We had been planning to make a trip to Washington, DC for several years, but something always came up at the last minute to make us change our plans. We finally decided that we would try again in 2001. We originally thought about going in May, but people told us that lots of school kids descend on DC then. We decided to go in the Fall instead. We worked through a Texas congressman's office to get special tickets to many of the government attractions - the White House, FBI, Supreme Court and others. We planned to take our RV and go up via the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. We would take about 2 weeks to get up there, and arrive in DC September 9th. We planned to stay in DC two weeks, then return home. In late August, