Gadsby's Tavern Museum

If we weren't already spoiled by all the free museums in the area, one Saturday in September the rest of our museums become free for Smithsonian's Museum Day Live! event. That day was yesterday and we like to take advantage of it to see something we've never seen before.

9-26-15 - The girls listen intently during their museum tour.

This year, we went to Old Town Alexandria and toured Gadsby's Tavern Museum. Gadsby's is an old tavern and hotel built in 1785 which was attached to a restaurant where George Washington used to celebrate his birthday and other events. You can still go to the restaurant and order George Washington's favorite dish (glazed duck -- which is delicious), but we'd never been in the museum before. It included a short tour (which was perfect for the kids) with a mocked up typical tavern room, a pair of ballrooms, and an example of a guest bedroom (without a bathroom, of course).

What a tavern was like in 1785.

Original flooring and decor. The girls are posing with their make-believe lanterns, which were carried throughout the tour.

An Old Piano

This featherbed was luxurious at the time.

Music balcony includes a "door to nowhere". If you leave through that door, you must jump half a story to get down into the hallway.

After the tour, we bought some heritage chocolate, which we enjoyed in front of the Alexandria City Hall after a walk through the Farmer's Market and lunch.

It's always fun to discover new things in our own backyard and it's especially fun to do it for free!

Newseum

The Newseum is a privately-run museum in DC and despite its $22/adult price tag, I'd always heard great things about it.  For the first time in its history, it was free last weekend to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of September 11th.

There are a couple of sites around DC where they very clearly have money and aren't afraid to spend it.  The Newseum is one of those.  It is seven floors of news, news history, movies, interactive games, and shops with a giant glass elevator running from the basement to the 6th floor.  At the top they have a terrace with an amazing view of the Capital.  Inside there were a few gems and a few things that made me angry.

First, I should preface this with the disclosure that lately I haven't been very happy with the media.  While I wholeheartedly support free speech, I also support fact-checking and honest reporting.  Sensationalizing every little story just to sell it has driven our economy deeper into recession, further polarized the country, and is just plain fear mongering.  I think our media is out of control and it's time for them to self-regulate a little better.   One trip out of the country and you'll realize how self-centered and off-center our media really is.

The Newseum generally reflects this industry standard by devoting huge areas of the museum to their most successful stories, mainly September 11th and Hurricane Katrina.  They praise themselves throughout for using their right to free speech for good, "Look at us, we trudge through the backcountry and risk our lives to bring you the news.  We're the first ones to get to the biggest stories.  Blah.  Blah.  Blah."  I was not impressed, but it did get more interesting as it went along.

There are a few things well-worth coming to see.

First, they have the largest chunk of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany.

 Berlin Wall

They also have the broadcast antenae from the top of one of World Trade Towers set in front of a backdrop of worldwide front pages from 9/12/01.

 9/11 - The Newseum's favorite subject

There is a memorial to journalists who have died in action with some interesting details about where they were and why.  My favorite room was probably the News History room, where they have front pages from newspapers dating back to 1455 (you can see the front page from when the Spanish Armada was defeated!).  I also enjoyed this exhibit on worldwide freedom of the press.

  It turns out in addition to having the best education, quality of life, and health care system, Finland also has the most freedom of the press.  Should we move?

Alison liked the tour of a real-life news studio (ABC Weekend Something...) and the exhibit on the presidents' dogs.  There are also theaters galore, including a 4D show (which I was scared would include very lifelike paparazzi running after you), and an entire floor of interactive news games where you could report on your own story and post it to youtube (for a price).

By the time I was done, my anger at the press had subsided and I was happy to have seen the museum.  Was it worth the $22?  Not unless you've already seen ALL of the free museums and are incredibly hungry for some drama.

Getting Stoned

I'm visiting Pipestone, MN this weekend and, although it's a small town of 4600 people, that is 46 times more people than Medora had in the winter and I expected there to be a lot to see and do here. I'm not disappointed.

