The Arkansas Brooksby's

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Christmas trip Day 4

Day 4

We woke up dressed warm and started walking. Everything we wanted to see was withing walking distance. It was smart because there was snow everywhere else. DC had been dumped on. It looked pretty though. We started our 2 day tour at the Lincoln Memorial. Pictures are great, but seeing it in person is a different experience. The reflection pond for the Washington memorial was frozen. People were ice skating on the pond. We then walked past the pond to the WWII Memorial. After that we tried walking up to the Washington Memorial, but because of the smow and ice they had it closed for the moment. We then decided to go to the Smithsonians. We went to the Natural History Museum and the Aircraft and Aviation Museums. After that we went to dinner back down South of DC, then came home and watched the BYU Game. What a game. Go BYU. Then we went to sleep.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Christmas trip Day 3

Day # 3 We made it to our hotel about 12:30 am. It was a nice room. We woke up about 7:45 for breakfast, went to eat and then went to Jamestown. We were able to go see the re-creation of 3 ships that the Pilgrims used to come over. It took about 5 months at sea to cross the ocean. The pilgrims were treated as cargo and so they were usually under deck on top of the cargo. There probably was not room for them to stand up. Amazing the stamina they had back then. Once they made it here, the death rate was very high. If they made it a year they were considered seasoned and had a good chance of surviving. They also had a replica of a city and of the huts the Indian's would have built.

After Jamestown we drove down to Williamsburg, took a car tour and then drove up to Yorkstown where Washington defeated the RedCoats. You can still see the holes they dug in the Earth as there protection and the make shift forts the Red Coats made. They would dig a ditch and throw the dirt up as a mound and then stick in wood posts around the exterior so no one could climb up the wall. Unfortunately to the Red Coats dismay, we built ladders the we laid up against their walls and were able to climb up them and take over to of the main strongholds.

We left for Washington DC around 5:00 pm. What was supposed to be a 2 hour drive took a little longer because of traffic. We made it to our Hotel. It was 2 blocks from the Lincoln Memorial and about 2 blocks from the White House. We drove around a little and then went to the Hotel and went to bed.

Christmas trip Day 3

Jamestown VA

Yorktown VA

Jamestown VA

Atlantic Ocean

We are on the Godspeed, the fastest ship Jamestown VA

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Lexington KY to Yorktown VA 20009

Day # 2 I forget it puts them in backwords or from the bottom up. We will start from there. The bottom picture is a picture of our Hotel Saturday night. It was downtown Lexington and a couple of blocks from UK. We woke up Sunday morning and went to church in Nicholasville KY. Roy was there in Nicholasville for 6 months. They have now gone from 2 wards to 5 wards and a YSA Ward. We went to Sacrament, talked to a few people, some Roy vaguely remembered and them went back to the hotel to change and took off. About 45 minutes later, just and Wyatt and I had fallen asleep, Garrison starts yelling Parker is throwing up. It took a minute to register, luckily there was an exit not to far down the road and a gas station, we cleaned up best we could and got back on the road. Luckily he only got his clothes. We get back on the road and are following the GPS and about 10 minutes on this hwy Roy wonders if we are going the right way so he pulls out his google map on his phone and wonders why google has us staying on the interstate and the GPS has us going around the through the mountain, needless to say, it was about an hour detour at least. We went from 1100 feet to 3200 feet and back down. The snow in WV was getting deep, that is what these next pictures are, are from the roads in WV. The roads were never terrible, but we found out when we tried to stop for dinner that the only fast food restaurant that was open was Hardee's and that the power had been out for a day and a half and was just coming back on. We patiently waited and the registers were not working yet so we did everything by calculator. It was quite fun, so needless to say our 8 hour drive ended up being 12 hours. We finally made it into Yorktown at about 12:00 am. What fun. No complaints by the kids, surprise, surprise! More to come.