Mount Vernon

The whole time I was here I thought only of the ladies in my book club!  Oh how I wished you were all here with me!  It was the most beautiful of places!  I was actually surprised that it was not bigger than it was but, I'm glad it wasn't.  It would have made him seem less real, more like royalty and less like the rest of us I guess.  (I know he was very wealthy for his time.)

The radius walkway are the original bricks and that is why they have the raised sidewalks for the tourists to walk on.  It took my breath away to think that George Washington walked on that very walkway.  

They did not allow pictures inside the house but it was all that you would imagine it would be.  It is an experience that I think everyone should have.  To walk where the Founding Father's walked and talked.   To stand in the same house that Marquis de Lafayette stayed.  To see the actual key to the prison of Bastille, that was given to George Washington as a gift to the "Patriarch of Liberty".  

Potomac River.  Even to this day when boats go past, they honk their horn in honor of the General.

There is a long line of chairs on the back porch facing the Potomac.  This is where George and Martha along with their guests would sit in the evening and watch the beautiful scenery.

This wall cracks me up.  When you are standing at the house, you cannot see that there is a wall here.  It was designed to keep the animals off the main lawn.  It is about 3 feet high and too tall for most of the animals to hop over.  But it turns out that it became quite a joke for the Washingtons as people would fall off it regularly.  They named it the "haha" wall.

This is the final resting place of George and Martha Washington.  Behind the black door is a huge vault that holds the bodies of other family members.  In the basement of the Capitol building in Washington DC, is a place that was made to bury George Washington but since it was in his will to be buried at Mt. Vernon, his family declined to have him moved.  The room at the Capitol remains empty.