Day 5

**First of all, I highly recommend the book we have used on this journey. It is called "Kids Love to Travel and we have the Virginia version. It is broken into states and down by areas of the state. It is then in alpha order. It has been a GREAT resource. It is written by a great homeschooling family that RV fulltime.**

If you would like to start at the beginning, you can click on Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4.

This mornings plans WERE to get up fairly early and be out of here at at Mt. Vernon at 9 am. But those plans got derailed. The condo we are staying at has a single LG combo washer/dryer unit for clothing. Well, Aaron didn't have any clean (or dry) undergrarments and so we were stuck here until they were done. Our plans were to do Mt. Vernon the first 1/2 of the day, do lunch in Alexandria and then the other 1/2 in Arlington, but that didn't happen.







(Beautiful view of the Potomac from the back of the mansion.)

(Another angle of the Potomac from the back of the mansion.)

We got to Mt. Vernon around 11:30. It was beautifully decorated for Christmas with all of the trees and decorations. The estate is on a sprawling 400 acres (Washington owned 8,000 acres). We started off in the main area, where we watched a film on him and then we proceeded to the mansion. There were NO crowds at all. It was very nice. I was amazed at how identical the mansion at American Village (Montevallo, AL, where we used to live) is to this one. We started off in the slave quarters and then headed to the mansion. It is absolutely beautiful and although the walls, floors, etc have been restored, they are all authentic. After George's third nephew faltered on it and couldn't take over it, he sold it to the ladies of Mt. Vernon in 1848, where it has been every since. There are 21 rooms in the mansion. It has been added onto several times. There were no pictures allowed inside the mansion or the museum inside, due to copyrights. We walked there and then walked out to the kitchen and slave's quarters.



(George Washington's Limo! Aaron LOVED this and said he wanted one, lol). This was near the barn stalls).

We then passed by the orchards, the site of the old tomb location and then around to the new tomb location. There is 28 Washington's buried at the tomb. 3 of them requested "not" to be intombed. The other 25 are intombed. George and Martha are in the Sarcophogi in marble. Martha is to the left (she died 2 years after he did) and George is to the right (it has the presidential seal on top). The others are inside of the black door.




We then went to the Museum. They have an overwhelming amount of authentic artifacts from the Washington's. They have chosen to have alot of them inside to be protected and they were (with the help of a few amoured guards too). There were no pictures allowed in there, but to describe the massive amount of stuff is incredible. Not only that, it was in immaculate condition.

We then headed over to the Education wing. But before that these were in the middle:

(My FAVORITE picture of GW, of all time!)

(And this replica, that was done by a professional chef. It was done of Mt. Vernon and out of Gingerbread.)

Here are some pictures from the Educational wing. There was a ton to look at and we didn't think the gift shop would ever end! We left a little after 5pm.






Tomorrow, we are hoping to get an early start and do Arlington and some other things. I will update more then!