America 250: What’s on your plate?

Despite, or maybe because of, the higher costs of travel, AAA is projecting that 70 million Americans (only 21 percent of us) are expected to travel for the July 4 holiday weekend.

It also happens to be America’s Semiquincentennial. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it means 250 years since the Declaration of Independence that created these United States.

POP QUIZ: Name the 13 colonies that formed the United States of America without clicking here.

Approximately 138 million Americans are old enough to remember the 1976 Bicentennial. That’s about 43 percent of our population (320 million +-). If you are among them, what’s your memory of the event?

We, who were in our 20s then, remember the main event as the tall ships entering New York and other harbors of the original 13 states. The famed CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite described it as “the grandest birthday party in the history of the world.” He anchored a 16-hour live broadcast for CBS on July 4, 1976.

In those days, there was no 24/7 news. There were only three TV networks (CBS, NBC, ABC – well yes, PBS too). No cable talking heads. No social media “influencers” to tell us what we should think or how we should act.

We just celebrated with backyard barbeques and Pabst Blue Ribbon. And we had an interim president, Gerald R. Ford, who most certainly did not try to make The Bicentennial all about himself.

This time around we have a confounding array of strut-and-puff out of our nation’s capital city. Don’t be fooled by all the gimmickry. Instead, we recommend the non-partisan Visit DC tourism website to find many non-political events, including fireworks. Likewise, you can find many events around the country in our seasonal guide:

Look, Washington DC tourism is having a tough time because of all the POTUS narcissism – the Ballroom; the ARCH; the Algae-Breeding, Peeling-Paint Pool. Let’s give Washingtonians a toast for enduring all of this! We always recommend the Capital City for family visits. So much to see and do. You can definitely tune out the “politics” (but don’t dare touch the Reflecting Pool).

Also: there’s the World Cup. We know it’s expensive, exceedingly so, for average Americans to attend these games of which we hardly know the rules, other than you can’t carry the ball. But there’s more to it in Eileen’s latest weekly Taking the Kids Column.

We will be spending the holiday weekend in Breckenridge CO, where the air is cooler (at 9,000 feet) and the town puts on a great Fourth of July show. We’ll follow that up with two nights at the beautiful new Kindred Resort in nearby Keystone CO. Both are great ski destinations, by the way.

Many think of Lake Placid NY as a Winter Olympics site, and yes, it has ski jumps and museums to prove that it hosted the games in 1932 and 1980. But it’s also a summer destination par excellence. The town will host its annual Fourth of July celebration on Saturday, July 4, featuring live music, family-friendly activities, a parade on Main Street, and a spectacular fireworks display. A full schedule of events can be found here:

Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello near Charlottesville VA will mark the Semiquincentenial as well as the return of Civic Season. The latter is nationwide initiative started by Made By Us that runs annually between Juneteenth (June 19) and July 4. It aims to connect history, civic engagement, and community participation. Learn more about it here.

Florida’s Space Coast belongs on any 4th of July list. The programming stretches across Brevard County for days. Cocoa Beach marks July 3 with an America’s 250 celebration at Centennial Square, capped by a synchronized drone show at 9 p.m. Port Canaveral hosts a fireworks show on July 3 with viewing available from the Exploration Tower, placing spectators directly above the waterline for the display. There’s more to see and do here.

Back in Washington DC, the Lincoln Memorial is the site of a new exhibition that opened June 25 featuring two historic documents: original, signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment (which cemented the abolition of slavery for good). A large unused space beneath the Lincoln Memorial called the undercroft, will be open to visitors for this exhibition, thanks to the National Parks Foundation. Learn more here.

Have fun. Stay frosty.