Summer is back! And we are headed out on a ghost tour in Old Town Alexandria!

We have very exciting things planned for this summer. The boys got out Wednesday, and I took them to Sweet Frog. That is one of my favorite traditions with the boys. It’s one of the few things we can all agree to love.

Living in the D.C. area, the day trip options are endless, and Old Town Alexandria is more than worthy of its spot on our list of things to do when you’re in the area.

My friends Amy and Zoe joined me for this adventure. We set out to go on a ghost tour of Old Town Alexandria, and we decided to make a night of it.

This was actually my first ghost tour ever. I’ve never been on one before.

You know a friend truly knows me well when she starts out by volunteering to drive into Old Town for me. If you’ve never been, you should know that driving in the D.C. area is kind of a pain, or at least it is to me. There is so much traffic. But really the problem is I have absolutely ZERO sense of direction.

Even with GPS, I make it, but I struggle.

I’m notorious for getting lost, missing turns, etc. Amy driving put me in a fantastic mood right off the bat because I recognize my own weaknesses.

We found a $5 parking garage basically right across the street from the ghost tours.

Yes! In any big city, that is a win. It’s a $10 parking garage during the day. After 6 pm, it has a $5 fee cap.

Then Amy navigated us past the town hall, down a couple of blocks, to a Mexican restaurant called Don Taco. We opted to eat inside in the glorious air conditioning. It was hot and humid outside, as it usually is in Alexandria in June.

We all had the chips and salsa. Zoe and I ordered birria tacos, which were delicious. You only need a couple, as it looked like they took the crunchy taco shell and fried it. However, if you just drink water and don’t go too crazy with the chips, you can eat two tacos and leave the restaurant without that heavy “I just ate my weight in Mexican food” feeling.

OH!!! Also, Don Taco had each item marked as “GF” if it was gluten free, which I almost never find at Mexican restaurants, so I was thrilled and safe.

Amy ordered some kind of rice bowl, which did look much healthier than my tacos, but it must have been filling because she liked it but she couldn’t finish it. We all agreed we would definitely eat there again.

Our dinner was delicious and refreshing. Mexican food just never disappoints. The scenery of Old Town in general is so pleasant too. There is excellent window shopping and two-hundred-year old town houses line the streets in varieties of colors and decor.

This particular night was very crowded down town, which was kind of odd for a random Wednesday night in June.

The additional crowds gave the whole area a vibrant atmosphere.

Now some of you may be like my husband and turn your nose up at the idea of a “ghost tour,” but I’ve always wanted to do one.

I mean, what’s not to love? I get a tour around a town I have not explored thoroughly. The tour is focused on historical events of the town. My friends or family come with me, so we have a much needed night out. Plus, I have always enjoyed a good scary story based on real people.

Or you may be more like one of my sons who asked, “What is a ghost tour?”

A ghost tour is basically a walk through a city or town with a tour guide where they stop by locations where historic or tragic things happened. They tell you the story of what happened there, which is almost always a true story, and then they tell you what strange happenings or ghost sightings have happened there in the years that followed.

A ghost tour is a fun way to learn the history of any place.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and I read every one of those 13 Ghosts of Alabama books. Do you remember those? They used to have one for every southern state, though now they seem to be all out of print. If you liked those stories, you will enjoy a ghost tour. It’s like learning all the lore of a local place, in the form of campfire ghost stories based on real historical events.

I’m not a horror fan though. I can only handle ghost stories in small doses, or I will be hiding under my covers and making a mad dash from the bathroom back to my room at night.

Alexandria Ghosts has several different kinds of tours to choose from. We did the 8:00pm Phantoms of the Potomac.

It was getting towards dusk, truly the perfect time to do a ghost tour. If you want to feel more nervous, I would say do the 10pm version. I personally don’t go anywhere that late, much less on a ghost tour.

I was taking a photo of the pretty hydrangea bushes, when someone offered to take our picture for us! Who says there aren’t still nice people?

You know, we kept marveling at how many people were in town on a Wednesday night. It just occurred to me we were sandwiched between school ending and this big Army parade happening in D.C. this weekend. That may be one reason Old Town was especially busy this week.

After a quick restroom stop at Alexandria Town Hall, we joined our Ghost Tour group.

There are multiple tour groups meeting in the square, but this group meets by the stage in front of Town Hall.

We had an enjoyable tour guide named Janda. Janda told her stories with enthusiasm and good humor. We all liked Janda.

