Pennsylvania Road Trip: Day 3

. . . So, imagine my being tickled when I woke up around 6:00 a.m. to discover that my bookworm Mary had woken early herself and sneaked into the bright hotel bathroom to read while the rest of us were still sleeping in the dark room. Like mother, like daughter!

We had a more leisurely morning, and we ate breakfast in the outdoor courtyard where the children could be loud and run about.

Then we departed for what was supposed to be a four-hour drive to Mt. Vernon. We finally pulled in at 3:30, after nearly six hours due to parking lot traffic on the Beltway, even on a Saturday.

It was delightful for me to take our children to Mt. Vernon, which I visited almost annually as a child while visiting my grandparents each summer in Alexandria, Virginia. My dad loves supporting Mt. Vernon so much that he is still a dues-paying member of probably nearly four decades.

Thomas (2) insisted on having his own kid's activity map and pencil, and he would "read it," mumbling random words, and then marking things off with his pencil.

We took turns touring the house, me with baby and two girls, then Chris with just John, and the rambunctious boys (5 and 2) just skipped the whole thing.

View of the Potomac from the rear of George Washington's home

We closed the place out at six o'clock and then ran to the van as the sky opened up with a deluge and lightening storm that lasted into the night. We bought Thai food to eat in the car and drove the last hour and a half to our hotel in Richmond, Virginia.

We were on bedraggled bunch checking in past nine o'clock at night, so you can imagine my not being thrilled when my hotel room did not have functioning air conditioning, a problem not discovered until I had unpacked and my three charges were asleep in their beds.

Chris was stuck in the boys' room and couldn't leave those sleeping children, so I was taking photos and texting him back and forth in the dark, trying to figure out why my adjusting the temperature down was not working. I called for the maintenance man at 10:40 at night, before he went off duty at 11:00, and he came to the rescue, whispering in my room in the dark while I used my cell phone's flashlight feature to guide his work opening up the ceiling panel, so we would not wake the children. He finally got the air conditioning working at midnight.