Maryland Trip Days 3 & 4

These were some of our favorite places to visit. On our third full day in Maryland we took a trip to Mount Vernon--George Washington's Estate. One amazing thing was how cool it was inside the house. It felt like they had air conditioning even though there wasn't any. We wished our house had been designed to stay cool like that house. It was a beautiful, peaceful place. We wouldn't mind taking up residence there.

Here is the main house at Mount Vernon. It's really nice inside, too.

This is the view from the back porch of the main house overlooking the Potomac.

The next day we went to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. This was an amazing place to be. The Liberty Bell was pretty cool to see, but the best part was this room.

This is where the founding fathers hammered out the details of the Constitution. Here they fought, argued, prayed, and compromised to finally bring the states together to form a nation. There's a reason that our constitution has been imitated by so many countries: it is definitely an inspired document. It was a humbling experience to look through these buildings and realize what great things happened there.

After we finished looking around the Independence Hall neighborhood, we decided to go farther into Pennsylvania to find some Amish villages. We went through the main road of Intercourse and Bird-In-Hand, but we got there kind of late when most of the shops were just about ready to close. We don't quite understand the principle that they're trying to uphold by the way they live. They can't drive cars, but they can ride in them if someone else is driving. They can use gas engines to cut their hay, but they have to pull the cutter with a team of horses. On a side note, they do have very beautiful horses. Every horse we saw looked like it could win a competition.

Anyway, those were a couple more days of our vacation. More to come soon (depending on your definition of "soon").