International Spy Museum

We had to wait for the repair on our trailer which was completed about 1:30 PM. It turns out that a spring on the trailer brakes had broken, eventually causing damage to the drum and the tire.
Then it was off to the International Spy Museum. This was a fun museum. It starts with the tools of the trade: disguises, cameras, microphones, lock picks, radios from World War I to the present day. Then a section covers spy history – this starts with the Trojan war and includes our Revolutionary and Civil War, and then finally the 20th century, especially during World war II and the Cold War. As part of the gimmick, they give you an identity and a mission which you have to remember as you go through the museum. We spent over 2 1/2 hours there, well worth the price of admission.

Washington, D.C.I

Iwa Jima Memorial

I spent these days at the World Congress for Software Quality. My talk was the first day, it went well. I had a few people come and tell me how useful they found the talk, and others who referenced it during their talks. Mary spent the first 2 days at the trailer, working to get the drum on our trailer repaired (one of the studs was completely sheared in West Virginia). On the 18th, Mary went to the brand new “Newseum” which just opened this year. It provides the history of recording the news from early papers, to TV national news, to the latest blogs. The FBI has also moved a lot of their museum here, so you can read about their big cases. On Thursday night, we took a tour of the monuments at night. The key stops were the Iwa Jima memorial, the Korean, Vietnam, and Lincoln memorials, Jefferson, and the Roosevelt memorials. I actually don't recommend this night tour – while you need to see Washington at night; the Vietnam and Roosevelt memorials should be seen in daylight.

Antietam, Maryland

Before heading to D.C., we stopped at the Antietam Battlefield. We learned a lot about this battle, since we watched 2 movies, heard the ranger talk, and then took the car tour around the battlefield. The battle occurred on September 17th, 1862. This was General Robert E. Lee’s attempt to bring the war to the North. His target was Harrisburg, PA, but McClelland’s army caught up with them here. They could have ended the entire war here, because Lee had split up his army in order to capture Harper’s Ferry, but McClellan thought he was outnumbered by Lee. The Union army was not well organized, and they made 3 separate attacks, and Lee moved his troops around to hold his lines from each attack. They could have been caught against the Potomac, but just when all was lost, the troops from Harper’s Ferry arrived behind the Union army. The battle ended a draw, but 23000 soldiers were killed, the bloodiest day in the war. Even though it was a draw, most of 1862 had been Confederate victories, with this battle, Lincoln felt he could now proclaim the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

Virginia

Mary with John and Betty

Today is primarily a drive and visit friends day. We started off with a scare, however. When leaving the campground, I looked behind me and noticed my trailer wheel was wobbling. The entrance to the park was 10 miles of very winding road, and it must have loosened the nuts on one of the wheels from all the bending back and forth. One of the bolts was actually sheered off, but I managed to tighten the other 5 nuts and we rode the rest of the day without incident (checking the lug nuts at every rest stop).
Tonight, we had dinner with John and Betty Calabria, whom we had met on the Machu Pichu trip. We had a delicious dinner primarily fruits and vegetables from their garden with the family recipe for Italian sausage. Of course, we shared travel stories for most of the evening and witnessed a beautiful Appalachian Mountain sunset.

Frankfurt, Kentucky

John Brown's House

Our primary stop today was Liberty Hall in Frankfurt, Kentucky, the capital city. We got a little lost because of poor directions and road construction. But when I stopped to figure out where we were, we were right in front of Liberty Hall. We tried to stop at the Frankfurt cemetery to see Daniel Boone’s grave, but there wasn’t any parking for our trailer nearby, so we returned to Liberty Hall for the noon tour. The first house was built about the turn of the 19th century by John Brown. He was instrumental in Kentucky becoming a state. For a while, some had considered becoming part of the Spanish empire (remember the land west of the Mississippi was claimed by Spain at this time). He also became the first senator from Kentucky, re-elected twice. The house he built was the first brick mansion of Frankfurt. What was amazing about the house, was the fact that most of the furniture was still the original furniture that John Brown had bought. Our tour guide was knowledgeable about the house and family to a fault – he went on for too long. We also toured the house next door, built for Orlando Brown, his son. The Brown family played important roles for many years, both nationally and in Kentucky.

Tonight, we’re just inside West Virginia at a Beech Fork State park. It has over 200 sites and we’re living in luxury with air conditioning on, water and sewer. It’s been over 90 degrees, so the AC is needed.

St. Louis

Gateway Arch

We continued traveling east on I-70 to St. Louis. Here we visited the Jefferson Memorial Park, better known as the Gateway Arch to the West. Of course, St. Louis was the gateway to the West for many years, when the primary means of travel was originally the Missouri river, then the wagon train. It’s the Jefferson memorial because he completed the Louisiana purchase and commissioned the Louis and Clark expedition. We watched the National Geographic special on this expedition while we were there.
With the advent of the railroad, the gateway to the West moved to Chicago, because the trains went west from there, crossing the Mississippi at Rock Island, Illinois. St. Louis to regain its status decided to build a bridge across the Mississippi. The Eads bridge still stands today, at the time it was a fairly new concept, a cantilevered bridge, with 3 huge spans across the river. You can get a good view of the bridge and the entire downtown area of St. Louis from the top of the arch. To get there, we took these claustrophobic tram cars, each of which sits 5 people. Mary closed here eyes as went up. When we were ready to go down, we had a ‘red alert’. The tram we were planning to use stopped part way up. They finally made it to the top, but we were asked to use the North tram as they inspected the South tram for problems. This really increased Mary’s confidence in the system.

We camped in a beautiful National Forest campground with electricity that evening. We asked for a restaurant for dinner and went to a tavern in Leopold, Indiana about 5 miles from our campground. Since it was Friday night, the place was packed with locals out for the evening. (The ribs were very good.)

Kansas City

We’re on our way out to Washington, D.C. because I’m going to give a paper on software quality at the World Congress on Software Quality next week. So we decided to make this an RV trip to Washington and then pick up our missing states (S. Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama for both of us, and Arkansas and Oklahoma for me) to have visited all 50 states. So this will be a quick trip out to the East Coast with a more leisurely return. Yesterday, was all driving through Colorado and Kansas. Today, is our first tourist stop, the National World War I museum in Kansas City, MO.

This museum is not quite 2 years old. We’re here because last year, we found out how little we knew about WW I, when we visited Canada’s War Museum. The museum starts with a glass bridge over 9000 poppies, each representing a 1000 lives lost in WW I. An introductory film leaves you with the impression that no one is really certain why WW I began – yes, there were a lot of secret alliances built between countries over the previous decades, a lot of countries had built a lot of war munitions, Europe was beginning to taste more democracy rather than being ruled a monarchs, and, of course, there was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Slovakia. But it seems like it just started, and then escalated quickly to a world war because of the alliances.

Germany’s plan was to quickly conquer France by going through Belgium to conquer Paris, then handle the Russians on their Eastern Front. But they got bogged down north of Paris, and the French counter-acted through a hole in their lines. This led to the trench warfare of the western front. The combination of several lines trenches, barbed wire protecting them, and machine guns meant little forward progress was made by either side for years. While there were many offensives, they were costly in the lives lost, and seldom were permanent gains.

Another movie explained how the U.S. finally entered the war. It was partly the German U boats sinking passenger ships, but mostly the Zimmerman letter to Mexico asking them to go to war with the U.S. This finally persuaded President Wilson and congress to enter what they considered a European war. The combination of American troops and tanks that could clamber over barbed wire and protect the soldiers from machine guns allowed enough of an offensive against the Germans to end the war.

World War I Tank