Day 4, Monday:
We woke up in Baltimore in a suite. We took advantage of the normal showers again. My 12 year old didn't read the labels closely enough and he showered with lotion instead of shower gel. Pretty funny. He's never going to live that one down!
No liberty bell waffles at this hotel, so we sat down at a hotel restaurant. Ended up getting the best omelettes and french toast.
After breakfast, we headed to pick up the truck, (which is a little cumbersome in the city as it is labeled as oversized and barely fits into the parking garages) and we headed over to the National Aquarium. We all enjoyed ourselves. I think that the Tennessee aquarium in Chattanooga was nicer, but this was a nice one too. The kids sure did like it.
Originally, I had planned on visiting the large ships next to the aquarium; the USS Constellation. But, none of the kids were interested. I think their feet were tired.
So, we loaded back into the truck and headed out to Fort McHenry. We ended up tailgating again for dinner. Cold pop from the cooler and cold leftover pizza from the night before served as our dinner. It seemed perfect actually.
We really enjoyed the fort. Santa had put National Parks Passports in the kids' stockings for Christmas, so the kids were now in the spirit of getting their books stamped. The first was the Liberty Bell and now they felt like pros finding the stamp station and stamping their own books. We watched the video in the visitors center after getting our books stamped, then the ranger asked us to participate in a flag ceremony. It wasn't anything official, but it gave us a great educational experience while being fun for the kids. Love our National Parks!
Then we explored the fort.
I heard my 10 year old explain to his 6 year old sister while I took this picture, "Just imagine yourself being here in this fort while it's being attacked....."
We heard back from the repair man and he told us the camper would be ready for us first thing tomorrow morning. Great! It was 4 hours away, so again....we drove late in the evening and pulled into a hotel after 10 pm.
It was during this portion of the trip that our confidence had started to fade. We started to second guess if we should continue on the trip. Were we making good choices? Was the camper actually road worthy? What if we got stuck again? Truth be told, I think we were just tired and had sticker shock. We were driving with young kids every night until 10 pm for the fourth night in a row. Between the hotels and camper repair, we had spent 2/3 of our saved vacation money on the first 4 days of the trip. The kids heard us discussing our options and their disappointment about possibly going home was palpable. You could have heard a pin drop in the truck. We didn't know what to do. We actually asked friends and our parents what they would suggest.
Every single person pushed us to finish off the trip. I think we just needed the encouragement. We needed someone to say, "Hey, yeah parts of this sucked, but you can do it and still have a great time. Make those memories. It will all work out."
We decided to push on and finish as much of the trip as possible. The kids knew the situation and although we were all looking forward to every aspect of the trip; we realized it was now impossible to complete everything we had originally planned. As a family we decided to eliminate the DC/Gettysburg portion of our agenda.
We headed back to the camper area for our last hotel stay.