The first place Janda led us to was Gadsby’s Tavern, one of the most famous local spots.

It’s mostly famous because it is well known that President George Washington frequented that tavern, and it’s incredible that it is still open. There is even a museum on one side of it.

I have often wanted to go there but was never sure exactly where it was. Well, now I know where to find it. It is close to Town Hall. Plus, we got to learn about the stranger ghost who apparently stays at the tavern.

Already we were marking landmarks off my local bucket list.

Now one day I need to go back and go inside!

Our next stop was this coffee shop. Pretty much every single building you pass in Old Town is historical. This building has been many different things over the years. Zoe and Amy both remembered when it was a delightful candy store.

They say this place is haunted, though the ghost does not bother the people in the business. A tragic accidental death happened there, followed closely by her fiance’s suicide. It was a terribly sad story.

Meanwhile, the current shop is a must visit. We went in there at the end of the night. I had a delicious decaf iced vanilla latte, and I think Zoe had gelato. It was extra fun because we ran into a friend of theirs working the counter! Amy and Zoe are far more acquainted with Old Town than I am, so they even know people there.

Our next stop had yet another President George Washington association.

This is a church with a graveyard attached. In fact, in the back this church appears to run slap into another church. It’s all a little crowded back there. I do not recall much of the stories from this place, as I was so busy trying to get a few good photos here. I can be a little obsessive with my camera.

However, my camera did capture the connection this church boasts of to George Washington:

Now for the graveyard in back:

Also, Janda explained to us the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery, which I had not the slightest clue about. She said a graveyard belongs to a church. A cemetery does not.

Now if you are here for the spooky part, this would be your favorite part.

This is basically a Revolutionary War era graveyard from what I gathered, though it is very hard to read anything written on these weathered tombstones. I was strolling through these stones, taking photos, trying to figure out where Zoe went (she stopped to pet an orange tabby cat), and enjoying the refreshing cold spots.

You know how you can be in the lake, and there are areas that are just ice cold, and other areas that are normal? Well, that’s how this graveyard is. It was chock full of icy patches, and I loved it because it was eighty degrees, and we’d been outside for a while. Oh, and it was an almost sticky humid evening.

We all gathered near the caged grave in the corner to listen to our tour guide tell us all about the Unknown Revolutionary soldier. Zoe moved on from the orange tabby cat, and we all reformed as a group. Janda said that this is one of the most haunted places in the city, and that several things are often reported here.

She told us about people seeing faces in the church windows, visitors reporting “cold spots,” and this, that, and some other things. I don’t know because as she mentioned the cold spots, I was busy leaning into one to get cooled off! Then all I could think about was, “Wait. What?”

Wait a minute. Cold spots are weird? This place is FULL of them.

Well, I still can’t tell you whether it means anything or not, but if cold spots means spirits, this place is dancing with spirits.

I checked with my friends. It was crazy cold in there, right? You felt that? Nope, nope, nope. It was just me. Zoe was only thinking about her new cat friend, and Amy said it was hot just like everywhere else.

Huh. Well, what do ya think of that?

But that’s not all, this place boasts something that would interest any history buff.

The Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War soldier resides in this humble church yard.

You can read more about it on the American Legion’s page here. Our guide, Janda, knew all about it. She said when they were rebuilding the wall back there (or renovating a building or something), they found this full Revolutionary War skeleton. It is all very official. He is the Unknown Revolutionary.

There are other memorials throughout the country to the Revolutionary War’s unknown soldiers, but this is the tomb.

A Civil War soldier was murdered in this tunnel. Other people have also been murdered there, way back in the past. It used to have train tracks inside.

There was a couple on our tour who had their engagement photos done here. They said the photographer’s camera would only take black and white photos in the tunnel, but everywhere else the photos were color, but no matter how much light they added, the photos still came out black and white. Isn’t that weird?

This is a popular place to walk in the city. Most people do not know about its being haunted, or they pay it no attention.

The most famous Spite house in Alexandria is something like six inches slimmer than the one in the photo. This was my first time to see any of them in person, though I have read about them before. We were excited to see this too!

By the way, that skinny little home sells for over $800,000, which is why we have never lived in Old Town Alexandria.

Janda varies her tours. You can go on the same tour more than once and actually see different places. It was seriously crowded with other ghost and history tour groups that night, so we skipped some popular spots to see others like the tunnel that were more out of the way, just to have more space.

Janda was full of historical information, and our tour was peppered with it. The stories were so detailed. I took no notes, so you are getting the Cliffs notes to the Cliffs notes.

I don’t even know what the building above is, but check out the buck!! You couldn’t pick a better city in America to take a walking tour.

Our last stop on the tour was the Carlisle house. It used to be much larger than this when it was a hotel. In person, you can see the marks on the red brick building next to it where the buildings used to touch. The house used to extend far forward and out to the side.

The ghost stories for this house occurred outside and in the torn down hotel. This is also a museum that you can tour during open hours.

We didn’t ride the trolley, but I took a photo of it. I think it’s an important staple of Old Town, and if you do get to go tour Alexandria, definitely take a ride on the trolley. It goes up and down the length of King Street, and it is free to everyone.

After our tour, we headed back to the haunted coffee and gelato shop, as I mentioned before. I highly recommend it, and don’t worry about the haunted part. Most people don’t even know that’s the case. We just learned so much on our tour!

I should’ve photographed my refreshing iced latte. It was the perfect way to end the night. Instead, I’ll leave you with one last Old Town photo, and a link you can click to check out a ghost tour near you, or an Alexandria one like we went to. They do ghost tours like this everywhere!

Click here to book a ghost tour anywhere in the U.S.

Go here to learn more or book a ghost tour in Alexandria, Virginia.

They do tours in Washington, D.C. too.

Not into the spooky side of things? Alexandria and D.C. Ghost Tours also offer ones that are more centered on history and spy activity. You could check that out instead.

We had a blast, and I can’t wait for our next adventure. Many thanks to US Ghost Adventures for the tickets. This is an unsponsored review, and all opinions are my own.

Drop me a comment below, and tell me what you think!

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You might be thinking, “I didn’t even know the US Army has a museum.”

Just a few years ago, there was not one, but now I am happy to report that the US Army does in fact have its very own museum. It is very close to Washington D.C., on an Army base named Fort Belvoir. And it is a fun one too.

Also, I will tell you, Fort Benning has a similar one that is called the National Infantry Museum, but it does not encompass the entirety of the United States Army branch. In fact, many of the branches within the Army have their own museum.

The one in D.C. is unique because it is for the whole Army. Its official name is the National Museum of the United States Army.

This museum takes you through the history of the U.S. Army and shows a little of what the Army is doing today as well. It tells the story of the brave men and women who have fought for our freedom through displays, real artifacts, and a lot of interactive fun stuff too.

Actually, there is way more here than you would expect, so I am going to tell ya all about what to expect when you visit.

When to go:

This museum is open every single day of the year, except for Christmas day. You can’t beat that.

Their hours are 9am-5pm.

We went on September, 11th, a Monday, and it was not crowded at all. In fact, it was ghost town in there, and I was just hoping they won’t go out of business because it was an excellent museum, especially if you are traveling with wiggly kids like we were.

Tickets:

Tickets are for specific times, but they are free. You can reserve them online. It was not crowded though, so you could probably get tickets at the door just fine.

Go here to reserve your time slot and date.

They do have a donation box near the door.

Is the U.S. Army Museum kid friendly?

Yes, very. There is a whole wing of hands on activities for kids, and even the normal museum exhibits have some hands-on activities, like this Army puzzle.

There are a lot of neat things to look at too. I should write a post about taking kids to museums though, because it is different than browsing on your own. We have dragged our kids (usually against their will) to museums all across America, and we have had mostly positive experiences.

However, we also do our best to keep low expectations and move quickly. This is always a little harder on the parent who is more interested in that particular museum. In the art museums in D.C., I was the one too engrossed in the paintings to realize our children were not popular with the security guards. Ha! My husband was mortified and ready to run, and I was like, “What? They’re being so good, and this place is amazing.”

At the Army Museum, Navy Museum, basically any war-related museum, Alan is the one reading everything, and I am the one asking to go to the cafe with the kids after a while.

It’s a balance. It does save the day for the quicker parent to escort the kids through a quick browse of the museum. Then when their attention span is getting stretched past their capabilities and melt downs are beginning to happen, the quick parent needs to escort the kids to a snack, play, or gift shop area.

In full disclosure, I get annoyed with adults who go through museums too slowly too. I feel like all you need to do is see the highlights, read a few plaques, get the general idea, take some fun photos, and leave. All of that takes me a couple of hours tops.

