Vacation Day 7: Hershey, PA

Our final leg of the trip was in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  We started the morning at a cute crepe shop for breakfast.  The girls are now hooked on crepes. We shared a ham/cheese crepe, a strawberry cheesecake one, and a strawberry nutella one. 

Hershey World was such a fun day!

We took a trolley tour of the city and learned the history of Hershey and its founder, Milton Hershey.  What Hershey did for this city and for children is pretty amazing.  I left with a greater appreciation for this chocolate company. 

Who knew cacao juice was a thing.  It was okay.  Nothing great that I would purchase again, but we can all say we've tried it. 

We ended our day at Hershey World making our own chocolate bars.  I was hoping I could put something like peanut butter or caramel in my bar, but the kids were super excited to watch their bar being filled and coated with chocolate.  The filling options were crispy cereal, toffee, cocoa nibs, chocolate chips, and pretzels. Sprinkles could be added on top as well. 

Such a fun and yummy day of chocolate.  We left with a bag of overpriced candy, a few souvenirs, and a bunch of free pieces of candy from each of the experiences we had there. 

Vacation Day 6: Washington DC and Gettysburg

Our final day took us to the Bible Museum. We were all so excited for this stop, and we didn't plan anything else for the day, so we had plenty of time to explore. 

 A stone from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. 

The collection of Bible here was incredible.

Kids of all ages enjoy catapulting stones at Goliath.  

Strong like Samson!

This next exhibit caught me totally off guard.  This was a slave Bible, and I had never heard of this before.  Huge portions were taken out of God's word so that the slaves would not know that there was freedom from slavery. Anything that referenced freedom was taken out.  Anything that referenced slaves obeying their masters was left in.  I had no idea, and this rocked my world a bit. It just blew my mind that this was a common Bible for the time period. It puts even more perspective into history.

It has been a BUSY week with so much walking.  This girl was tuckered out and took a little nap on our way to Pennsylvania.  The traffic from DC to Baltimore was insane, but thankfully the last half of the trip was a quick ride. 

As we were driving through Pennsylvania I started to see some signs for Gettysburg.  We made a last minute decision to pull off and check it out.  The Visitor's Center was already closed for the day, but the park was still open to walk around. I'm glad we made the stop.

Vacation Day 5: Washington DC

I tried to get tickets to Ford's Theater, but they were sold out months ago.  We still walked by and showed the girls.

Our next scheduled tour was the FBI Experience.  This was hands-down one of our favorite tours of the week. This was a self guided tour with a couple FBI agents available to answer questions. 

We learned about some cases that the FBI solved and how the solved them.  We learned about special techniques the FBI has. It was interactive for the girls, and the CSI fan in me reemerged as I walked through reading about cases they had solved. 

This is the boat that the Boston Marathon bomber hid in prior to being caught.

We ran into an old family member as we were walking around. :)

Snack time outside of the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

Giving a little speech. Talking is right up her alley.

Tonight's adventure walk took us around the Tidal Basin. First stop - Jefferson Memorial.

Of course there will always be a stop to visit with a local duck family.

FDR Memorial.  I was a little bummed that the water features were drained and not working. 

MLK Memorial

On the way back to our hotel one of the girls noticed my badge.  This was so cool, and a highlight of my day, but the visitor badge apparently is printed on some sort of timed paper/label that changes to show expired after a certain period of time. At first I thought maybe it was activated by the sunlight, but all the other badges that were put in a backpack had changed as well. 

Leave it to our FBI. So cool

Vacation Day 4: Washington DC

Today we had a tour of the White House.  We were super excited to get tickets for this location since none of us had been inside before. Funny story going through security - Marc had a conference call he had to be on this morning.  He was hoping it would end before our tour time.  The Secret Service were all pretty nice and helpful on our visit, but when we walked up to the check in the agent there asked who Marc was talking to.  When he told the agent it was his boss, the agent offered to talk to him to get him out of the phone call without getting in trouble.  It was a call Marc could just hang up on, and he did, but it was funny that the Secret Service agent offered to help Marc out. 

After our White House tour (which was really just a walk through), we stopped by the 

Supreme Court. 

Our next tour was at the Library of Congress.  On the far side of the National Mall, of course.  The architecture in this building it truly amazing. 

This is part of Thomas Jefferson's collection that he gave to the library.  Many of these books were lost in a fire, but Jefferson kept excellent records.  We know the title and edition of each book he donated, so the library is working to try and replace each book that was lost.  The white spines in the cases are place holders for the books that the library is still looking for. 

The Gutenburg Bible. This is one of only three complete copies from the first printing that was printed on vellum (treated calfskin).

Our next stop was the World War II Memorial.  This was was new since our last visit, and it was breathtaking. 

Each star on this wall represents 100 soldiers that died in the war. 

We then walked down to the Lincoln Memorial and waiting for the lights to come on. On our way we stopped by the Korean and Vietnam Memorials as well, but somehow I managed not to take any pictures.  All of these memorials were pretty full of 8th grade school trips. 

The WWII Memorial looked amazing lit up as well.