March was a busy time for Flat Stanley. Anna took a trip to Virginia and Alabama, with a stop over in Atlanta. In the middle of the month we took Stanley to Philadelphia, and then New London Connecticut, then at the end of the month to Washington DC.

We went down to Philadelphia for the flower show and to just tour the city. The flower show is held in the Philadelphia convention center every year in March. It's the perfect way to welcome spring, to go and see all the flowers that people have been growing all winter. The picture on the right is from the flower show, the house is fake in it, it's just a backdrop for the flowers in the foreground of the picture.

When you take a picture of it and look at it you would think you were in front of somebodies house. The show featured all the usual spring flowers, lots of rose arrangements, and many many landscape displays such as this one.

Of course, each of these displays also had the brochure for the company that did it, hoping that they would be able to get some business out of it. It's still hard to believe that this entire scene was built a week or so before we took the picture on a concrete floor.

Besides the flower show, we took Stanley to learn something about the country. He went over to Constitution Hall, where in 1776 the constitution was first drawn up. We learned about how much work it was to come up with the document we all hold so dear to us now. It's also the same hall the Declaration of Independence was made in, it seems that to raise money back then they would rent the hall out for a few dollars so the political groups would have a place to hold their meetings.

Everybody has seen this room in a painting or a picture at one time or another. This is the actual room Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and all the others did their work in to get this country started. The furniture has been replaced several times, and they had to put in a new floor because of the wear and tear on the old floor, but this is where it all started.

Just across the street is the Liberty Bell, again something everybody has seen at one time or another either in person or in a painting or a picture, You know they don't ring it any more because it is cracked. You can easily see the crack in this picture of the bell. The bell was used to announce meetings, and it was also used to call people to come down when they had news to share (there wasn't any TV or radio in 1776). The bell was rung for a very long time when the Declaration was first read to the people in Philadelphia, they wanted to make sure that everybody came down to hear it. It's interesting, to think about what it would have meant back then, the start of the United States and the beginning of the fight to break away from England.

Of course, Stanley was part of all this, in fact, that looks like him on the back of the Liberty Bell over there on the right.

Actually, the park rangers were very nice about it, they just smiled when he climbed up on the big Liberty Bell and insisted we take his picture.

The Bell is in a building they will soon be tearing down and replacing with another building, they want to have the Liberty Bell in a new home so even more people can come and see it by January, 2000.

You can not go to Philadelphia and not learn something about Ben Franklin. Anna went to the University of Pennsylvania when she went to college, the school was started by Franklin over 200 years ago. Of course, there are statues and sculptures of him all over the city, including one very famous one on the sidewalks at the University. The University is very quiet during the flower show, they have their spring break and there are not any students around.

Yes, that's Stanley talking to Ben Franklin.

While we were there we stayed in a hotel on the Ben Franklin Parkway, the last picture from Philadelphia is the view we had from our balcony as you looked towards the art museum in the back left side of the photo. While the flower show is a great way to welcome in spring, this weekend was also the one that the snowstorm was coming up the coast, so we had to cut our trip a few hours short to get out before the storm hit.

There was a weird snowstorm when we got back from Philadelphia, it was so bad that we had to open a shelter for the people who didn't have any electricity. Not a lot of people came, but it was good to know they had a place to stay if they needed it. We had eight inches of very heavy wet snow, it caused a lot of trees to come down and break lots of wires. No electricity meant many people didn't have any heat or hot water, and in the smaller towns it also meant you didn't have any water, as you couldn't pump it from the well. This picture shows the outside of the shelter at a school in Westport, when the fire department came by for some dinner.

In the middle of the month I had a Red Cross conference in New London, Connecticut, and Stanley came with me for the two days. Not the best photo taking opportunities, the weather wasn't that great.

The last weekend of the month Stanley came with Anna and I to Washington DC for a mini vacation weekend. That was a fun trip, it started out with the flight down, which was in a very small plane (21 passenger) and was propeller driven. We were there for Saturday and Sunday, visited some museums, some of the other sites there, and Arlington, VA. When we made the arrangements to go we were hoping it would be in the middle of the Cherry Blossoms coming into bloom, but the snow I mentioned above had put the blossom time back several weeks, so we missed it.

Washington is a fascinating place for both kids and adults, there is so much to see and do there that you can't possibly ever run out of things to do. Stanley had a good time too, over there on the left he is looking at the notebook Thomas Edison kept all of his notes in while he was working on the light bulb. They had a display of all the ones that he tried before he got it right. It amazes me to this day they have his original books that he kept the records in.

While we were there we visited the Art Museum, a couple of the Science ones, and some of the smaller ones. Because so many people came down to see the Cherry Blossoms it was very crowded, so some of the most popular sites had waiting lines that were an hour to two hours long. We skipped any of those, figuring we could always go back some other weekend when it was not as crowded.

The Washington Monument was undergoing it's facelift, they had the entire structure wrapped in clear plastic to hide the scaffolding under it. They were cleaning it and repairing any damage to the bricks they found. It was strange, at night they would light it from inside the plastic so it glowed. There was also a kite festival there, with hundreds of people flying kites. Here is a picture of the monument all wrapped up while they were working on it.

And no, it isn't that crooked, the picture was not taken at a perfect angle.

The monument will stay wrapped up until the celebration of July 4^th this year. That should be a fun time in Washington as it happens on a weekend this year.

If you have been to Washington you know that the Capital, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln memorial all pretty much line up in a straight row. There is a pool of water between the Washington memorial and the Lincoln memorial, and there is grass park between the Capital building and the Washington monument.

In the picture on the left you can see the Washington monument in the middle of the picture. If you look very closely at the base (bottom) of it on the right hand side you can see the capital building, where the House of Representatives and Senate meet. In front of the monument is the reflecting pool, a shallow pool of water that reflects the image of the monument into it. If you remember, it was in the pool that three beavers set up a home this spring and started chopping down the cherry trees as they tried to damn up the reflecting pool.

At the bottom of the picture is Stanley, it was a cloudy day so he came out a bit brighter then we would have liked, but if he was any darker then you wouldn't be able to see the rest of it in the back.

Stanley is actually sitting on the steps at the top of the Lincoln Memorial. When I was 12 years old the 7^th grade class I was in took a trip to Washington, the Lincoln Memorial really impressed me then, and I still try to visit it every time I get to Washington.

It actually looked strange to see all the school groups and their busses, it brought back many memories of my trip there.