The week end BEFORE the Super Bowl (when there were no football games) I put together a scrap book of our family trip to Southern California for the Christmas Holidays. ( See below) This weekend with no football I put together a scrap book of my trip to Washington DC and New York City the summer of 2004. The trip was originally planned as a trip to Washington DC to help my Son move there for a "Washington Semester" at American University. He is a student at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and instead of a "Semester Abroad" it is a Semester in DC for Political Science majors. My daughter then invited me to go with her to New York City for part of the Republican Convention. So the two trips were put together.
On Friday August 20th my son and I flew to Washington DC . On Saturday August 21 my Son Daughter and I took a tour of the new WWII Memorial and to some of the other monuments in DC. Their Grandfather, who is now dead, had fought in Italy during the war. On our way to the Jefferson Memorial we were caught in a rain storm and got very wet. My Son KEPT talking about his Gore TEX shoes and I told him if he kept on talking about those d** Gore Tex shoes I was going to throw him in to the Tidal Basin and then, as the rain poured, all three of us began to laugh. On Sunday My Son and I left for a tour of Virginia in my daughter's new car. We stopped at the Civil War Battlefield of Bull Run, where Stone Wall Jackson "stood like a stone wall" against the Union attacks. We then went on to Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello, and stopped by the University of Virginia. On Monday we drove to Williamsburg and toured it and near by Yorktown where the British surrendered to Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War. We then drove to Virginia Beach and that night went on a 4 mile walk along the board walk. On Tuesday we drove to Fredericksburg and toured the Civil War battlefield. It's a shame that houses have been built on the ground where so many Union Soldiers died to preserve the Union. On Wednesday we drove back to Washington DC and moved my son into his dorm at American University for his Fall Semester.( he got an internship with Republican Pollster Frank Luntz). I stayed at my daughter's apartment on Thursday and rested up. On Friday I went on a tour of the Capital and a walking tour of Washington DC. On Saturday August 28th the two kids and I drove up to the Civil War Battlefield of Antietam in Maryland and spent a hot day touring the battlefield and then drove on to Harpers Ferry. Antietam was the bloodiest one day of the Civil War. At Antietam we took a car tour with a CD playing in the car CD player telling us what we were seeing at each stop. It made the battle come to life. We then went back to Washington DC and. I said goodbye to my Son and would not see him till Christmas. On Sunday August 29th my Daughter and I took the Amtrak train from Washington DC to New York City for the Republican Convention. I got to go by FOX NEWS. I went to a Republican Veterans program on the aircraft carrier the Intrepid that is now a museum docked in New York harbor. My Daughter was able to get us passes into Madison Square Garden before the convention started on Tuesday. We went to an area at the Garden that was set aside for Talk Radio Shows and saw Tony Snow interviewing Andy Card, White House Chief of Staff. I also saw G Gorden Liddy. We then walked down to the convention floor and had our picture taken by the "Oregon" banner. After that we went down to Ground Zero and Wall Street. That night I flew home to Medford and watched the rest of the convention on TV. In November George W Bush was elected to a second term.
I have always wanted to go to a Republican National Convention and it was special to be able to go with my daughter who watched her first convention with me, on TV , when she was a about 3 years of age.
