R and J in the USA

Day 2: Friday, May 31st, 2024

On this trip we both have a long list of personal creative projects we are hoping to work on among all the goals we have for what we visit, do, and experience in each state. The balance between our creative projects and the doing of the trip itself will prove to be among the primary juggling acts of the next ten months. It all begins with what we call ‘having our mornings’. We are early to bed, early to rise folks (usually in bed between 8:30 and 10:00 and awake between 5:00 and 6:30), and we both like to wake up and go right into our projects. This is what having our mornings means. So, on Day 1 of the trip, we both woke up and dive right into “having our mornings”.

Julie kicked off her morning with a short bike ride through this little wooded area tucked amidst Maryland’s busy DC metro area roads and highways, quickly remembering that it has been WAY too long since she hopped on a bike. That memory became all too real as she cruised down the massive hill just outside the campground, realizing the return trip would involve traveling up said hill. And, Julie’s thigh muscles were happy to report on said return trip that, yes, indeed, it had been a very, VERY long time since she biked. Either way, Julie was delighted to be back in the saddle with all the glorious markers of life on a bike – the wind in your hair, the gleam of the sun through the trees whipping forward along with you, and the wonderful rhythmic motion of the pedals putting you into a peaceful trance that can be found nowhere else but precariously balanced and forward moving on two aligned and spinning wheels. It was a great way to start the first official day of the trip.

In order to cram in all of the day’s plans, we cut our morning short from the ideal of working non-stop through lunch before starting any other activities. We headed southwest and hopped on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to make our way to the capital city of our United States of America to kick it all off.

We had both been to the National Mall many times before, including a visit the prior July 4th to enjoy the fireworks from the base of the Washington Monument. So we decided to go full tourist for the first time ever and take a trolley tour. We shelled out the, gulp, $70/person and hopped on the Old Town Trolly tour, where we hit some old familiar sites and saw some new ones.

As we traveled through our nation’s capital, Julie was overcome with a desire to visit everything she hadn’t seen before, and with the idea that we not only needed to start our 50 States Tour here in Washington, DC, but we needed to end it here as well. We made a decision to add a full 5 days of time in Washington D.C. after we finished the final state. We decided not to go inside the Capitol building on this visit. We figured we would take a picture outside of it and then earn a visit inside the capitol building with 50 states visited and 50 state capitol buildings under our belt.

We went to the White House Visitor Center, where we took in the various exhibits. Julie a little choked up reading letters that little kids had sent presidents over the years. After purchasing a book of FDR quotes at the gift shop (and realizing that museum gift shops would be a very dangerous part of the trip that Julie should not be allowed in without supervision), we made our way out of DC and into Virginia to kick off the state of Virginia with a visit to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home. We considered a visit to the Marine Corps Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, two of the most profound stops in a DC trip. Since we had both already been to them, and time was limited, we decided to forego them on this outing.

Mount Vernon was beautiful, inspiring, and sobering. The heat was punishing and brought even more sensory realness to bear as the informational displays described the heat in the kitchens where the daily full ham was baked. It was already hot enough to wish for air conditioning without imagining the working fire of an enclosed kitchen at play. The view from the iconic home was as inspiring as the reclaimed graveyard of the more than 300 people enslaved there was sobering. Reminders of the paradox of American idealism since its inception were ever-present and woven into every step of the visit, making the journey into American identity and history a dizzying maze of the confluence of human aspiration and the realities of human behavior. We left with a blend of emotions, inspiration, awe, pride, pain, and sadness that can accompany any honest and deep look into our past. It was an educational visit and a great way to kick off the trip.

One of our favorite features at Mount Vernon impressed us enough to remain among our favorites as we travel along. It was a concave relief sculpture of Washington’s iconic face that, thanks to the limitations of our human brains, becomes an optical illusion that looks like a convex stone sculpture. So much so that you are absolutely convinced a stone sculpture is sticking out of the wall that you could touch if you stretched your hand out far enough. We had to force ourselves to look harder to see the reality of the sculpture as it was. Even then, both of us could only hold out so long before our brains would just turn the image back to what it wanted us to see. A perfect metaphor for the human condition. Sometimes, you have to look a little harder to see things as they are. Symbolism aside, it was just friggin’ cool.

With the daylight drawing to a close, we returned to our campground and a delightful evening in the van, eating some quick leftovers from the prior day’s travel for dinner before turning in for the night.

In the morning, we would close up our time in DC with our first official 5K at the Capitol City Chase in support of the wonderful organization, Warriors Ethos. You can read all about in our 5Ks in the 50 States section.

A great visit to our nation’s capital and a great kickoff to our trip is now complete. 50 States, here we come!