We recently returned from Branson, Missouri, where we attended some of the entertainment that city offers. We have been there several times now, all being on organized bus tours. By doing so we turn the planning for tickets, rooms, and meals over to experienced travel companies. All we need to do is write a check.
So it was that we saw Daniel O’Donnell’s show again, I believe for the fourth time. His is a show where people come away feeling good about themselves, and such a gentleman he is to boot. After the show he stood for a long line of mostly ladies wanting to have their picture taken with him. Another great show, a biblical one, took place at the Sight and Sound Theater. The title this year was “David.” Previously, we’ve seen “The Temptation of Christ,” and “Noah.” To describe the staging for these productions is beyond my descriptive powers since you have to see it in person to appreciate it.
All the other shows made for worthwhile viewing, too. The Haygoods, The Presleys, Dolly Parton’s horse show, an in-the-round show called “Where Jesus Walked,” and a gospel quartet show. How many more times we’ll go is unknown. The average age of the riders on our bus was 77 years, and we’re well beyond that now. We will have our memories, though.
We usually write some thoughts on paper for major events like these bus tours and came across one I wrote twenty years ago. It documents a trip titled “Northeast Fall Foliage Tour - 2005.” It was enjoyable to sit and read through and reminisce about the sights and feelings we encountered on this tour. Here is that somewhat edited piece.
We arrived home from an 18 day bus tour to the northeast on Thursday, October 13, 2005, after traveling through twenty states, the District of Columbia, and one Canadian province, riding 5,020 miles, and burning 800 gallons of diesel fuel. The itinerary let us visit many sites we had never visited before and can now be satisfied for doing so.
Our experienced driver drove through traffic in major cities with a confident air and took us to such places as New York City, Washington, D. C., Boston, and Philadelphia. As I look back on meaningful highlights and impressions, the history found in them mattered most to me. How many times in a person’s life has he heard of Monticello, Williamsburg, Mount Vernon, Washington, D. C., the Smithsonian Institute, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Fanueil Hall, Ellis Island, Plymouth Rock, Old Ironsides, the Old North Church, Ford’s Theater, the White House, the U. S, Capitol, and Arlington National Cemetery? We walked in those places.
If we have read once, we have read many times the names of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. We walked in their footsteps.
Hundreds of thousands of lives have been taken on battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. We had the opportunity to contemplate their sacrifice at the face of their memorials.
The most profound experience for me was the tour of the Gettysburg Battlefield. I remembered studying how men had slaughtered each other on that plain in Pennsylvania for a cause we named the Civil War. At the heavily contested summit of Little Round Top, I gathered three acorns fallen from their mothering tree. Somehow it seemed significant for me to pick them up and bring home. That tree might’ve been a “witness tree” from which its roots found nourishment through the blood spilled there and soaked into the ground.
In the vicinity of the battlefield could be seen a contemporary site of some importance. President Eisenhower’s retirement farm was adjacent to the battlefield. And we saw other places of this ilk: President Coolidge’s birthplace and museum in Vermont, President Kennedy’s library in Boston, and a stepping stone on the shore called Plymouth Rock.
Mild excitement occurred while I stood high in the Washington Monument looking toward the adjacent White House. The reason for men with rifles standing on the roofs of nearby buildings soon became evident. A flight of three helicopters appeared headed toward the landing pad on the lawn, then two lifted away while the third one set down. A man and a woman stepped from the craft and started walking toward the building where a small crowd welcomed them. It was President and Mrs. Bush.
We walked on the campus of Harvard University and saw among other buildings its library, the third largest in the country with 3.5 million volumes. Only the Library of Congress and New York City’s are larger. I regretted not being able to step inside.
We observed re-enactors in period costume on the board the Mayflower, in Plymouth Village, and in Colonial Williamsburg. There in Williamsburg we watched men using an old style printing press while making pamphlets. They told us there was freedom of the press at the time and you could print what you wanted to.
The governor in Williamsburg, representing the king of England, hung an implicit threat consisting of hundreds of muskets and swords on the ceiling and walls of the entry in his mansion. Our history now illustrates that this mere threat of arms could not prevail against the written word.
That concluded my thoughts of 20 years ago. We’ve seen all the states now, mostly by bus tour, except for Delaware, and I don’t think I make it there. Sometimes we run into folks we’ve traveled with before. On this trip, Bob and Mary Gruman from Lucca traveled, too. The last we’d seen them was on a Texas trip. We stood together for a picture of us standing on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.
