 More 2014 Adventures |
Alexandria → Arlington 24.1 mi (38.8 km) |
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Great news, everyone!
My good friend, Eddie, who lives in the tiny town of Kingston, Utah has been selected to fly for free to Washington, D.C. with a host of his fellow veterans to visit the memorials built in their honor! This is part of a program called the Honor Flight, whose mission is to seek out all American veterans of the great wars and make sure that they are properly honored for their service!
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Eddie’s last flight was in 1996 when he went to visit his brother in Florida! Things have changed a lot since then. You can’t meet someone at the gate anymore, or keep your shoes/belt/coat/hat/sanity through security! But he’s faced tougher challenges! He was drafted into the 63rd Infantry (Eisenhower) Division of the Army in the 1940s and sent to guard the Panama Canal while many of his friends died in the Battle of the Bulge!
He told me his greatest concerns were mosquitoes and venereal disease!
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Eddie’s family invited me to tag along, and I just couldn’t say no! While they could include me in the meals, though, I had to book my own flight! So I flew into Reagan International, while they flew into Baltimore. We were supposed to convene at dinner time, but the Honor Buses hit some major traffic! That gave me time to visit the Jones Point Lighthouse in Alexandria!
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Unlike the other famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, the one at Jones Point is much humbler in size. It’s one of the last standing riparian lighthouses in the country! From 1856 until 1926, it warned ships traveling up the Potomac that there were dangerous shoals nearby, and because of that, it was really critical for the development of Alexandria and Washington, DC!
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In fact, the Jones Point Lighthouse is right at an important boundary between cities and states! Between February and April of 1791, Major Andrew Ellicott and his team used the stars to survey a large plot of land between Maryland and Virginia to serve as the United States Capital! On April 15th, the first boundary stone of the city of Washington was driven right here at Jones Point! Now, you can still walk back and forth from Maryland to Virginia to the District of Columbia in whatever order you like!
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I raced back to the Hilton Mark Center, where the family bus picked me up and rumbled to dinner at the Knights of Columbus complex in Arlington. In a meeting hall adjacent to the glorious estate house, we welcomed the veterans with flags and applause and had a sumptuous dinner to the tune of old brass classics. This weekend is going to be HUGE! I can’t wait to get going!
Into the wild blue yonder!
More 2014 Adventures |
Total Ground Covered: 24.1 mi (38.8 km) |
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