D.C. art museums aside, I am always the one with the kids on the bench at the end, waiting for the rest of the family to join us. What can possibly take them that long? I’ll never understand.

In fact, I have some good photos of me and the boys waiting on the benches for Alan or relatives, but they will not let me post them on the internet, which is fair.

We found something for everyone at this museum, even our loudest whiner. Our little whiner enjoyed the virtual reality and the cafe and the Army puzzle.

Our Army officer enjoyed everything and was probably wishing he had come without us (ha!).

Military Kid Experience

Nowhere else will you get this, and I thought it was just fantastic. They had a military kid experience quiz on a large touchscreen t.v. at the front of the interactive wing of the museum.

All four of our kids enjoyed answering the questions. It was so extremely relatable to our nomadic lifestyle. At the end of each question in the quiz, it would give what percentage of participants had chosen each answer.

The Experimental Learning Center

The interactive area is to the right of the front doors when you first walk into the museum. It is called the Experimental Learning Center, and it is unlike anything I have ever seen in a museum. This was high tech learning and lots of it. I learned science concepts in there I knew nothing about.

They have all these training modules you can participate in, and you can select the easier or the harder versions. We worked on engineering, vision wavelengths, virus studies, and all sorts of scientific concepts. I learned a lot about night vision and infrared light at one of the modules. This was all impressive.

If you have older kids, or people who enjoy this type of thing in your group, you could easily spend an hour just in this area. We did. We are definitely hands-on-learning people.

If you have younger children, you will need to let them set your pace. It can be hard sometimes to let the younger ones set the pace for your tour, but the fact is that if you don’t, you will end up with an over-tired, frustrated, crying toddler on the floor, while you are questioning all of your life choices..

Meanwhile, I had such a good time trying everything out in the Experimental Learning Center, I either forgot to take photos or they were not allowed. So don’t skip the learning center!

Extras at this Museum:

Two activities here are extra, paid add-ons. They had a flight simulator and a virtual reality Army experience next to the main exhibits of the museum. I did the flight simulator with two of our boys, and Alan did the virtual reality with the other two.

I think they were $10 extra a piece, per person. That adds up quick, so that is why three of us did one of them and the other three of us did the other.

I did enjoy the flight simulator though. It reminded me of a Universal Studios simulator I got to go on back in high school, and I thought it was fun.

The Exhibits

The exhibits are authentic and fun to look at. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour through all of America’s wars and seeing the uniform of each different generation.

We actually ran out of time to see it all. If you do not want that to happen to you, schedule your ticket earlier in the day. My husband is in the Army, and he and one of my sons took f-o-r-e-v-e-r going through this. My teenage sons, my nine-year-old, and I ended up hanging out at the cafe eating chips and drinking sodas for a while. The nine-year-old ran out of patience to finish the whole museum, and we were all hungry.

In conclusion, touring this museum is a great way to spend an afternoon with your family.

When you go places and engage in the world together as a family you cannot help but have fun. And yes, it felt like delicious bonding time with our sons.

We watched movies, tried out all the interactive stuff, did puzzles, laughed together, and complained to each other. What more could you want in a day trip? I got some delightful family shots of us at the end. They don’t let me share those.

So we went in with some unwilling participants for sure. Some of our group wanted to stay home and play x-box. But we went anyway, and we had a great time.

I highly recommend this museum to anyone. You will learn so much and have fun doing it. Plus, it instills a nice sense of patriotism that you don’t get many places.

I firmly believe we learn more from these immersive experiences than we do from school history books.

And for the full story of when we took all the kids and some of their friends to a D.C. art museum, go here.

For more fun things to do in D.C., see this article.

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It’s been a month now since we moved into our new home in Virginia. It’s been 6 months since I blogged regularly, and there is so much I could tell you, I almost don’t know where to begin!

This move, our 10th as a military family, is complete. We are still fulfilling medical requirements and registering for things like school in the fall, but for the most part, we are finished.

It’s time to get back to blogging, which I can’t wait to do!

If you live nearby, and I haven’t paid you a visit yet, don’t worry, I will. And if you were afraid (or relieved-ha) I had given up writing completely, let me assure you that I haven’t.

I needed time off to focus on my family and this move, but at this point I’m really just sitting around playing the Jeopardy app on my phone, so… time to get back to work, eh?

Good-bye, Old House. Our Georgia friends will always hold a special place in our hearts.

End-of-year gifts from John David. Good-bye Pre-school.

