teach until just before game time).  The hockey game was very entertaining, although the local team lost:

We got to our hotel rather late that evening, so it was with a bit of effort that I rousted the family out of bed the next morning for the next big adventure...fresh baked bagels and lox!  Yum!

John brought Beth over to join us for breakfast, and then walked us to nearby Liberty Park (we were still in New Jersey).  We caught a passenger ferry from Liberty Park to Ellis Island first, then the Statue of Liberty:

The Statue looks small when compared to the giant buildings on the adjoining city skylines, but when you're up and close with it, it is bigger than you think.  We didn't get the tickets to the crown, but did climb up the pedestal base.  As we walked around the base of the Statue, we had some good posing pictures (Christmas letter spoiler, y'all!):

And Kenny the scofflaw:

We got off this passenger ferry in Battery Park at the lower end of Manhattan, and walked up to the Freedom Tower to meet with John.  After a scramble to find some New York-style pizza, we still had some time to kill before our evening plans, so John suggested we take a different passenger ferry up the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge.  Given that everybody was tired from miles of walking already, you can see they really enjoyed the boat ride:

(I guess I did, too!):

Our evening plan was to catch the play "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Broadway.  So we had some more walking in front of us, caught an overpriced dinner at the bottom of 30 Rockefeller Center, and then ambled blocks to the theater.  As you can see, there were some pretty wide eyes with the bright lights:

The theater we went to, the Shubert, was actually the same one Hope had seen a play at while a high school student some years ago.  As you can see from the billboard, the star of the play we went to was Ed Harris, a pretty well-known and talented actor:

The Shubert is a rather small but very steep theater; our seats were fairly high up, but afforded us a good view:

(The gentleman wearing the beige blazer and dark tie in the front row middle was Ed Harris).  I think the best thing about this play (which was very well done and very entertaining) was the fact that ALL of the kids absolutely LOVED it!

We got back to our hotel pretty late that Wednesday night, and with little planned for Thanksgiving Day (no, we did not go to the Macy's Christmas Parade!), we had to figure out what to do.  Hope, Beth, and Stephen voted for sleeping in, and Kenny and I wanted to see more of the town, so he and I caught the subway from Jersey City to Manhattan, and took the Freedom Tower tour.  Below, Kenny looks out from the viewing level (100th floor of this building, over 1200 feet above the streets):

Kenny and I also walked past the reflecting pools where the World Trade Center once stood:

Our main activity for Thanksgiving Day was a fairly traditional family gathering at John and Jim's, full of board games, football watching, and a wonderful turkey & fixin's dinner:

John and Jim were excellent hosts in their small but cozy apartment, which was warm and cherry and very casual:

(Although I worry that Jim's going a bit native, wearing a New York Jets t-shirt!!).  John and Jim were great hosts, and we had our traditional long midwestern goodbye that evening.  Early the next morning (Friday), Bragg Family South had to head southwestward to get back to Arkansas by Sunday.  We drove first to Lexington, Kentucky, where we met up with Hope's dad for a short, about day-long visit.  This allowed us to celebrate both Rick's birthday, and Kenny's, who turned 18 on that Saturday.  We also decided (because of a steady, heavy rain) to visit a dry place...which in this case turned out to be Mammoth Cave:

The cave adventure turned out to be far more enjoyable than the lunch we had at a nearby BBQ joint (ask Hope sometime about her, Beth, and Stephen's likely cases of food poisoning), but we made it back to Monticello without any other major issues...and only a brief breather before the next Bragg Family South adventures began!