We did our best to take advantage of all the Frederick/Washington DC area had to offer. The Frederick area offered an amazing look into life during the Civil War and opportunities to enjoy the two mountains that surround the area.

We started the week with a short drive to South Mountain State park where we visited the George Washington Monument (different from the one in DC, but just as oddly shaped, it looked like a big stone honey pot) and walked a section of the Appalachian Trail. The boys decided for some reason they did no want to walk to Florida 🤷‍♂️.

The next day we rode the DC Metro subway to the National Zoo, which probably led to this stop’s best Gabe quote of “this is so absolutely amazing”, not to the zoo or a monument or the capital building…..but to the really escalator at the metro station that goes up from the Metro to the zoo. Our trip to the National Zoo was on a very hot day, but a very surprising amount of animals were out and about. The boys showed way more interest in our day there than I had anticipated and we actually ended up staying until closing time. Their favorites were the big cats and the small animal and reptiles houses.

On Thursday we were lucky enough to have Meg join us on a trip to DC because she actually need to run into the city for work. We all took the Metro again and after a short stop at ATF headquarters for Meg we headed over to the National Archives to see the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and more. Again I was surprised how interested the boys were in the history the Archives had to offer, maybe homeschooling is working! Afterward we headed over to the Museum of Natural History and walked a bit of the National Mall.

Friday was focused on the truck. I have been struggling with the steering ever since they worked on it in Maine (new track bar and lower ball joint) so I tried adjusting the steering gear box, it didn’t help much. I also replaced a bad rear brake caliper.

Saturday we headed to Harper’s Ferry National Park just over the river in West Virginia. The town changed hands eight times during the Civil War and was the site of the famous John Brown Raid just a couple of years before the start of Civil War. Again the boys ate up the history and we loved the scenery that Thomas Jefferson described as “perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature”. Afterwards we rode the beautifully groomed C&O bike trail about four miles to Brunswick, MD where we stopped by the local visitor’s center and museum. We were surprised to find how much there was to see there including an entire top floor dedicated to a model train exhibit and a detailed scavenger hunt the boys spent at least an half an hour completing.

Sunday we drove just five minutes from the rental home to Crystal Grottoes Caverns, an awesome cave that was discovered by county road workers in the 1920’s. It was not what we expected to find in Maryland and we all had a great time exploring the unique formations in the cave. Afterwards we went to South Mountain Creamery where we got some awesome ice cream and spent some time hanging out with some very friendly calves. Finally we stopped by Antietam National Battlefield, site of the deadliest day in any American war. The Civil War site was so close to the rental home that the property the rental home sits on was likely apart of the battle when it took place. The boys spent over an hour exploring the museum, watching a short history of the events that took place that day and walking through the cemetery.

Despite all of our fun during the weekend, Meg and I couldn’t help but feel the weight of loosing what had started to feel like our best remaining chance to stay on the eastern side of the country. Frederick checked almost every box we cared about: beautiful mountains and trails, good schools, access to Washington and Baltimore, reasonable housing costs, nearby services, and still being close enough to drive back to see family and friends.

That made the way my symptoms worsened near the end of our stay especially hard to accept. We were here in the fall, during a time of year when I had hoped the environmental load would already be lower. If I was struggling this much now, it was difficult not to imagine what spring and summer might look like.

The frustrating part is that we still don’t know exactly what happened. There were storms and pressure changes, nearby fields were being harvested, the grass around the house had recently been cut, and there are probably dozens of other environmental variables we weren’t measuring. Any one of them could have contributed—or none of them could have. That’s one of the hardest parts of this whole search: there is almost always a possible explanation, but rarely a way to know which explanation is the right one.

I don’t think one difficult week is enough to say that Frederick could never work for me. But it was enough that we couldn’t honestly keep treating it as the promising eastern option we had hoped it would be. That one hurt, because unlike many of the places we’ve crossed off along the way, Frederick wasn’t a place we were trying to convince ourselves to like. We already did.

Sometimes this journey feels like finding places we love and then waiting to see whether my body will let us keep them. This time, at least for now, the answer seems to be no.