Vacation/Travel Supplement
Travels with grandchildren:
Road trip includes 11 states and District of Columbia
Jack and Marie Fink’s granddaughters, Claire Meyerhoff of St. Louis, from left, and Hannah and Hilary Fink of Fort Wayne, Ind., tour Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., and the Kentucky Derby Museum there on a quiet day at the world-famous racetrack. (Photo by Marie Fink)
By John F. Fink
My wife, Marie, and I have 10 grandchildren, none of whom lives in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. The cousins see each other when they visit us for holidays and have become good friends, but we would like to see them more often and they would like to see each other more often.
That is one of the reasons why we have made it a practice to take our grandchildren on trips when they reach the ages of about 11 or 12. Another purpose of the trips is to give them a chance to learn something about our country’s geography and history.
Those who have taken the trips tell their cousins that a trip with Grandma and Grandpa is not a vacation. But we do take time for fun, too.
So far, we have taken three such trips. The first trip was with our two oldest granddaughters, who are now in college and high school. The second trip was with three grandsons, and the third trip last June was with three granddaughters. Our two youngest grandsons are now 8 so it will be their turn in two or three years.
We began last year’s trip by driving two of our granddaughters to St. Louis, where the third girl lives. We arrived early enough in the afternoon to take all three girls to the St. Louis Zoo, one of the best in the United States.
We began the following day at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in downtown St. Louis, which includes the famous Gateway Arch, the Museum of Westward Expansion beneath the Arch, the Old Cathedral and the Old Courthouse.
The memorial was established in 1965 to commemorate the role of St. Louis in the westward expansion, including Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Naturally, we took a tram to the top of the Arch, which is 630 feet high.
The museum theater has a superb film on the Lewis and Clark expedition. I want all our grandchildren to have an appreciation for that expedition. I explained to the girls that the expedition really began in southern Indiana, where Meriwether Lewis met William Clark then they made their way from what is now Clarksville to St. Louis.
We visited both the Old Cathedral and later the new Basilica Cathedral. Actually, both churches have been named basilicas. St. Louis is one of the few U.S. cities that can boast of having two basilicas.
Both cathedrals are named for St. Louis, of course, who was King Louis IX of France in the 13th century. The new Basilica Cathedral is justly famous for its mosaics because it has more than any other church in the world.
The next day, we drove back to Indiana and stopped in New Harmony, arriving in time for a 10 a.m. tour. New Harmony was settled in 1814 by the Harmonie Society, a German religious communal group headed by George Rapp.
By 1824, more than 150 structures were built and the town marketed products as far away as Pittsburgh and New Orleans. Then, though, they decided to move back to Pennsylvania because most of their markets were in the East. They sold the town to Welsh philanthropist Robert Owen and geologist and philanthropist William Maclure.
The men tried to organize a model community that stressed equal education and social equality, but it continued for only three years. There are still many homes from the Harmonists’ time, both temporary log homes and permanent pre-fabricated houses.
Next we drove to the nearby Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, where Abraham Lincoln lived from age 7 to 21, the formative years of his life, and where his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, is buried.
We arrived there in time to see the 2:30 p.m. film about Lincoln’s boyhood before visiting the farm on the land owned by Thomas Lincoln, Abe’s father. The actual home that the Lincoln family lived in is gone, but one just like it has been built there along with various farm buildings.
Crossing the Ohio River to Kentucky, we spent the night in Louisville then began the next day with a visit to Churchill Downs, where we visited the Kentucky Derby Museum, took a backyard tour and viewed a film about the Derby. Then we let the girls spend the next 7½ hours enjoying the rides at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom and Hurricane Bay Water Park.
Before leaving Louisville the next day, we visited the Louisville Slugger Bat Museum and toured the factory. That might have been more interesting to our grandsons when we took them there as part of their trip.
The rest of the day was a long drive to Lewisburg, W.Va. Our car became a traveling library. In the front seat, Marie and I listened to an audio book while the girls in the back seat were absorbed in some books we brought along.
After spending the night in Lewisburg, we drove to Charlottesville, Va., to visit Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, which is fascinating for the many innovations, if not actual inventions, that our third president made
there.
Our next stop was Colonial Williamsburg, Va., preserved as it was in 1776. This is an excellent history lesson for every visitor. We saw actors portraying Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and George Washington, who played roles in the American independence movement. We visited homes, taverns and shops maintained as they were in 1776.
Next we drove from Williamsburg to George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon, where we spent several hours touring the home and the grounds. The girls agreed that they liked Washington’s home better than Jefferson’s house.
We then spent three nights in Washington, D.C. As is true of most of the places we visited, we could have stayed much longer.
We started our tour at the Lincoln Memorial on the west end of the National Mall then made our way east along the mall back to our hotel near the Capitol.
At the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial steps, the Korean War Memorial is to the right and the Vietnam War Memorial is to the left. We walked along the Reflecting Pool to the World War II Memorial and from there to the Washington Monument. Since we had been unable to arrange a tour of the White House, we could only view it from the Washington Monument. We spent the afternoon at the Smithsonian Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
During our trips with our three grandsons and last year with our three granddaughters, we were in Washington on Sunday. Both times we went to Mass at St. Dominic Church, which has 24 large stained-glass windows that tell the story of St. Dominic from his birth to his canonization. The pictures on the bottom of the windows commemorate other Dominican saints. Built in 1852, the church has had larger congregations in the past.
Our tour that morning began with the Air and Space Museum, one of the most popular Smithsonian museums in Washington. We spent three hours there, starting with a conducted tour then continuing on our own. We also had lunch at the McDonald’s in the museum.
Next we walked through the Sculpture Garden to the National Archives. There was a long line in the Rotunda to see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It was not as crowded as we explored other exhibits. We were there for two hours.
The girls wanted to return to the Museum of Natural History so we did. Among other things, it had a special exhibit on the Lewis and Clark Expedition because the members of that expedition either brought back or sent back many specimens of plants and animals discovered in their travels.
We began the following day with a tour of the Capitol, which we had arranged through Sen. Richard Lugar’s office. It was a thorough tour except for the most important areas—the floors of both the Senate and the House of Representatives were closed that day.
On the way out of Washington, we stopped at the magnificent Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest church in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth largest church in the world. We arrived just as a tour was starting and we had a good guide.
The basilica is adjacent to The Catholic University of America, where some of our diocesan seminarians have completed their priestly formation.
From Washington, we drove through parts of Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey to Ocean City, N.J., for a break from our sightseeing.
This was a nostalgic experience for Marie because she spent her summer there 54 years ago while she worked as a waitress at Flander’s Hotel following her freshman year at Rosemont College. The hotel is still in business, but much different.
After two days and nights at Ocean City, it was on to Philadelphia. We arrived at Philadelphia’s famous
Museum of Art at 10:30 a.m. and were there for five hours. We spent about an hour-and-a-half of that time viewing a special collection of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings.
The next day, we explored historic Philadelphia. First, we watched two films—a mediocre one then an excellent movie directed by John Huston about the events that happened in Philadelphia when our country declared our independence from England.
We saw the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and the other buildings on Independence Square, where the first Congresses and the Supreme Court met until the capital was moved to Washington in 1800.
We toured the Second Bank of the United States, now a portrait gallery of the Founding Fathers and Mothers, and Carpenters Hall, where the Continental Congress met in 1774.
We had lunch at historic City Tavern, where the Founding Fathers ate, and visited Christ’s Church, which most of the Founding Fathers attended, then toured Betsy Ross’s home and Elfreth’s Alley, where people still live in homes built in 1736.
On our way back to Indiana, we stopped at Gettysburg, Pa. The best way to see the Gettysburg battlefield is with a guide in your own car. Our grandsons particularly enjoyed that tour and said that it was the best part of their trip. We also took a shuttle bus to President Dwight Eisenhower’s farm, where he lived after his presidency.
By the time we got back to Indianapolis last year, we had traveled 2,588 miles through 11 states and the District of Columbia in two weeks.
On each of our trips, the grandchildren got to know each another better, learned something and, we hope, enjoyed being with their grandparents. We certainly enjoyed being with them.
(John F. Fink is editor emeritus of The Criterion.) †
