Kevin's Excellent Excursion

Read earlier entries from October.

November, 1998

7th: Milford, PA

I think my dog is going to explode because we tossed about three pounds of bread into the garden and the dog ate about three quarters of it. That is why I think my dog is going to Boom! explode. After that he looked like he had improperly digested a basketball.

We started out today. We got as far as Pennsylvania.

(This song is sung to the tune of "The wheels on the bus.")
The kid in the car says "Mom I'm bored."
"Mom I'm bored." "Mom I'm bored."
The kid in the car says "Mom I'm bored."
All through the continent...

8th: Catoctin Mountains, MD

Well, we're on the move again to Maryland. We're staying at a campground called Crows' Nest and we're near Camp David which is a presidential summer camp. We stopped at Roundtop (Gettysburg) which is a historical site where the Union and the Confederate troops did much of their fighting in the Civil War. We hope to be at Washington D.C. by tomorrow.

9th: Lake Fairfax, VA

We saw nine deer today, not counting the one smeared on the road. There were six in a field and three running.

Today we just kicked back and relaxed and I even fit in a little exercising.

10th

Well we're here for the week.

We saw eight deer today. All we've ever seen on this trip are does.

I went on a bike ride with my dog, and my parents lost me.

I went to dinner at friends of my Mom's and Dad's. I played with their kids, Danny and Rachel, who are five and six. We flew paper airplanes.

11th

On to D.C. we go! We took the Metro subway. We saw the Washington Monument, the Capitol building and the Air and Space Museum. We went in the Air and Space Museum. We saw the Wright Bros. airplane, a V2 rocket, a Saturn 5 engine, a Voyager reproduction (one or two, we don't know), a Star Wars® exhibit, a paper airplane contest (which I lost), the Spirit of St. Louis, the Gossamer Condor, the Spirit of Texas, a Skyline® Cessna that they would let you steer on the ground, and a whole lot more.

South American Poison Arrow Frog

12th

We went over to more friends of my parents' for dinner and they had three dogs: Murphy (about three feet at the shoulder), Emma, and Mousse (who I joke about being Mouse). They also had frogs, turtles, snakes, and chameleons.

We only saw one doe today.


13th

We went to the house of more friends tonight. I played pool in their basement. We saw no deer today. We went to the NRA range and I got about fifteen in the bulls eye.

14th

The Rices were here at 10:00 and we played. We went over someone's house just to find out that we were supposed to be there on Sunday. We finally saw a buck today along with five other deer.

Kevin on top of 'The Awakening's' foot.

15th

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to D.C. we go for a driving tour.

We saw the Pentagon, Gravelly Park, a metal sculpture called The Awakening at Haines Point, the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, the White House, the Supreme Court building and the Lincoln Memorial.

At the Pentagon we parked at the south entrance and went in but could only go in five hundred feet. A security guard that worked for the Department of Defense wouldn't let us in because we didn't have security clearance.

One end of Gravelly Park is about 200' from the end of the National Airport runway. Fergus wanted to get one of those birds! About 200' off the ground they were!

The Awakening (1980) spells f-u-n! It's an aluminum sculpture that looks like a giant coming out of the ground. Kids were sliding down the knee, climbing the feet, sitting on the head and hand.

The Jefferson Memorial had a path deliberately cut between the trees to have Jefferson looking at the White House.

The White House: big and roomy with a lot of S.W.A.T. officers to chat with. Yet no one can go near it because of this new terrorism protection thing.

The Lincoln Memorial: we saw it from the road but we didn't go there so I've got nothing to say.

The Washington Monument: I didn't go up it because it was closed for repairs. "Our goverment at work," I say.

The Supreme Court building had nine people on an arch over the doorway.


The spider on a dollar bill

16th

Today we went with the Rices to the Department of Engraving and Printing and the Museum of Natural History. At Engraving & Printing we got a tour. I asked what that owl was on the upper right hand corner of a $1 bill and the tour guide said it's a joke spider because of the web printers they use. I'm scanning it in just in case you don't know what I'm talking about.

The gift shop was either totally overpriced junk or good stuff over $20.

At Natural History we saw a tiger exhibit and a bird exhibit. The tiger exhibit was only one room but the bird exhibit was huge. There was a "Rocks, Minerals and Gems" exhibit. They had every kind of rock you can think of and more. We saw


17th

Nothing to write today. All I did was laundry.

