Yesterday Ann returned from Washington DC after a long weekend there. She took advantage of the quasi-holiday that’s Columbus Day to go on a quasi-school trip; four days and three nights (there was no school last Friday because of parent-teacher conferences).

Quasi because it wasn’t actually a school function, or even a school club trip, but organized by a company that makes money from the trips, with some teachers participating as chaperons, not as teacher-chaperons. Three busloads of kids from a number of junior high schools around here went. It was a crowded scene at the parking lot where they boarded the buses.

In some ways, the moment of departure is the best part of any trip.

She says it was a good trip. Except that she had a camera-phone mishap and deleted a lot of her pictures before she could get home. All I could tell her was that the important thing was being there, not taking the pictures. As often as I take pictures myself these days, I believe that. I’ve been plenty of places without a camera, and even now leave it behind when I don’t want to mess with it.

Among other things, she saw various memorials, such as those honoring Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR, MLK, and the U.S. soldiers of WWII, Korea and Vietnam; visited Ford’s Theatre and the Peterson House, Arlington National Cemetery, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Newseum, Mount Vernon and the National Cathedral; went on a dinner cruise on the Potomac; and swam at the Spring Hill Recreation Center in Fairfax County. Those kids were busy. Sounds like good tourist value for the money to me.

And some of her pictures survived.

That’s a better shot than I ever got of the Lincoln Memorial.