Tuesday at Monticello

 Monticello, Jefferson's home, sits on one of the highest hills in the area, so the view from the hill is lovely....everything so beautiful and green.  He owned acres and acres (thousands!), as did most of the plantation slave owners.  We got that sense that one of the reasons Jefferson is still studied so much are the seemingly great contradictions between what he wrote and believed and what he lived.  He struggled with the issue of slavery all his life....knew it was wrong, but couldn't find a way to live without it.

 Monticello was probably one of our favorite places to visit.  We took a house tour and a tour of Mulberry Row, where the slaves lived and worked and learned so many interesting things about the period and the people who lived here.

 The grounds were beautiful and you know I love the way things grow in places that aren't a desert!

 A small part of the huge vegetable garden they grow even now with a view of the lush valley beyond.  Much of what we could see below us was also Jefferson's property.

 They believe this statue is an accurate replica of what Jefferson looked like, as well as his height and body build.  One of the really cool things in the house was a gift to Jefferson from Lafayette.  After the French Revolution, Lafayette brought Jefferson the key to the Bastille.  It's hanging in little glass box on a wall.  There are also lots of things from Lewis and Clark's Expedition in the entry way to the house---including a set of elk antlers.

 We had a few sprinkles our first day.  Dennis is in front of the Jefferson family cemetery.  You can still be buried here if you a direct descendent of Jefferson.  (And you're dead of course.)

 Before Jefferson died, he designated what he wanted to have on his headstone.  The three things he chose to be remembered for were writing the Declaration of Independence, founding the University of Virginia and being the author of Virginia's statute of religious freedom.  After learning more about how strongly Jefferson felt about freedom to be able to worship without government interference, I really believe that the Church could not have been restored and/or survived without advocates such as Jefferson.  (Think how much the early saints were persecuted in a country WITH religious freedom!)  He was criticized a lot in his lifetime for being anti-religious, but I think he truly understood the importance of being able to worship according to one's own conscience.

Wednesday: Montpelier & Manassas

 This is Montpelier, the home of James and Dolley Madison.  I think it was only about 25 miles away from Thomas Jefferson's home and James Monroe's home was also close by.  George Washington's home was probably just a little further in the opposite direction.  Isn't it incredible that so much brain-power and vision were concentrated in such a small geographical area?

 James Madison called this his chapel, just a pretty little rotunda a little way from his mansion.  He liked to go there to meditate.  They also had their ice house below this, where they cut blocks of ice in the winter and stored them here in straw all summer, so they could enjoy ice cream and whatever else they used their ice for.  The guide told us it would last until October through the hot Virginia summers.

 Another great man, seated beside the diminutive James.  James was very small in stature, but big in education and intelligence.  Both he and Jefferson were well-educated and spoke several languages.  I learned that Dolley was a Quaker, but was the first First Lady who set the tone for style and entertaining in the White House.  Our tour guide said she hadn't had the formal education that her husband had, (women didn't of course) but that she was very likely his intellectual equal.  Yeah for Dolley!!  We knew that James would have been a Cougar fan if he had only had a chance, so we honored him with this photo.

 They didn't let us take any pictures inside the house (wish we could have) but the grounds were lovely.  I tried to capture the majesty of some of the grand old trees, but the pictures don't do it.  This one was planted in Madison's time and was beautiful.

 The fence behind it is six feet high and of course you can't see the top of the tree, so just try and imagine how beautiful it was.

 A small shot of one side of the formal gardens.

 Madison's burial site.  There is a little family cemetery where many family members are buried.  Dolley outlived James by quite a few years and died in New York, I think.  It took a while before she was re-buried here and by then there was no room beside James, so she is buried behind him.

 I thought this was good advice on one of the family headstones!

 We stopped at the site of the Civil War battlefield of Manassas.  It was late in the afternoon and the Visitor's Center was closing, but we could walk around the grounds and read a little of the history.  This is a statue of General Stonewall Jackson, who got his name at this very place at the first battle of the Civil War.  They referred to this battle as the End of Innocence, because it ended any ideas for both the North and the South, that this was going to be a war that would end quickly and at a small cost in lives and money.  It was the first time many of the soldiers had seen battle.

The memorial erected immediately following the war.

Miranda's Wedding--Thursday

 We drove up to our motel room in Silver Springs, near the temple, the night before in a pretty good rainstorm and took a trial run to the temple.  Here it is, lit up at night.  It's a big temple and very beautiful.  Our GPS took us a crazy way to Silver Springs through lots of residential neighborhoods and we wondered if we would ever get there in the rush hour traffic.  But, praise be to the inventor of the GPS.  We don't know how we would have found anything without her!!  (Ours is Clara.)

 A glorious day for the wedding.  A little breezy, but all the rain was gone from the night before.

 Ken and Miranda after the wedding ceremony.  They obviously weren't posing here.  I don't know that I have ever seen a happier couple.  Maybe it does enhance your appreciation if you don't find each other until you are in your thirties.

 Ryan, Lauren, Wendy, Miranda, Ken, Caitlin and Curtis.  It was wonderful that all of them would come to wait outside for the wedding party. 

