We are back from Washington. The bus pulled into Tatum about 10:00 yesterday morning. We can report that a good time was had by all. The kids were terrific. Everyday lasted a full 18 hours of travel with the sight seeing. We were one tuckered out group upon arrival at the hotel each night. Still, the students hung in there without an abundance of complaining. They even enjoyed seeing the historical stuff. Sure there were a few bumps in the road but nothing worth losing sleep over. We already had a difficult time with that.

It would almost be easier to talk about what we did not see rather than what we did. We got in all the memorials there in the city. The only trouble was in trying to see the Vietnam memorial with about 100,000 people on motorcycles crowding us out. The World War 2 memorial is spectacular. The band played there on Sunday morning for a few songs. One drawback is that as we packed up to leave, the buses with the veterans of the war began to arrive. Our kids wanted to be able to play for them but they came in too late. The view from the Lincoln Memorial is still worth the trip. Junior High and High School students are not easily impressed but this perspective gave even them pause.

The Capitol was a bit of a bust. There were only 3 stops on the very short tour. Most of the places we would want to see are not on the tour. Oh it was nice to see the rotunda but other than that I left wanting to see far more than we did. That and watching about 20 movies on the bus are my only low points of the journey. My seat was right under the speaker so there was no escape. Well, you can add to that the fact that buses are not made for people my size. My knees still ache from being folded up like a pretzel.

We will try to write more over the next day or so. This post is just to let you know we are safely home even if we are not quite sound. It was good to spend time with the students. The sights were well worth any difficulty. Would I go again in two years for another trip? Uh, let me recover from this one first. That should take most of the two years until they leave again.

Bro. Trey