Drive to Pennsylvania to See the Autumn Leaves

Saturday, October 25 — We decided to take a drive to see the leaves change color. Eric found an app that said that as of this morning, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania was the closest place that had the best ratio of colorful leaves. What was interesting was that last night, it gave us a different town, so clearly, it’s being updated frequently.

Chambersburg was 2-hours northeast of us. The drive up in an of itself was pretty. This was what the highway looked like most of the way.

Traffic did seriously slow down outside of Baltimore, but it picked up again as soon as we passed Baltimore. We could see Baltimore from the highway, and we had nostalgia about the month that we’d spent there. Eventually, we left the highway for Highway 97, which was a two-lane road that ran through a rural area that looked to be mostly agricultural.

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Tour of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis

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The security guard said the last tour of the day was just beginning, so we rushed into the visitor’s center to get tickets. We passed a group that was standing near the entrance; an older gentleman was introducing himself, so we figured that was our group and they’d already started.

It looked like there was a film that showed every few minutes and a small museum in the visitor’s center, but we obviously didn’t have time watch the film or to look around. Tickets were $18 for adults and $16 for ages 5 – 17. The man at the register tried to charge Keith for an adult ticket. When we said he was a student he said “Oh, here for a college tour?” When we said he was only 13, he looked disbelieving.

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More Socializing and Exploring in Annapolis

Sunday, October 12 — Yesterday, the area around the boat show was a zoo. When we went out for lunch, it seemed like all the restaurants had long lines. Wanting a quick meal, we decided to get lunch at The Fleet Reserve Club. The Fleet Reserve Club appeared to be a private yacht club that was very close to the marina. It was having a special boat show luncheon event. If we remembered correctly, the sign had said it was a fundraiser. But what drew us there was that we could see a steady stream of people entering the outdoor seating area with trays of food.

It was a cafeteria style buffet line. We got three hamburgers, a cup of soup and 2 bottles of water. The cashier was probably about 6-years old, and she was being supervised by an adult (we assumed it was her mom). We were pretty shocked when the little girl gave us the grand total of $52. The adult confirmed it was the correct total. The expensive, mediocre burgers made us feel like we were in The Bahamas again. But we did get exactly what we were looking for: a fast meal. We were in and out in only a few minutes. From the little we saw of the club, it looked like it was very nice.

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Keith’s Perspective on our Last Week in DC/Le point de vue de Keith sur notre dernière semaine à Washington

This week has been fun. On Saturday, we went to cryptography museum. It was quite boring and a super long drive to get there. I learned that the old computers were really really big. For lunch we ate at a Thai restaurant.

Cette semaine était amusante. Samedi nous sommes allés au musée de la cryptographie. C’était très ennuyant et un voyage très long pour y aller. J’ai appris que les anciens ordinateurs étaient très grands. Pour le déjeuner nous avons mange à un restaurant Taiwanese. 

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More Outdoor Monuments in DC — Constitution Gardens, The Declaration of Independence Signers Memorial and the WWII Memorial

continued… We followed a walking trail to The Constitution Gardens. The Gardens felt more like a park than a garden, with grass, lots of trees and a shallow lake in the middle.

That said, it was a lovely setting.

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