Day 7: Baltimore, MD to Raleigh, NC - January 3, 2009

With Debby rounding the corner on her illness and starting to feel better, of course it was time for Ian to catch it from her. It didn't help that today was our longest trip yet--seven hours and thirty-five minutes according to Google, which by now we knew of course meant much longer than that in reality. Nevertheless, we forged ahead and resolved to make the best of things.

Following the advice of both Roadside America and The Great American Road Trip, we began our day by visiting Baltimore's Great Blacks in Wax Museum, located on Route 1 in a, uh...lovely part of town. (The shot below is from around the corner.)

The Blacks in Wax are a curious bunch, notable almost as much for who is not included as who is. (No Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, or Al Sharpton, for example, nor Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin, or Oprah Winfrey--but the entire executive staff of FUBU was there.) Debby couldn't help but notice the gender politics in play; the vast majority of figures were male and there was even one exhibit featuring members of an organization called 100 Black Men of America, whereas Rosa Parks only merited inclusion in a small corner devoted to "women leaders of the civil rights movement" or something similar. The Blacks in Wax museum was most memorable, however, for its absolutely gruesome depiction of the horrors of the slave trade and lynching. While obviously presented with an agenda, the exhibits nevertheless reminded us how much we sanitize our experience of these shameful parts of our country's history. For all of its idiosyncrasies, the museum is extraordinarily successful, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to a rather morbid part of Baltimore and even provoking an offer from the city to move the collection downtown to the posh Inner Harbor area. (The museum directors refused, fearing that they would need to tone down the content in order to survive.)

Our next stop, after a quick drive-by of DC through which the actual path of Route 1 was far less than clear (our four sources, Wikipedia, Google, AAA, and GART, told us four different things), provided a stark contrast to the Blacks in Wax. The George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, VA, is a stunning proclamation of wealth and privilege. The memorial itself stands atop a hill overlooking the city and the nation's capital and is itself nine floors in height; inside, what may be the biggest bronze statue I've ever seen towers over the visitors.

The temple seems to function as an active space, with a huge theater and several decked-out meeting rooms in the downstairs portion alone. Small galleries depict the faces of past local grandmasters, white men all, while a museum below tells the story of Freemasonry in America. (Apparently Harry Truman was a grandmaster in St. Louis. Who knew?)

After we had some tasty chili in Old Town Alexandria (which is quite beautiful) and were greeted by this wonderful creation upon our exit,

we continued our "black and white" theme with a stop by Washington's Mount Vernon Estate. While without a doubt the most mainstream tourist attraction we had yet visited, I also found it the least interesting. Determined to recoup value for our $15 admission fee, we spent most of our time on the grounds waiting in an endless line to enter the mansion itself, while three young ladies from Oklahoma behind us waxed poetic about how Washington "was a real leader, who loved people, loved his country, loved the Lord -- what a MAN!" The estate itself was no Versailles, though as Debby pointed out to me, we should probably be thankful for that. There was, however, a very nice view of the Potomac from the front grounds.

Mount Vernon also features a recently opened "education center" with a ton of flashy exhibits about George Washington's life. Not only were there several computer-assisted life-size recreations of Washington at different ages, there was even a separate exhibit about the making of the models.

Not to mention, a completely gratuitous hologram of Washington's face looking at you regardless of from which angle you choose to stare at it. The education center has a huge stone wall on the inside with the names of contributors to its capital campaign engraved on it; many of the usual suspects were in evidence. (Ford Motor Company Foundation was a principal supporter.) I couldn't help but think of the Blacks in Wax Museum, which as chronicled in The Great American Road Trip has faced myriad financial difficulties through the years despite fulfilling an obvious niche for its visitors. To be sure, preserving our first president's home has obvious value to society; but this education center seemed, to me at least, not to add anything new to the conversation. Washington's wax (well, more like plastic) figurines and the house to put them in cost 85 million dollars; the Blacks in Wax pulled in revenues of barely $800,000 in 2007 (pdf). It's hard not to think about these things when reading about how Washington's "enslaved gardeners" (not slaves, mind you, they were gardeners who happened not to be free) received a few days off and a new blanket for their straw bunkbed every Christmas.

Too much time waiting in line at Mount Vernon meant that we didn't make it to the Marine Corps Museum before it closed at 5, but we were able to take this photo of the imposing exterior at sunset.

On the way there, we stopped momentarily to get me some new gardening equipment:

After a quick stop in Richmond to view the Giant Milk Bottles of the old Richland Dairy,

and seeing this crazy van in the parking lot across the street,

we had to book it to Raleigh. By this point I was hungry, exhausted, and full of mucus, so Debby heroically nursed the Mossmobile through the rest of Virginia and into North Carolina. We ate some fine southern cooking at (ahem) Pizzeria Uno and finally deposited our listless bodies at the La Quinta at Crabtree just past 12:30am, after having been on the road for 15 hours, suddenly thankful for the relatively attraction-free South Carolina and Georgia roadscapes ahead.

Route for the day:

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