GrampCamp 2026 -- Part I partially authored by William

Gramp Camp 2026  Part 1

 It is both the fourth of July and time for  Gramp Camp  2026. As in other years, our now 12 year old grandson, William, is contributing to our travel journal.

He's telling his stories and adventures, and has a secondary theme going through it -- you'll see.   These italics indicate that I am the author of that particular section.   He gets the regular text.

A picture of  the authors of the 2026 GrampCamp blogs. 

 Hola Hola*!! Welcome to la casa de los abuelos de William*. So I am starting yearly language themes. SO for this years themes... drumroll please...............   SPANISH!!!! So for my goal this year i wanted to learn a new language on Duolingo (which I highly recommend). So I chose Spanish. Next year will be something different. I am still thinking about the next language.

On Friday,  July 3, I got up at 6 am (MST) to catch my flight from PHX to BWI. The flight attendants (FAs') were super nice. It was a very long flight so they were giving out a lot of snacks and drinks. The head FA gave me 3 Dr. Peppers!! They were definitely my favorite flight crew ever. 

Once I landed, we taxied to gate B10. When I deboarded the plane, my grandparents and I went to a restaurant that was before security I forgot what it was called though.    Then, we headed back to their house. The rest of the day we just hung out at their house. That was it for Viernes*.

The next day, we got up and had some breakfast. It was nothing I ever tasted before that's for sure, lol. Those Grandparents!  He had steel cut oatmeal with nuts and raisins in it.   Since then he's had Quick Cooking Quaker Oats.

After some time, we went to a Virginia Railway Express (VRE) station then headed to downtown DC. 

William shares my love of trains.  He was happy to score one of the second story single seats on the local commuter line (VRE)

We got a really good view of the Blue Angels flyover from the train.

We stayed for the fireworks. We had tickets for the mall but, the  line was muy* long so we couldn't get in. We waited ever so patiently for the fireworks.

It took so long that we waited till 11:59:58 PM for the 4th of July fireworks that were mostly on July 5.

The fireworks started late because DJT's speech was delayed, purportedly because of hot weather and a thunderstorm. Having said that, the fireworks were fantastic.  Whoever put that together and whoever did the projections on the Washington Monument deserves many kudos. 

After, we headed to the Virginia Railway Express station to go home. The train got there at 1:30 am... we had a 40 min train ride to the Woodbridge station and then we had a 15 min drive so we got home at around 2:30 am. I finally went to sleep at 2:45am.😭😭 (I woke up at 11:30am.)

The day I went to sleep, Domingo*, was a reset day and a fun day. We drove to DCA (Gravelly Point) to watch airplanes. It was very fun!!!! After, we headed home and that was it for Domingo*. 

On Lunes*, we got up early to eat then went to the Springfield metro station. We headed to the Bible Museum. It was really cool and yo* would go there again sometime. I shared my story with I am second. I hope my story goes on their website.

We started with a fabulous traveling exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the archeology and geography surrounding them.  And I didn't take one photograph!  Lots of other exhibits in the museum too.

William is an airplane and air travel aficionado, and its hard to impress him with an air museum, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum didn't do it for him.  His story about it is after the picture:  

Next, on Tuesday, Grandad and I went to the National Air and Space Museum. So first we got on the metro and went to Smithsonian station. We had to walk about half a mile. The staff were very rude when we arrived like if I could chose one emoji to describe them it would be this: 🙄. They called the cops on this guy who didn't do anything. They need to be fired. The food there was terrible both taste wise and stomach wise. They had Pepto Bismol in the gift shop... I am not tipping. Also y'all need to go onto Yelp or like Trip Advisor or something and give them 0 stars. My mom said I can't get Yelp so I can't do it ( so please grammy 🥺) It was that bad. Also my teacher works there but I couldn't find her. After that we went to the pool at the WWII memorial. It felt like the longest walk of my life. Mainly because that hot dog (from the food court) messed me up  No wonder they had Pepto Bismol. I can sue according to ChatGPT. 😌 Law suit coming up Smithsonian Air and Space Museum you're not gonna be having free admission for long. 😊

ok ok I am writing this mid Wednesday. but 🍑 I have one story. We went to Chick Fil-A la for breakfast. We went through the drive thru. Worst mistake of my LIFE. Lets just say they don't know how to order in a drive thru.  