I left work at 1:30pm Friday to start my trip to the other side of the state. The scenery was a little disappointing as there were too many farms and not enough signs for Wall Drug, but the amount of windmills in the area was impressive and only driving 3.5 hours instead of 10 or 24 to get to one of Nathan's parks is a treat. I did get a chance to stop in Blue Earth to see the Jolly Green Giant, who I kind of feel sorry for. Poor guy has to live outside in Minnesota without any pants, plus there is a little platform right between his legs were you can stand an impressive 6 extra feet off the ground and look at the parking lot or...um....up...what's that about?

On the way to Pipestone, MN, you take Hwy 75 through Luverne and past two state parks: Blue Mounds State Park and Split Rock Creek State Park. I hope to visit those tomorrow if it's not too soggy.

Nathan lives in the loft of a cute little house-turned-apartment near downtown Pipestone (pictures to come in an upcoming blog). The main strip, appropriately named Main Street, is only two blocks from his house. Just like any historic downtown, Pipestone has historic buildings and shops, except that here, they are all made out of the native, brilliantly purple/pink quartzite rock found everywhere around here. Downtown has a couple of clothing stores, a card shop, hardware shop, appliance store, a pub, and several restaurants including Pizza Ranch, where we headed for dinner Friday night.

Downtown Pipestone

Pub/Restaurant

Pipestone County Courthouse (1902)

Despite its Western theme, Pizza Ranch is located no farther West than North Dakota. It did, however, have a very nice small-town feel to it, exhibited by the fact that the cashier asked us if there were any particular kinds of pizza we wanted them to make for the buffet. After seeing their vision statement displayed prominently on the wall which read: To glorify God by positively impacting the world we live in, I did expect the pizza to taste a little more, well, heavenly, than it actually did.

After dinner we headed to the monument to hike the 3/4 mile nature trail. Nathan and I had a hard time not comparing it to Glacier as we walked. The good news is it reminded us a lot of it - there were lots of familiar plants, including my favorite anticoagulant, yarrow and the rocks made us believe that pikas would come sheepishly crawling out if we sat quietly long enough. The trail bends from a green prairie oasis, dotted with periodic quarries, into enchanted forest with pink rock walls and the famous Winnewissa Falls. I only regret that it was getting dark and I couldn't hold the camera still enough to get great pictures on the trail, so you'll have to wait for those too.


I did get to see some Pipestone, which you can see in the picture below - the deeper purple stone making up the floor and the bottom layer of the wall in this picture is Pipestone. The pink stone above it is the quartzite.

We got to see the quarry that one of Nathan's friends at the monument has been working on for 27 years. You have to have a permit and be Native American to quarry in the park and it doesn't look easy!


This morning I woke up to a downpour. Not to be detered, I foraged in the Alero for an umbrella and set off to explore the town. I didn't get very far when I landed inside the Pipestone County Museum. Two very nice women worked there and told me all about the surrounding town festivals, including the Watertower Festival coming up in Pipestone on June 27th, which includes a dance, craft fair, parade, and, although not mentioned on the Pipestone Event Website, plenty of drinking.

I enjoyed the museum! It was well-narrated with signs mostly explaining the origins of common phrases, such as 'deadbeat', which comes from the fact that old, empty railway cars made a different noise as they ran over the tracks than the cars that were full. That was called a deadbeat as those were the cars that weren't pulling their own weight (i.e. making money). They also had many displays of household items from the late 1800's through around 1950. The top floor was the Minnesota Room where they had pictures and articles explaining all of the "Minnesota State ________" - both official (Lady Slipper is our state flower) to unofficial (luckily Wood Tick is not our official state insect). There was even an article on supercomputing in Minnesota, which, to my horror did not even mention IBM, whose Roadrunner project, partially worked on in Rochester, MN, broke the petaflop barrier last year.

A couple of other noteworthy items were the large, gorey mural that was displayed in the kids' play area of Native Americans harvesting bison:

It's important that kids know where their food comes from

There was also a wooden, transportable toilet (an early Port-O-Potty if you will) that I really understood the value of after being without even an object as crude that on our Kilimanjaro Trek last year! Ah, to have a wooden toilet seat....


All-in-all Pipestone has been great - can't wait to take another trip through the park this afternoon!