My family spent our summer vacations driving around the country. From camping alongside Grizzly bears at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, to listening to my dad’s impromptu history lecture on the steps of the Alamo in Texas, ensuring that we experienced both New York’s Statue of Liberty and my dad’s version of Buckingham Palace – Graceland in Memphis, as well as multiple visits to the National Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL.
I’ve squinted to get a glimpse of the images of our great leaders carved into Mount Rushmore, only to be defeated by stormy clouds that lasted for the duration of our visit and not a moment longer, sat in an auditorium in the National Military Park in Pennsylvania listening to the most boring presentation ever of the Battle of Gettysburg while watching a dull map light up on the floor, and was also a witness to the process of bringing Crazy Horse to life.
I didn’t necessarily appreciate it all then. I do now.
Knowing some of my political friends didn't want their Presidential Inauguration tickets, I took my dad to DC for the ceremony in January 2012. We traipsed around Alexandria, VA and Washington, DC on the subway, collecting National Park Passport Stamps, hunting down the little-known Albert Einstein statue, and paying homage to my favorite, Honest Abe, stopping by the Lincoln Memorial and dining on sushi and hot tea at Wok n Roll, located in the former Mary Surratt Boarding House, where John Wilkes Booth plotted his assassination.
An ever-curious photographer, my dad came across an open door to a historic fire station. Shooing away my caution to ask permission first, he stepped inside the station with no delay to take photos of the “cool architecture and sweet trucks.” I followed. Snooping around a fire station unannounced is suspicious anytime, especially during Inauguration weekend, but when we were found out, my dad smooth-talked our way out of it and I smiled and nodded alongside until the firemen were treating us like old friends.
I get my sense of adventure and smeagol from him.
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