September 6
It was just getting light inside my room when I woke up. I was on the sunrise side of the train, but unlike the train in California we weren't right on the coast so I couldn't really see the horizon.
I had to go down the hall to use the shower, 'cause my room didn't have one of its own. And I went to the wrong end of the car first, then had to go back to the other end.
It was nicer than the Superliner shower, 'cause it was bigger, but there was only one in the whole car and 'cause people don't like sharing showers it might leave a lot of people waiting their turn in the morning.
There wasn't anybody waiting outside when I got out of the shower so I went back to my room and sat on my bed and combed my mane and tail, and then I preened my wings. Mister Salvatore had said that we were getting off the train before breakfast, so I made sure that everything was still in my saddlebags, then I sat down on the bed and looked at the scenery out the window.
I'd picked a good time to start looking out the window, 'cause we went through a little town and then some woods, and then the train crossed over a bridge and pretty soon we were running right alongside of the Potomac River. We went past an airport that had some green air force airplanes outside of it, and then pretty soon we were in the city, although still pretty close to the river.
We passed over it and then the train started to slow down and I got my saddlebags and was standing outside my door before Mister Salvatore came down to make sure I was awake.
We waited with the conductor until the train finally stopped at the station, and he helped us put our bags on the platform and then thanked us for taking Amtrak.
Mister Salvatore found a locker that we could put our bags in and then we decided that the first thing to do was to go get breakfast and then we'd go to the Air and Space Museum as soon as it opened so that we could spend all day there.
There was a restaurant called Pret A Manger right in the train station, and they had breakfast sandwiches, so I got one with egg and mushroom which was pretty good. And their coffee was good, too. They said that their coffee was fair trade and their eggs were cage-free and I didn't know exactly what that meant, so Miss Cherilyn said that meant that they paid a fair price for their coffee and that the chickens who laid the eggs weren't kept in little cages.
I had never heard of chickens being kept in cages, and I couldn't think of why anybody would want to. All you needed was a coop and maybe a fence to keep predators out.
We got on the mini-Marc and took it to the Air and Space Museum. I flew down the Mall until I got to the front doors then flew back because I was a lot faster than Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn and it was rude to rush ahead of them like that. Then I flew back to the museum again because I thought I'd seen a sign on the door that said it was closed, and I was right—I had seen that. So I flew back to them and Mister Salvatore looked at his watch and then said that he hadn't remembered when they opened but he promised me that they would be open because the only day that they were closed was Christmas, or when the government was shut down because Congress couldn't agree on a federal budget.
So we had over an hour to find something else to do, and Miss Cherilyn suggested that we could go to the castle because it was open now and it might be fun.
It was neat because it told us about all the other museums and what we could see there, and the computers would try and answer your questions when you talked to them. I could get mine to do things by talking to it but it wouldn't talk back to me.
There were a lot of museums and I think I could have spent a week just looking at them if I wanted to see everything. Maybe ponies should have a week to look at museums, but I wasn't sure when would be the best time. Right after we came would probably be confusing, it would be too much all at once and a lot of it wouldn't mean anything. But right before we left could be time better spent with our friends.
Maybe they'd already thought about it and maybe there were some ponies who spent their summer vacations going from museum to museum. I guess I was kind of sad that I'd never have a chance to see them all, but I didn't regret how I'd spent my summer.
Even though it was still too early, we went back outside and I flew a big lap around the Mall, and then the second time I went around I landed next to a wedge that had marble soldiers in it, which was a monument to the Korean War. And then I flew on to an ornate marble gazebo, and when I got back to Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn he said that the marble gazebo was a monument to World War One.
So that made six wars that I'd heard about and I was pretty sure that I remembered that America wasn't even three centuries old yet so I asked Mister Salvatore just how many wars they'd had and he said that it depended on how you counted, but at least eight significant wars. So then I wanted to know how come there had been so many and Miss Cherilyn said that would take weeks to explain and she was pretty sure that there had been more than eight. She said that she wasn't sure if there had ever been a time when America wasn't at war with somebody.
Mister Salvatore said that was really cynical and she said that didn't make it any less true.
I wasn't sure what to believe. I'd seen a lot of the country on my trips so far, and it didn't look like it was at war. I wasn't exactly sure what a war even looked like, though.
We were waiting on the museum steps when they opened the doors, and Mister Salvatore said that we had to leave by three to make our next train but as long as I promised to be by the main doors by then I could go around the museum by myself.
Well, that was nice of him but I didn't want to. It would have been lonely by myself. So I said that I wanted to see the airplanes first because they had the largest collection of airplanes in America including the very first one, but I didn't want to do it by myself and that made him happy. So he reached down and petted my mane and said that we'd all go see the airplanes.
We looked at the Wright Flier and it was hard to imagine how the Dreamliner had come from that. Their airplane was cloth and sticks, and now airplanes were made out of metal or fancy tape. And there were some other older airplanes that were just as simple as it was. But it was very important because it was the first real airplane that humans had invented.
There was also the Spirit of St. Louis, which was famous because the pilot was the first one to cross the Atlantic by airplane all by himself. He flew it around some after that and then he flew it to Washington and gave it to the Smithsonian and it had been here ever since then.
