Our Trip Blog

Events of Wednesday, December 1, 2010

This title is a little misleading. It should be properly titled “Events of the RV” or “Not Maryland”, instead of “Maryland”, since we did no sightseeing today. Last night’s incredibly heavy, non-stop rain left our RV an island in the lake of Site 40. Since a gray sky threatened more rain and it isn’t really any fun sightseeing in the rain, we decided to stay at our campsite for the day. After a scrumptious breakfast of eggs and bacon (thanks, Dad!), showers, and other little jobs, we settled down for our manuscript Mark study. I realized that, with all our intense sightseeing and other tasks, we haven’t had a family bible study since late October! We studied Jesus’ sending out of the disciples, two by two and the importance of relationships. We discussed what responsiveness to the gospel might look like and how to decide when it is time to move on and “shake the dust from our feet” in relationships with people who aren’t being responsive. We also discussed Herod’s dilemma about the beheading of John the Baptist and how he chose murder over the dishonor of not being true to his word. Then we examined our own lives to make sure that promises we make to people don’t compromise our relationship with God. It seems in this section of Mark that everyone, from the common folk to the disciples to the king, is trying to answer this question of WHO ARE YOU? about Jesus. It was a fun and thought provoking bible study.

                A delicious lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and soup rejuvenated us for our afternoon activities. During this fabulous meal, a staff member of our campground notified us that our RV was blocking parts of the two adjacent sites—which were empty! We had parked the RV a bit angled to access the utilities and keep it level. But since we didn’t want to anger the management, we explained our case and asked permission to move to site 36, a dry site on higher, more level ground. We unhooked, moved, leveled, and re-hooked. In its new site, the interior of the RV begged to be cleaned. You wouldn’t believe how dirty the inside of a thirty foot vehicle can get! Once everything was spick and span, we had math time. In school, I never was as excited about math as I am on this trip. It seems like such a joy to be learning something new besides history. While on the computer, we saw that our grandparents were online, so we skyped them. Initially, we had some problems getting our video to work, but my technological genius solved the problem with ease. Skype is so great—we can communicate with our relatives like they are sitting right next to us. We all hoped that we would be able to finish our planned tasks before dinner and watch a movie, but we had to finish planning for our time in DC. We planned and planned and planned and planned and planned.

So how do we plan our time in a city or state? Over the last few months, we’ve developed a bit of a system. Over the past week or so, we all read our way through the AAA TourBook listings for attractions in the District of Columbia, highlighting, underlining, starring, or circling what interests us. When it comes time for our family meeting, the Tour Book is all marked up. As maps of the area and other books are spread out on our small table, someone reads the title and paragraphs about each of the attractions marked in the book. After hearing this, looking up the site online, and finding it on the map, we vote to see if the attraction is worth visiting. For example, Abby had highlighted the National Zoo. But since she was the only person voting for the zoo, the majority prevailed; the National Zoo is not included in our itinerary. The same happened for me: I wanted to go to the National Building Museum, but no one else did. In DC, however, there are so many museums in the area and we each had our own preferences. We took polls for all the Smithsonian Museums and the ones that got more votes are higher priority for us. The ones that got fewer votes will be seen if time allows. One find slightly altered the rule, though, a find that kills two birds with one stone. Since we were turned away from ice skating in NYC due to the expense, we decided to look here in DC; maybe something cheaper will show up. Sure enough, the ice rink in the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden was well priced. Although the sculpture garden was a low-priority museum, it is now included in plans because of the ice rink.

 After all sites have been decided and voted for, we plot them on maps (both on paper and online) to find a good route and form a rough day-by-day plan. Finally, we knew what we wanted to see and had a general idea of how we wanted to do it. Exhausted, we climbed into bed for a restful night of sleep.