Hello, moving boxes, you old rascal you.

Hello, RV and hotel stays.

Good-bye dear friends. Thank you for being there for us. I love this Georgia-shaped cutting board I received as a parting gift.

Hello again, moving truck. Better late than never… This is the tree-sized limb that almost fell on my rental car on moving day but missed it by a hair. Thank you, Lord, that it missed!! And thank you to my friends and neighbors who helped me clean up the debris.

Hello, new kitchen and hello to you too, you dear old boxes. Every single one of you showed up unharmed.

“Sometimes you gotta go where everybody knows your name…”

Returning to this place has been even more magical for us than I even dared hope.  The boys are running around with other boys all day long. The trampoline, which was mostly unused the past two years, is back in daily play. Bicycles are being ridden again. The sounds of children playing Nerf-war games echoes through my house.

Ahhhh yeah.

Alan has been on vacation for a month, so I feel like I am too. We are all on this restful, ridiculously long, staycation. I get to sleep as late as 8:30 in the morning some days, and going for walks on sidewalks in my own neighborhood is such a breath of fresh air.

But my favorite part is that everywhere I look there are friendly faces, both old friends and new friends too.

playroom photo wall

Moving to encouragement and familiarity, rather than to fresh new beginnings, was exactly what we needed. There’s a time for new adventures, but there’s also a time for returning home. We are lucky. We have many ‘homes.’

The v-tach is back.

This was especially timely as we had other worries. Right before we left Columbus, my heart began acting up again. It felt like a punch in the gut when my cardiology clinic called about my implanted monitor reading, saying that I needed to meet with an electrophysiologist about a possible ablation. (It’s a procedure where they go in through your leg with a catheter and burn off the cells of your heart that are causing the trouble.)

I’ve been trying to avoid having an ablation, but my heart keeps acting up. It’s all unsettling and tiring. What mom needs yet another thing to WORRY about???

Most days I’m fine. I’m not even a big worrier, but it’s there in the back of my mind. I pushed off the electrophysiology appointment. I’m going in July.

That’s why it’s that much sweeter that this move was to a place we hold dear, rather than to a new frontier, if you will. We have health issues to sort through and children to raise. It feels like the perfect time to be back in our beloved Virginia.

Thank you for welcoming us back.

Daniel, anxiously waiting at the door for his friends to arrive.

This summer we are memorizing Psalm 23 as a family. (Yes, even little John David). It felt fitting because it’s a short but mighty message, and God has taken such good care of us.

Psalm 23

SaveSave

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White House made of Lego bricks, Legoland, California

Happy 4th of July, friends!

There’s this one DIY/home decorating blog that I love, even though this blogger’s home looks the polar opposite of mine. Seriously. She has 4 kids, and yet she decorates in white.

And yet it looks beautiful. Her blog is Tidbits-Cam.com,  and if you want to be inspired by photos of sheer beauty (who doesn’t?), give her a visit.

Today on her blog, she is showcasing inspiring patriotic images, and I liked it so much I decided to do my own version of that post.

So I give you 25 photos of America the Beautiful.

Since we’ve lived all over the U.S. of A., we have seen first hand just how gorgeous our country is, and I wanted to share that here today.

All photos are my own, except for a few that Aunt Janet provided.

Lego Mount Rushmore, Legoland, California

Go ahead and get that song in your head. “Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountains majesties…”

near Yosemite, California

Half Dome, Yosemite, California

Yosemite, California

a day at the ballpark

White House, 2012

Alabama

Sea to shining sea…I don’t actually remember which ocean this is.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA

Look closely. Many of those rocks are actually sea lions laying on rocks. Monterey Bay, California

Alexandria, Virginia

Alexandria, Virginia

One of my all time favorites. Not only was he making snow angels, but you can see all the places he’d already walked, just like the way the Family Circus comics show foot-paths traveled by Billy. So cute!

Climbing trees are a bonafide part of childhood.

Poppies!

Carmel Valley, California, photo by Janet

Carmel Valley, California, photo by Janet

Monterey, California, photo by Janet

youth, photo by Amy Driscoll

on the road again

Grand Canyon, Arizona

Cliff Dwellers, Colorado

Disney World, Florida

Alabama

Billy Graham’s “The Cove” in North Carolina, photo credit The Cove

I count it one of my greatest blessing to have lived in so many different parts of this country. It truly is America, the beautiful.

Happy 4th of July to you all!

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