18th

Today we saw the NRA Firearms Museum. They had over 1000 guns. We saw semi-autos, handguns, and rifles. We saw everything from bayonets to Tommy Guns to modern full autos. We saw a kid's room full of cap guns. We also saw some buffalo rounds that we keep arguing about how big they were, but I think that they were as big as an electrical outlet top to bottom, and at least about 1/2" thick.

Afterward, we went to the Memphis BBQ place.

Russell with Fergus

19th: Westmoreland, VA

After ten days we moved. We'll be here for the next ten days. We are staying at Westmoreland State Park. We are here because we are closer to Dahlgren. My brother, Russell, will be staying with us for the next couple of days. We ended up parking over a BBQ grill because it was the only site with water and the BBQ grill was bolted down.

20th

We moved site-to-site today from that over-the-BBQ-grill site to a nice big site. We picked up Russell today for a few nights. I don't think I mentioned why Dahlgren is so important. It's because that's where my brother is stationed (he's in the Navy).

21st

I made our dog psycho by playing a game of "imaginary ball." My brother and I took a bike ride around the park. Dad, my brother, and I threw boomerangs. My left-handed brother almost took my dad's head with the flight path of a right-handed boomerang.

22nd

We went to Colonial Beach today. Our dog did the funniest thing today, he "did his thing" in the water.

My brother has left for a few days but he will be back for Thanksgiving.

We went stargazing and saw about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars and the Milky Way. We saw the constellations Orion, Auriga, Cassiopeia, The Pleiades, and Pegasus.

23rd

Homework time in Kevin's cubbyhole. For those of you that think I'm doing no work, I am. I have a Macintosh IIci which I am writing on now. What I do is I write the story for the day and pass it on to my father who helps me correct it and puts it on the web site. I also do math, spelling, reading, and all of my BSA achievements.

I shot some archery and my dad is scanning in some pictures of it to show you.

I called in some deer with a deer call today but we heard a double gunshot and it was time to go in. We think we heard a buck, a doe, and a fawn.


Kevin and Dad reassemble his bike.

24th

Today we put together my bike. My dad put the seat back up too high. When we were fixing my bike we took about 99 things apart, greased about 50%, and lost about 20 ball bearings.

We went hiking to Rock Spring Pond. You can just imagine what my dog did! My dog was rubbing his head in the reeds and went head first into the pond. We took Rock Spring trail to Laurel Point trail and up the road to Campground B.

27th

Today we saw an assortment of birds. We had two sightings of a bald eagle in one day, two wild turkeys, and three black vultures. I bet those turkeys were hiding in every nook and cranny yesterday. We keep seeing these huge bird nests by the water about the size of a heron's nest. They were always in high places like on top of water towers, on top of roofs, and pilings.

We saw all sorts of hunters today. There were a pair with two deer carcasses with a lot of antlers.

I climbed a very steep hillside like this ____\ near the Potomac River to get a closer look at some sandstone just to find out it was bleached dirt.

Kevin's archery practice... and some of his results.

28th

Again we went over to more friends of my family's tonight. We played, talked ate, talked, and left. They had a Weimaraner named Merlin because he makes the food disappear so fast. They have a house by the waterfront.

29th

We went to a playground today and threw a hat up and down a slide because all the slides were plastic and were too full of static electricity. Zap!

Thumbnail for 'The Great Outdoors' (click for full-size artwork). Later my brother and I went on a bike ride in the forest on a course we made up. On the course there are steep hills, lots of hazards, ditches, wet leaves, trees, holly bushes, and roots. We found a Black & Decker Snake Light on the course.

We had to fix our bikes. My bike needed brake pads, my brother's a tire, so we went to a store out near Fredrickburg. We also picked up a helmet and some inflator needles.

We dropped Russell off at NSWC. We won't be seeing him until Christmas.

We have had some pet ladybugs with us since VT but we've not seen 'em for days. One was orange and the other was red. We don't know if they flew away or if they are hiding.


30th: Williamsburg, VA

I lost my leatherman tool somewhere. Today we moved to Fair Oaks campground. Fair Oaks is a stone's throw from the Williamsburg Pottery Factory. For November thirty it has been about 70° here in Virginia. Here you can actually see the bathroom! Here we have a playground, a pool, and a mini golf course. The playground has a circular slide, a bumpy slide, two swingsets, and some sort of climbing structure.

Continue on to December.