Mt. Vernon

I made the pilgrimage here ~ to Mount Vernon. When you actually get here, it feels obligatory that every full blooded American should visit this place at least once in their lifetime.

My pictures do it some justice, but walking the grounds on George Washington’s estate is just something that can’t be explain. It’s like we belong here, were welcomed here, but only visiting. It also could be a southern thing, like southern hospitality.

It was super chilly today, 27 degrees, with the wind chill factor putting the temperature at about 15 degrees. It also rained a little.

We took a tour of Washington’s Mansion. We couldn’t take pictures inside the house, but I can describe it as colonial, whatever that means. The most intriguing part of the house was his desk. I can only imagine George Washington thinking about how to create a nation by implementing his vision and infrastructure and oh yeah, come up with a draft of the U.S. Constitution.

After the short tour of the house, we went to his backyard where it has a wonderful view of the Patomac River. To my knowledge, this river separates Washington D.C. and Virginia.

Also outside of his house were these small buildings. There were at least a dozen of them. Each of these buildings were like specialized shops. Example would be one building was to cut and hold all the wood, another building was to make furniture, etc. George Washington assigned an overseer to run his day to day operations. This overseer would assign duties to individuals. Of course as you know, George Washington had lots of slaves who did a lot of the labor.

Further down a dirt road was his grave. Sort of awesome! After his grave we went up the dirt road to the museum. The most interesting part of the museum was an exhibit providing information about George Washington’s distillery. According to the piece, it said that after his presidency, George Washington started making whiskey and it became quite successful. So successful in fact, that he was the #1 whiskey maker in the country at that time.

My time at Mount Vernon was awesome, wouldn’t trade this experience for the world.