Visiting DC

Saturday morning, the contingency of girlie Carter cousins were off into the tunnels of the Hilton.

There, with the help of our younger & geekier cousins, train passes were purchased from the big confusing automatic machines. Soon we were off on a train headed for downtown Washington DC.

Down, down, down into the subterranean 

Once in DC we were onto one of the local bus tours that allows passengers on and off privileges.

Settled in on a Tour Bus of DC

Look Familiar? It's where great men & women go to nap.

Hum... I know I've seen this on a nickle...

The Washington Monument is getting a little work done.

Our first stop of the day was to pay our respects at the year old Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

Standing tall with Dr. King.

When we had taken enough photos to fill the Capital Mall, we were back on the tour bus, headed for our next stop - The Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

One of the gems of the Smithsonian Museums

By this time breakfast seemed as if it was days ago, so we started off our Smithsonian visit with lunch at its cafeteria. Once filled and feeling more human, we raced off to view the Inaugural gowns of all the first ladies of the United States - gowns from the 18th through the 21st Century. Here are my personal favorites. Please pardon the glass reflections.

Mary Todd Lincoln's plush purple velvet gown believed
made by her friend, African-American dressmaker Elizabeth Keckly

A blue satin flapper's styled gown, worn by Grace Coolidge

Beautiful yellow silk gown worn by Jackie O., but not at an inaugurate.

 And here is the most recent inauguration gown, worn, of course, by Michelle Obama.

Michelle's Jason Wu Gown

 By the time my cousins and I were out of the Smithsonian, we were whipped! We re-boarded a tour bus and headed back downtown. We were soon within a block of something I'd had my thoughts on since we arrived in DC - getting a chance to visit Ford's Theater and the Peterson House. I begged my cousins to hang tight while I ran into Ford's Theater to soak up a few minutes history and to get my first National Park Passport stamps for the Washington DC area. OH JOY!

We weren't quite finished... Rhonda had her heart set on visiting Madame Trusseau's Wax Museum. We futzed and fumbled outside the museum, then thought, 'what the heck!'. Soon we were rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.

Mr. Lincoln wondering how 'Our American Cousins' got up in the box with him

Idea and Dolores feeling a bit frisky with Mr. Freeman

Carol in good company with Samuel

Cousin Donna and Will Smith seem
a tad too chummy, don't they?

Whew! I was pretty tired by the time we got back to the Hilton. We rested up a bit, but we were, believe it or not, not quite done for the day. Around 6 PM all the girlie cousins were chauffeured by our Cousin Jackie and her husband, to their lovely Chevy Chase Home.

Let me tell you, Cousin Jackie outdid herself in preparing a dinner for all of her cousins. The meal was Caribbean in theme and quite drool worthy. Following the awesome feast, we settled into puzzling over where we might hold a Carter Family Reunion in 2014. The final local options were a bit of a surprise for me, as I visited the first two for the first time, only last spring.

• Savannah, Georgia
• Charleston, South Carolina
• Fort Lauderdale, Florida
• Other possibility: Island local such as Bermuda or Barbados

Which site will be the venue of our reunion depends on what our honored elders have to say on the matter. Myself, I casting my hopes on either Savannah or, if the elders are up to it, a Caribbean adventure. 

Donna, Yvonne, Rhonda and one of my hairier smaller cousins

By the time we were all chauffeured back to the Hilton at night's end, we were all sated, happy and a little tired. I haven't had such a cousin filled day since the days before my family left New York City in 1967.