Visiting Ben & Alyse in Richmond ~ The BS Report

With a couple weeks between Sarah's classes, we decided to take a trip the last week in May to visit Ben and Alyse before they moved and see some of the sites in the area. Our adventure started well before we landed in DC, as our plane circled the Denver airport for half an hour, waiting for the storm to pass before the pilot decided to fly down and land in Colorado Springs, where we refueled and waited three hours before finally arriving in Denver. During those three long hours on the plane, I wondered to myself why we were flying to Washington DC through Denver, as it is not really in a direct path from Oklahoma. I guess that's just the nature of flying Frontier, where it seems like every connection is in Denver, and we had a free flight voucher for me from Christmas when they overbooked our flight and I offered to stay behind.

Once we got off the plane, we couldn't help but notice a line that seemed to go on forever (or at least a hundred yards, which seems like forever in an airport). We then discovered what the line was for (Customer Service) and hoped that our flight wasn't cancelled and that we didn't miss it. Luckily for us, they had just started boarding when we got to the gate. Unluckily for Ben, who was going to drive to DC to pick us up, our flight had been delayed from arriving in DC at 10pm to 12:30am (even though we didn't eventually arrive until 1am). While we were waiting for a crew member to get to the plane, I shared this news with Ben via text. A conversation ensued in which many alternatives were suggested in place of Ben driving to DC so late (renting a car for our whole trip, getting a hotel/sleeping in the train station and taking the train the following morning). The crew member arrived and a flight attendant asked me if my phone was in airplane mode. Shortly thereafter my phone was in airplane mode and we took off, not knowing what had been/would be decided in regards to how we would get to Richmond. Once we landed, I turned my phone back on to find a text from Ben, saying that he was waiting in the parking lot at the airport and to let us know when he had arrived. He then drove us back to Richmond, where we arrived at 3:30am. I'm incredibly grateful for a brother who was willing to go to such great lengths to help us out (even if he never reads this, because it is too long for him already).

After getting some sleep, the next day we went to see some of the sights around Richmond. We went to Belle Isle and walked around, enjoying the scenery, including a neat suspension bridge.

From there we went to Hollywood Cemetery, the resting place of two Presidents of the United States (James Monroe and John Tyler),

the only President of the Confederate States of America (Jefferson Davis), and a general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War (George Pickett).

This ninety-foot tall pyramid is a monument to the Confederate soldiers killed in the Civil War, built in 1869. The crane used to construct it wasn't tall enough to put the capstone on the top, and a sailor who was serving time in the local jail volunteered to climb the pyramid and put the capstone on the top. He did just that and was granted his freedom for this act.

We then went to the Museum of the Confederacy and the Confederate White House (picture below). It was interesting to me to hear the confederate view of the Civil War and how the issue they were fighting for was states' rights with a limited federal government.

Right across the street from the Confederate White House is the Medical College of Virginia and its hospitals, so Ben gave us a tour and we took the classic med student picture by Hippocrates. We then drove down Monument Avenue, where there are statues about every quarter mile for different individuals. Rather than taking pictures by all of them, we just got a picture by Robert E. Lee (Well, we actually got like twenty pictures by the Robert E. Lee statue because Ben liked to take lots of pictures with my new camera., but I'll spare you having to see all of them)

By this time, Alyse was done with school, so she met up with us and we went to the Museum of Fine Arts together. Once we were done, we took some pictures together outside to share our big news - in case you didn't already know, Sarah is pregnant!

Can't have a photo shoot with the Brockbank boys without them trying to be taller than each other.

We also visited the Virginia capitol building, which used to be the smallest working state capitol until an underground addition was added a few years ago. This addition included a statue of Thomas Jefferson, who designed the capitol. Also in the capitol is the only statue of George Washington that was sculpted during his lifetime. There are copies of this statue in the U.S. Capitol as well as at Mount Vernon, among other places. The statue is in the center of the rotunda, surrounded by busts of the seven other U.S Presidents who were born in Virginia.