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By Katrina Kane, on April 25th, 2008 If you are an American, like a pilgrimage to Mecca, you should try to visit Washington, D.C at least once in your lifetime. It is incredibly inspiring and does affect your life every day.
There are many ways to tour Washington. I don’t recommend driving it yourself. The traffic there is nuts! If you camp at Cherry Hill RV Park, Grayline tour buses and the local metro buses come right to the park to pickup all during the day. It is not cheap to camp there though. From The Wilderness/Presidential Resort in Spotsylvania, I was able to arrange a private tour in a van with just one other couple via US Tours (1-800-863-6333). Our tour guide was very very friendly. She picked me up at the campground. She knows the area and stories well. She gave us plenty of time to see everything and ran around getting us tickets into the monuments while we were sightseeing. I highly recommend this tour for only $38. For Arlington, you will need to pay around $7 for their own tourmobile bus as no others are allowed to drive around in it.
We saw the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, toured the Office of Engraving and Printing and got to see how money is made as well as $1 million dollars in a case, the Vietnam and Korean War memorials (I touched the Wall), Ford’s Theater, the house and bed where Lincoln died across the street, the reflection pool (no Forest Gump or Jenny in it), went up in the Washington Monument by elevator (they closed the steps years ago), Arlington National Cemetery, the Kennedys’ graves, Audie Murphy’s grave, the memorial for the Challenger astronauts and their graves, a memorial to the men who died in the failed rescue of the American Embassy in Iran, the mast of the Maine (sunk to start the Spanish-American War), the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the changing of the guard there, the memorial for Military Women in Service where I looked up my own record with picture and helped the other couple find out how to register the wife’s mother’s service. We also drove by the Capitol, the Whitehouse, Library of Congress where my registered copyrighted materials are stored 🙂 , the Supreme Court, Kennedy Center, the Pentagon on the side that was hit, over the Potomac river, and more. Our tour guide dropped us off at a little grill in town for lunch and souvenir shopping.
Continue reading Washington, D.C.
By Katrina Kane, on April 22nd, 2008 I found Spotsylvania to be an excellent location in the Washington D.C. area. It is in amongst several major civil war battlefields and close enough to scoot into D.C. for sightseeing as well. There is a wonderful private tour operator in Fredericksburg nearby who will pick you up right at your campground or motel. There is also every kind of food or shopping near there you could want not to mention a Walmart and TGI Fridays.
I stayed at The Wilderness/Presidential Resort. Because of everything just outside it, I won’t say I would never stay there again but it was the worst campground I have been in this trip. Oh it has tons of amenities you expect in a membership/timeshare park. It has 3 pools (1 indoors), a clubhouse, store, gymnasium, volleyball, baseball, lake with rental boats, full-time security gate and guards, cafe, etc. However, the office staff are not particularly friendly, it looks like a trailer park with people allowed to build on to their trailers, the camp site utilities are in the worst possible positions and in fact the sewer connection was unusable, and the neighbors were ridiculously noisy and callous. The electric and water required me to add extensions in order to reach them. The sewer connection was at the front of the site on the wrong side. The neighbor decided to blast me out of bed with his radio in the early evening while he had a campfire gathering. I called security and they were very nice about it. They came up immediately and got him to stop it. About a half an hour later though, someone new joined them and the radio went back on very loud until I called security again at 11:30pm.
 
Continue reading Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg, VA
By Katrina Kane, on April 20th, 2008 Yorktown is where the end of the American Revolution began when Washington cornered Cornwallis and his british troops there, forcing them to surrender. British ships sent down from New York to help Cornwallis failed when they were met at the harbor entrance by French ships sent to help the Americans. I found it interesting that soldiers from many nations fought in this war on both sides and both sides offered freedom to negro slaves and indentured servants if they would join their armies when more men were needed. Unfortunately, those on the losing side did not all get what was promised and likely met harsh punishment from their masters. Many were driven out of the british lines during the war when smallpox appeared and the former slaves were found to be particularly susceptible to it.
You can tour the entire battlefield and encampments for both sides as well as the final place of surrender by car. There is a museum there with a partial replica of the inside of a period ship, Cornwallis’s portable war table, and Washington’s actual sleeping and dining tents. Yes, they still exist and look pretty good. I got to stand inside Washington’s dining tent. How cool is that? The tents were handed down through Martha’s relatives and ended up with the wife of Robert E. Lee, the famous confederate general. They were well protected by the family and during the civil war were protected by the patent office then eventually returned to the Lees. You will also see a LOT of cannons there of all different makes. One cannon in the museum was identified as actually having been used during the revolutionary war there at Yorktown by General Lafayette during a return visit. He could tell by a distinctive mark where it was hit.
   
Continue reading Yorktown and Jamestown, VA
By Katrina Kane, on April 19th, 2008 Off to another Coast to Coast campground, Indian Cove. It is very clearly a membership campground, especially on the weekends when the staff start towing lots of trailers and golf carts out of storage and set them up on sites for their owners to whip in for the weekend. The facilities are very nice with 3 large outdoor pools, adult lounge, gym, lots of group picnic shelters, wifi at an extra charge, 24 hour security gate, playgrounds, organized activities, boat launch, and canals weaving through the campground that lead to the James River. If you like kayaks and canoes, or even small boats the place is wonderful! I met one lady who said she lives nearby and I didn’t understand why she would spend so much money to be a member of a park but after a week there, it makes perfect sense. The pools, gym, and boating are certainly worth it.
Nearby is the boardwalk, the excellent ocean beach area, lots of museums, even more shopping and food, bridge/tunnels such as the Chesapeake Bay bridge/tunnel which takes you underwater, and the naval air station. You have to LOVE the Navy to live in Virginia Beach. They fly sooo many sorties with take-offs and landings nearly every minute during the day that it is very noisy in town. The campground was much quieter.
I didn’t do the Chesapeake bridge which charges a huge toll but I did go over/through another which was a lot of fun to get to Yorktown and Jamestown for a day of siteseeing. Another cool thing to do is take a boat tour of the harbor to see all the Navy ships and other ships since this is near the port of Norfolk.
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