P is for Presidents Park

During the recent spring vacation, Carolyn and I took the kids up to Williamsburg, Virginia. Instead of visiting the area's major attractions - historic Colonial Williamsburg or the theme park, Busch Gardens, we spent most of the time vegetating in our hotel room with hours of Cartoon Network (we don't have cable at home) punctuated occasionally with swims in the indoor pool, afternoon naps and fastfood meals. When home is also your workplace, vacations are when you don't do anything...

[Aside: Cartoon Network is awesome. It's no longer just the Dexter's Lab channel as it now has animation in a variety of genre and tastes. Our favorite cartoons? Carolyn and I really like Teen Titans; Ethan is enthralled with the Star Wars shorts and Stuart, well, let's just say that his picture in the dictionary next to couch potato. When he's watching CN, his response to every question is, "Huh?" But, in spite of that, we're seriously thinking that our next family weekend getaway will be to my parent's place 20 minutes away. They have cable...]

Now, we did try to do something active and educational by visiting Presidents Park. When we were planning our vacation, it sounded intriguing: Why bother to go to Mount Rushmore to see four presidential busts, when you could see all 43 sculpted "Heads" of State from George I to George III. As a history buff, I envisioned a leisurely time taking pictures of my favorite presidents - Wilson and Carter - and reading up on presidential trivia. I even thought up a game for Stuart and Ethan who are learning their presidents in school: I would shout out like the maddest mullah, "Bring me the head of George Bush!" and then race each other to his statue.

The trip turned out to be, uh... a bust. When we saw the park's nearly empty parking lot, we should have turned around and headed back to the hotel for the next rerun of Totally Spies. At first glance of the exhibit you can see why. It aspires to Mount Rushmore's greatness, yet falls miserably short. It's too kitschy - more reminiscent of a circus sideshow than the British Museum. The statues aren't imposing marble or granite, but made of cheap fiberglass; and besides, they were so poorly kept that you'd think that one characteristic that all the presidents had in common was leprosy. The northern Virginian winter took a toll on the park especially on the bust of Ronald Reagan. Here's a workman giving his statue a rhinoplasty - a little nipper on the Gipper...

I think we stayed at the park for less than an hour. Carolyn spent much of that time in front of the men's room waiting for Stuart who decided that he needed to poo. Meanwhile, I was preoccupied with Ethan who took it upon himself to reposition a sign directing patrons to Lincoln's statue to point towards Benjamin Harrison instead. I suppose he thought Harrison's statue a better likeness of our 16th president. I don't think that anyone would have known the difference...

Anyway, we gave up on James, James and Jimmy for Ed, Edd n Eddy. Cartoon characters beat politicians any day, but hey, it's vacation: Don't make me think...