The Events of Friday, December 17, 2010

          Many of you don’t know how awesome this whole SNOW thing is for me. Where I usually live, it never snows. I’ve seen snow, and I go to Tahoe often, but it never snows on my permanent home. So now, in a world of white, it is so AWESOME‼ This morning I woke up to this wonderful world of snow and headed with Mommy to the shower. Where ever we stepped, we left fresh footprints in the snow. Everything was covered in a layer of white. The trees were especially beautiful. As we looked back toward our camper we could see the lake below, frozen over and covered with snow. My favorite color used to be rainbow, but for today I think it is SNOW WHITE!

          When we came back from a nice hot shower, we had a quick breakfast and prepared to leave our country campground. As we slide in our slide outs, we looked out the window and saw the snow that had collected on top tumbling down. Then, while securing the kitchen so we could drive, we discovered icicles that had been on the outside of the slide out were now inside the RV and melting fast. Again we had a layer of ice, INSIDE the RV. Up front, the windows and windshield had frozen water on them, on the inside. Dad’s was so frozen that he couldn’t  move his window, but when Mom rolled down her window a beautiful thin sheet of ice stood there. Unfortunately, we were unable to get a picture of it. The hot air from the defroster quickly melted the ice on the windshield. Soon, we were ready to go and we carefully drove through the snow and ice in the campground to get to the road.

          Surprisingly, after about two miles of snowy roads, the roads were very clear and we headed towards a spot to buy some propane. Our propane tank fuels our heat, which we need a lot these days, so we burn through propane fast. The kids are very excited about Christmas and snow this year. Even Mom is excited. But her excitement for the snow is basically because of the weather forecast. We are not supposed to have any more snow until Christmas Eve, which means we will have a white Christmas! Yea! It will be my first ever white Christmas! Anyway, we needed propane, so, in a few hours, we arrived at our propane stop. While Daddy filled us up with propane and gas, we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to have on the road.

          About noon, we reached Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, and the rest of his 8,000 acres. Mom was excited. She had been concerned that our drive here would take longer because of the snow. But because the roads were so clear, we arrived at Mount Vernon with time enough to do everything we wanted. We started by buying tickets for the house, museum, and education center. Then we headed inside an information center to plan our next five hours. In the lobby was a statue of George and Martha Washington with their grandkids, Nelly and “Washy”. Off to the side were a couple of Christmas trees, each themed for different rooms of Mount Vernon. One had replicas of items from George Washington’s study, another had stuff that the children would have played with during that time period, and a third had equipment representing his surveyor years. In the middle of the trees was a replica of the house with the furniture in it to give us an overview of the house. As we were gazing at this model, the bottom suddenly dropped away, giving us a clear view of the third floor that had been hidden under the roof. December is the only time of the year when the third floor of the house is open to the public, so we were able to see in miniature what we would see later on the house tour. The model was an exact, fully functional replica, down to working door knobs and dumb waiters.  Soon it was time for an introductory movie about  George Washington’s early career in the French and Indian War and when he met Martha. The romantic part was the girls’ favorite.

          When the movie was over, we went up the path outside to visit Aladdin, the Christmas camel. Each Christmas, George Washington would get a Christmas camel, for the kids of the estate. Now, in the 21st century, they have a Christmas camel too. Only we had been cautioned that Aladdin liked to eat hats and had already ingested two this year. Nearby the Christmas camel was a pen that held the official pardoned turkey of 2010. The turkey’s name is Apple, and he was officially pardoned by President Obama this Thanksgiving. After the Christmas season at Mount Vernon he will go to a pen on the Mount Vernon grounds, joining his brother, Cider, and will live out the rest of his years free from fear of being eaten. The fact that he was from California made me feel especially  attached to him.

          Next to the animals was a tent where some people were making chocolate. We found that George Washington actually made his own chocolate from the cocoa beans that he imported from South America. He roasted the cocoa beans and ground them. Then this mixture was place on a heated stone with a flame under it and mixed and spread with another stone until it was a viscous liquid. Then this liquid was hardened and stored until grated and mixed with sugar, and some other spices. Then hot wine or hot water was mixed into this mixture to create a chocolate drink. It looked sort of good, but, as we will find later, it was quite bitter.

          Then we went over to the house and, after taking some outside pictures, went on a tour. The tour was made up of a couple tour guides scattered throughout the house. As you walked into a room, they would tell you stuff about the room and answer any questions you have. Our tour was quickly over and we decided to walk around the surrounding buildings for a while, such as the stable, spinning room, wash house and a blacksmith shop. My favorite fact was at the wash house. In summer, the slaves would spread out all the white clothes on the grass or over a bush. The chlorophyll in these plants would go onto the clothes, acting as natural bleach. In the last building we went to was a woman playing Martha Washington. She talked to us for a while about her life and we took a picture with her at the end. We said good-bye to Martha and went back to the chocolate tent to taste the chocolate drink and “toast to Christmas”. There, we basically just got a sample of the chocolate drink, which tasted like unsweetened, watery hot chocolate.

          Another path led us to the education center. The educational center was surprisingly educational without being boring. Basically, a path led you through the different stages of George Washington’s life. Interspersed throughout this experience were several movies. My favorite movie was in a special theater and told us of George Washington’s successful battles  - Boston, Trenton, and Yorktown. The special thing about this theater was the special effects: the seats shook when the cannons went off, and steam rose when Washington was by the seashore to represent waves, and snow fell on us during the part about Valley Forge and his crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas Eve. We strolled through the museum and learned many details about George Washington, such as his view on slavery and his trials as a President. After watching a final movie which spoke of his legacy we felt we had learned enough for the day. We headed to the gift shop, perused it for a while and then returned to the RV.

          Next, we drove to Costco for dinner. Costco happened to be next to a big mall, so we had to pay for parking, but we couldn’t find any parking. As a result, we got our money back and found parking about a block away. We had a delicious dinner and dessert and then shopped for groceries and, secretly, Christmas shopped. Our plan for presents at Christmas is to plan for one gift for each person. It is really fun to be secretive around Christmas time, especially now, on our trip. After shopping, we drove to Walmart. We were going to do some more Christmas shopping after getting permission to stay, but the manager said we couldn’t park there overnight. After deciding it was too late to do any more shopping, Daddy got permission for us to stay the night at a nearby grocery store. Although it was noisy, we managed to fall asleep, greatly looking forward to tomorrow.