Not sure this is blog-worthy, but it is William's travel story and we must defend ourselves: We, the 'they' in William's story,  had promised (bribed) William that if he got up early, which he gladly did, that we'd get him Chick-Fil-A for breakfast. That's how we found ourselves driving our Princess Prius, instead of Baby Beluga, into a Chick-Fil-A, drive-though at 6:30 AM.  Baby Beluga is too tall for a drive-thru and because we don't eat meat this was a rare experience for us.  William, on the other hand, is a Chick-Fil-A expert. 

Our lack of experience quickly became obvious.  We aren't familiar with the menu, and Bill -- like many of us who are old enough to pretend our hearing is still perfect -- kept asking for repetitions. 

This particular Chick-Fil-A was especially confusing. To place an order we had to drive all the way around the building to reach the ordering window.  Then, after ordering, we had to keep driving around around the building to pick up the food.  We couldn't stop making jokes about driving in circles.

By this point, William was rolling his eyes so hard they were practically leaving his head. He was probably just hungry, or maybe he had concluded that he was trapped in a little car with two crazy grandparents who were both literally and metaphorically going in circles.

Next, we headed to an open house (kinda) I mean, it was alright.... (we were looking at a condo on the beach to maybe purchase) the view was nice but the walls and door (it was hot pink) WERE U-G-L-Y!! The walls were dark teal. IT LITERALLY TOOK FOREVERRRR.

We didn't think it was that ugly and give kudos to William for being patient and polite for a long time. Kitchen is great and even on a cloudy, rainy day, the view is great.

The  O street Museum and Planet Word, both in Washington, DC. were fabulous places to wrap up Part I of GrampCamp 2026:

The O Street Museum is a series of 5 old Washington, DC mansions connected and intertwined in ways that you'll never figure out from the inside.

It has some 60 hidden doors to find your way from one themed room to another or to a hallway of more rooms.  We considered ourselves successful when we found about 20 of them.   And everything in it is for sale,  so in some sense it is a giant thrift store with an interesting, mostly elegant twist.  There's a bar for snacks, a chef who cooks meals, and rooms are hotel rooms if you are so inclined. 

William moved fast through the secret doors to be sure he wasn't leaving hints behind.  Bill held this one long enough for a snapshot.

The requisite Halloween room. 

Bill is in the Beatles Room.  There was also a Rosa Parks room, an Elvis room, a room decorated for any holiday you can think of, and a secret wine cellar, and a secret garden room. And more.

Another secret door

 Planet Word is an interactive place with a mission statement:  " to inspire and review a love of words, language and reading in people of all ages."

First stop:  Learning a few Icelandic words.  Wow! what an ancient and complicated language! 

After saying bless bless (bye bye) to the globe with all its languages, we moved to the origins of words in English.  Are they borrowed from German, French, Arabic, Spanish, Latin, Greek, or do they sound like the noise they describe or some other nifty thing?  

And there's so much more:  There's poetry, how to construct messages in song, and what language tricks work there, advertisements and lots more.   We watched children perform karaoke and stepped into a photo booth that presented words and photographed us making appropriate expressions to give face to the meanings.  William even recorded a story for their story library, bought and read a book, even while on his end to end metro ride, and we loved the place.  

These two places were fun, but the favorite place was definitely the O street mansion.

To finish the last DC day William requested a ride along the whole  length of one of the Metro lines, so we did that.  Blue line to Largo and back to Springfield/Franconia. Interesting to see the scenery change even in that small amount of time and real estate.    Bill and I have never done that before. 

The long escalator at the Dupont Circle station. 

Our favorite quote from William:  "I'll never get tired of GrampCamp; I'll always make time for it."  We're off to Iceland for GrampCamp2026 Part II.

WOYAYA

 Also if you want to see translations of the Spanish words, scroll down.

*TRANSLATIONS

 Hola Hola = Hello hello

la casa de los abuelos de William = William's grandparent's house

Viernes = Friday

muy = very 

Domingo = Sunday

lunes = monday

yo = I