America 250- Friday, June 26, 2026

      Scott loves observing the anniversaries of historical events, and this year is a tremendously significant one.  It is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Scott couldn't let that one go unnoticed.  He has already been to a number of the Revolutionary War's 250th anniversaries, and he certainly wanted to make this one.  Of course, it comes right at the start of our summer vacation, so we built our big summer trip around it.  The highlights will include the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Sullivan's Island in Charleston, SC, which happened the week before, a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, VA, and the climax of the week in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July itself.  That's the plan anyway, with time for pools and beaches, shopping and other things in between the history.

     This morning was Scott and Julie's last day of school, so they had to go in for the last meetings of the year.  We dropped Abby off at the grandparents for half a day and dropped 14 week old Buttercup for her first stay at the pet spa and went in to school for our half-days.  

     Scott was sad to see Cathy W. retire.  She has been a big part of our family events since Scott started working there.  She was there when we first brought Anna off of the plane from Russia and was there over twenty years later when that little girl got married.  Today was  Cathy's last day.

     Julie and Abby picked Scott up at his school and we were on the road by noon.  It's over 13 hours to Charleston, where we have reservations for Saturday night, but we didn't have firm plans for where we were going to stop tonight.  It was planned to be our longest day of driving for this trip, and we hoped to get as many hours in as we could so we might be able to do a few things in Charleston tomorrow,  We stopped at McDonald's in Erie, PA, for a late lunch, and Abby enjoyed playing in the Play Place for a while.  You don't see many of those anymore.  We drove on to about half-way through West Virginia when we stopped for a late dinner at a Shoney's.  

     Our best case scenario was to drive far enough into North Carolina to only have 4 hours to drive tomorrow, but by the time we were getting to Wytheville, VA, it was after 11:00 and we decided to call it a day.