Saturday morning. The chaperones woke us up bright and early. Too early! 6:00 a.m. to be exact. Should have gone to bed when they told us last night. Eat breakfast with my new friends Andrea and Teri from Black River Electric Cooperative. In fact, every meal on this trip is provided or paid for (yes, Mike, by Cuivre River Electric Cooperative). After breakfast we packed our suitcases. Counted off. 1... 2... 3... 85! All present and accounted for. We got into our odd and even groups and loaded our bags into two buses and drove to the St. Louis airport. Before we got there, the chaperones asked how many of us had flown before. I was surprised to see that only about a quarter of us had never been on an airplane. As you know, I haven’t, and I didn’t really know what to expect.
We pulled up at Lambert International Airport and the Skycaps literally freaked out. Just as Mike and Lonnie said they would. We unloaded our luggage from the buses. It's amazing at just how many black and red bags we have. Which one is mine? Get in line... Mike gave us our tickets and we got in line for our security screening. I'm glad I checked everything! After an hour we made it through security and went to our gate. I met some more delegates as we talked and played cards.
We flew on Southwest Airlines, and the flight was amazing. The flight attendant cracked jokes and sang her welcomes and safety instructions to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies song. She enlisted three of our delegates to pass out snacks and really made a big deal about the 96 Missouri Youth Tour participants (that’s 85 delegates and 11 chaperones) on the plane. Like I said, I was nervous about flying on an airplane. But with so many fun games, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Why didn’t anyone tell me flying was like this?
Our plane landed about 3:40 p.m. in Baltimore. Yeah, that bothered me a bit, too. I thought we were going to Washington, D.C. It turns out that our final destination was only a 45-minute bus ride away. We loaded up in two deluxe tour buses and made our way to our hotel. As we arrived, we could see the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol rising above the city skyline. It was awesome!
We stopped at the Jefferson Memorial. At the shore of the Tidal Basin, the memorial featured a 19-foot bronze statue of our third president. What vision the man possessed! It was Jefferson who penned the Declaration of Independence and oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. He also promoted the importance of democracy, freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. It’s largely due to his vision and leadership that we have such a great nation today.
On the way back to the hotel, we visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. Located on the famous Cherry Tree walk, the memorial took us through a series of four sections, each representing one of FDR’s terms in office. With plenty of statues and cascading waterfalls, the site was perfect for photos.
It is amazing to see these great tributes to such great leaders for our country. It's hard to belive what challenges each of these great leaders had to face during his time as President of the United States of America. Walking through the FDR Memorial and reading about the issues he faced made each of us look at ourselves and what we deal with each day back in Missouri. We just found the electric lineman Lonnie was talking about. There are so many things to see... Glad I am with my friends!
There are about 1,500 other delegates from states all across America at our hotel. From the moment we got off the bus and entered the hotel lobby we met delegates from several states like Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas! We didn't even have time to set our bags down when everybody started introducing themselves and which state they represent. The cool thing about this is each state has a special Youth Tour pin that you can trade or collect! Our Missouri Youth Tour pin looks like our license plate with the letters MO YT. Very clever! This is going to be fun!