 Looking directly opposite the temple toward the Visitor's Center.  The flower beds were empty of the spring flowers and getting prepared for the summer ones, but the grounds were still lovely.

 Miranda's reception was held on this lawn in front of the Mt. Vernon Chapel.  The chapel is beautiful and has a sloping front lawn that overlooks the Potomac.  What a choice piece of property!!

Looking toward the river.  They fed us a delicious catered dinner of stuffed chicken, salmon, eggplant, etc.  Very Nice!!

Friday in Annapolis

 At Karen's suggestion, we visited the Naval Academy in Annapolis on Friday.  We were very glad we did and found it very interesting.

This is the building that houses all the approximately 5,000 midshipmen.  It was huge!  I don't remember how many acres the building covered, but our guide said there were over 5 miles of hallway in the building and it has its own store, post office and barber shop (to mention a few) in the basement.  It also has its own zip code.

 We learned that the campus is not called a campus, but the yard and the students are midshipmen, taken from a term in the British navy when young sailors (12 and 13 years old) were positioned in the middle of the ships to relay messages to the front and back of the ship.  The first year students are plebes.  About 20% of the midshipmen are women.  The Naval Academy trains and commissions the officers for the Navy and the Marines.  In the fall of their sophomore year, they have to choose in which branch of the service they will serve.  They owe the country 5 years for their education.

 There were bells on both sides of the stairway leading to the main entrance of the building.  This Japanese bell is rung only after the Navy beats the Army in football.  You could tell there was a big rivalry between the two.

 What would a Naval Academy be without some anchors on display?!  The submarine fleet is also under the navy's command.

 We always love the beautiful green countryside and all the huge trees when we are in the eastern U.S.  Reminds us how much of a desert we live in.  (We aren't sure driving in that traffic is worth all the beauty of the landscape though.)

 This is the non-denominational Christian church.  The stained glass windows line each side of the chapel.  The left depicts scenes from the Old Testament related to the seas/water and the windows on the right are scenes from the New Testament.  They are very beautiful.  There is a huge one at the front of the chapel of Christ walking on the water, but our picture was too dark for it to show up.

 This one is of Noah and the flood.

 Our tour guide told us that there used to be a rash of weddings in the chapel right after graduation, but they were finding that they had a high rate of divorce, so now mandatory counseling is required before they can marry right out of school.  This year she said there were 18 weddings scheduled.  The men on the steps are practicing for some ceremony having to do with the upcoming weddings.

 This is a bust of John Paul Jones.  He is considered to be our country's first naval hero.  He never lost a battle to the British in the Revolutionary War.  He was trained in the British Navy as a young boy and young man, but came to America and sided with America in the Revolution.  He died in France and was buried there, but the powers-that-be decided some years ago that he should rest in America.  They went to great lengths to identify and bring his body back here and the vault holding his body has a permanent home in the basement of the Naval Chapel.

This thirty foot obelisk is on the grounds of the academy. Every fall the upper class men grease it with a couple of hundred pounds of grease and the plebes have to see who can be the first to reach the top. Legend says that the first to reach the top will be the first admiral in their class. Our guide said it hasn't happened yet.

 Here is a statue of the Academy's mascot, the goat.  Not especially threatening-sounding, is it?  You can read the traditional story on the plaque below.

How we spent our Saturday

 Mount Vernon, George Washington's home, on the Potomac.  Of all the places we went, this was probably the most disappointing.  There were crowds of people and the "tour" of the home was really just a walk-through without much interesting information. 

 This is the back of the house overlooking the Potomac River.  It's a beautiful setting.  We sat on the chairs on the porch and it was a little spine-tingling to imagine George and Martha sitting there with their guests.  We learned that Washington, Jefferson and Madison all married young widows.  Washington and Madison had no children of their own.

 This is the view from the back porch.  No pictures were allowed inside any of the homes.  We did see the actual beds upon which all three men (Washington, Jefferson and Madison) died.

 A woman dressed in period costume...  She sat on the porch and told stories of Washington's time to interested listeners.

 This is where George Washington rests.  His wife is to his left.  The doorway in back leads to a crypt where about 40 other Washington family members are buried.  Sometime, years ago, they removed George and Martha's casket to incase them in these vaults and then discovered that they couldn't get them back inside the crypt, so here they lie.  It was interesting to us to learn that most of the founding fathers really struggled with the issue of slavery, even though many of them were slave owners.  George Washington is the only one that freed all his slaves in his will.

 We visited the Pentagon Memorial to the victims of 9/11 on our way back from Mt. Vernon.  It's a series of benches, arranged by year of the victim's ages, going from youngest to oldest.  Their names are on metal plates at the end of each bench and the bench sits above a small reflecting pool.

 It is lit up at night and I'm sure is very beautiful.  The benches of those on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon face toward the building and the benches of those inside the Pentagon face away from the building.  There were 184 victims.

When we arrived there were lots of police around and we weren't allowed to go in.  A guard told us a suspicious package had been left there and he didn't know when the monument would reopen.  We were disappointed and got ready to walk back to the car when we heard an explosion.  They had one of those robots you've seen on the news and they had blown up the package.  A few minutes later they allowed us to go in.