It was next to the Bell X-1 which was powered by a rocket and was the first airplane to fly faster than sound. I didn't think you could fly faster than sound, but Mister Salvatore told me that there were now lots of airplanes that did and there even used to be a passenger airplane which did, but it didn't fly anymore.
Then there was a strange funnel-shaped spaceship called the Columbia, which had flown to the moon atop a giant rocket. Mister Salvatore said that there had been three men inside and they'd gone to the moon in it, and had been the first humans to ever set foot on the moon. He said that the landing module was called the Eagle, and it was still on the moon or else it would be in the museum, too.
And there was also an airplane called SpaceShipOne, which was the first space rocket that hadn't been built by a government. After it had gone to space and toured America, it was also flown to Washington and donated to the Smithsonian.
I was curious how many other famous airplanes had just been flown to the Smithsonian and given to it.
A lot of the airplanes hung from wires from the ceiling and Miss Cherilyn thought that was because airplanes belonged in the air and Mister Salvatore thought that was so people couldn't touch them and it was too bad that you couldn't get a really close look at them, especially since he said that I shouldn't fly inside after I reminded him that hanging airplanes in a pegasus museum wouldn't keep pegasuses from touching them.
There was a big room full of old passenger airplanes, and they were really small compared to the modern ones I'd seen. They were probably the size of airplane that Casey had said that Boeing made which was too reliable, and I looked around for Boeings. There was a 247, and there was also a cockpit from an Airbus A320 which was not as fancy as the one in the Dreamliner but a lot more complicated than the one in the Cessna.
And in one room there was even a moon rock that you could touch, although it was under a cover that my hooves couldn't reach through which I thought was kind of unfair, 'cause Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn both got to touch it and I didn't. It was a little triangle of rock, and it didn't really look like that much but it had been brought all the way back from the moon which was pretty amazing.
We ate a really late lunch and it wasn't much but we were all kind of tired and hungry and they wanted a chance to rest their feet for a little bit. It must be hard to have to walk around on only two legs all the time.
They also had a special theater called an IMAX where we could watch a movie, and instead of being a big flat screen like I'd seen before it wrapped around and the chairs tilted back so that you could see it almost all around you. We watched a movie called To Fly!, and that was really neat. It was kind of short, but it gave a history of how humans flew, and some of it was almost like being flying. I accidentally hit both of them with my wings when the movie was flying sometimes, 'cause it was almost like flying for real, since all I could see around me was the sky.
One room had a display of flight gear, and that was kind of fun to see, since I had my own that I had to wear. And it was kind of interesting that humans wore things like hats to keep their heads warm and goggles to protect their eyes and scarves to keep their necks warm and even special suits that were almost like diving suits, but none of them had to wear bright yellow vests or blinking lights or camelbacks.
Before we left, we stopped in the gift shop and there were a couple of big books that had pictures of all the airplanes and facts about them and Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn bought them for me which was really nice of them. They said that they wanted me to have something that I could take back and show other pegasuses and I promised that I would. But I was going to read through them, too, until I knew everything about all the airplanes that were in the museum.
I didn't want to leave the museum because I still hadn't seen everything but our train wasn't going to wait for us, and Miss Cherilyn didn't approve of Mister Salvatore's idea of cancelling our train tickets, renting a car, and driving back home overnight. Even when he told her that we were going to wind up in a rental car eventually so why not now. But we did have enough time to look at the strange spaceships that had flown around the moon and looked at it to make sure it was somewhere that humans could actually land and walk, and then others that had made more detailed maps of it. Even now there were more spaceships that were looking at the moon and learning new things about it and taking new pictures of it.
On our way back to the train station, Mister Salvatore said that there were crazy people who didn't think that we'd actually landed on the moon, that it had all been made up and all the movies and pictures had been fake, and even now that there were satellites taking pictures of the moon that showed footprints and tire tracks and the moon rovers still sitting where they'd been left. And I thought that was kind of dumb but he said that some people were dumb.
Our train was waiting for us when we got to the station, and after the conductor showed us to our rooms we went to the dining car for dinner.
Mister Salvatore said that it had been one of the funnest vacations he'd ever had and Miss Cherilyn said that was just because he'd gotten to fly airplane simulators, and he said that was true and it was much more entertaining than visiting photography museums and he really felt like he'd learned something on the trip. And he said that I ought to have a beer or something to celebrate so I knew that he was in a really good mood.
He said that we'd be getting off the train in South Bend, because that was the closest stop to Kalamazoo and there was no point in going all the way to Chicago and then back again. And I knew that South Bend was pretty close to Granger, so I kind of got it in my mind that maybe I could fly back from there instead of riding in a car, as long as they were willing to take my things back to Kalamazoo for me. I thought that they probably would, and I almost asked, but I decided that maybe I'd wait until tomorrow and see how I felt then. It would be nice to get a long flight in, especially since I'd spent a lot of time riding on trains, but it might be rude to go my own way before our trip was over. Especially since I was sure they'd put a lot of effort into finding the right trains to ride and places to go, and there had been a couple of nights where Mister Salvatore hadn't gotten any sleep at all.
I should have read my Bible, but instead we all stayed in the Viewliner car watching the scenery until the sun went down, and then we went back to our rooms for the night.