A Vacation of Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson

TRAVEL BUG TALES: OUR AMERICAN HERITAGE VACATION

This vacation is one I touched on while reviewing Primarily Presidential Destinations four years ago.  FOUR YEARS AGO!  I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for that long, but there you have it.  While traveling we saw Lincoln historical sites, Mount Vernon, Monticello and Arlington National Cemetery.  If you want to read about those destinations, then you should follow those links.  In this blog I’ll chat about some of the things which happened in-between these historic landmarks.

Looking at Different Parts of the Menu

Sometimes I feel like an exotic bird among birds of a different feather. It’s like someone dropped my egg into a nest of another species.  We’re all birds, but we’re not alike.  At first no one noticed and they were always good to me even when it was obvious I didn’t quite fit in.  Some of the differences were apparent on this wonderful trip my Mom had carefully planned.

Along with the attractions listed above, we visited places like the Smithsonian Institute and drove all over D.C. , but I didn’t want to just visit museums and drive around.  I felt like there was more to this travel thing than that.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, because this was the most sight-seeing we’d ever done, but everything felt canned.  To an extent I still feel the same way.  I have a great time on vacation and I explore things other people never find, but the real excitement seems just out of my reach.

Take the night we went out for an elegant dinner in D.C.  I have no idea exactly what the restaurant was, but we were very dressed up and the menus were ginormous.  Within moments after opening the menu my Dad announced we’d all have the ground round.  Our usual dining experience was either the local cafeteria, Shoney’s Big Boy or a BBQ joint, so I was thrilled to be in this place with linen tablecloths and candles.  However, I wondered how my dad could know what I wanted before I even finished reading the menu.

I suspect my dad looked at the right side of the menu before he checked out the descriptions on the left.  We sat by quietly while my dad ordered our dinners and obediently ate what was served, but I’d seen the word “lobster” before they took away my menu.  I didn’t know what lobster was and I wasn’t quite ready to let go of it, even after I’d been served my ground round.

I Finally Got My Lobster 

I can only guess what it must have been like to be my parents over the next two or three days.  I probably asked 3,297,000 questions about lobsters.  Somewhere around question number three million I was able to ascertain the undesirability of lobster at a meal was not related to the crustacean itself, but actually to something called “market price.”

When I figured that out I must have posed a question like this, “So, if I found lobster on a menu and it had a price listed instead of just market price, could I order it?”  “Theoretically,” my father replied.  I probably didn’t understand exactly what “theoretically” meant, but I realized it wasn’t a no.

To my parent’s dismay, it wasn’t long until lobster salad showed up on a lunch menu.  I was old enough to understand less than and greater than.  The price of the lobster salad wasn’t the cheapest thing on the menu, but it was in line with the other items, something else my parents must have discussed with me during the lobster conversation.  I confidently informed my family I would be having the lobster salad for lunch.

Oddly, it was my mother who started making a case against the lobster.  She warned me it would not be a whole lobster, but pieces of lobster in a salad and it might give me the wrong idea about lobster.  I imagine I had a look on my face my husband is familiar with. They’d laid down the circumstances in which I could have lobster and I was going to have it.

Dad certainly recognized the look on my face, so he announced I would be having the lobster salad – and that was that.  The lobster salad was good.  It would be years before I’d dip a lobster claw into drawn butter, but for the time being, my parents could talk about something other than crustaceans.

Come back next week and we’ll go to Historic Williamsburg.