SC to DC to AC AtLast!

UPDATE: I am now home with adequate facilities to fix the myriad errors in the post below. However, I'm leaving the mess as is. First, to demonstrate how the clumsy web TV interface combined with rotten navigation and a keyboard as sticky as a toddler's cheek to create a horrific situation that certainly earns me your pity and a pat on the head. Second, I hope you'll see how much editing I do on your behalf, even to crank out posts at my usual level of error-riddling.

AFter SC, I spentabout two days in Washington D.C., and speedsighted many historic spots under the relentless blaze of the sun. I had underestimated the brigades of matching-shirted young miscreants on summer group trips that would be mocking and sweeating in competition with me at every venue. Many of the monuments were impressive in concept and stonework, but in gneral, the grassy verges bordering such sites as the Vietnam Memorial and surrounding the reflecting pool were raggedly chewed weed islands floating in seas of barren dirt. The Smithsonians were hodge-podge, though Air & Space was cool and the Nat'l Art Gallery notable in both its collection and its sparse attendance. The Lincoln Memorial could mist up anyone, but time and again, the wide vistas and medians of uneven dandelions and drifting brown dust made me wish Frederick Law Olmstead were around today to give our capital the landscaping it deserves.

Leaving D.C. this morning, we headed to Atlantic City to finish the week with decadence. On the way through Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersy, I saw a few items of note. I saw a graveyard with a huge number of heart-shaped headstones in pink granite to the extent it looked like it had become a local fad. I saw a trailer park being advertised in a way I'd never seen before, as a "picnic grove community." And I saw the worst name for a 55+ retirement development ever: Cranberry Run.

Having learned more about our nation through exhibits and mileage, having arrived safely at Bally's where a foully designed web TV device with a sticky keyboard and lousy controller just barely allows me to check in briefly, I'm going to wish you all well and hit the tables! My America in her grandeur and squalor. How I love her.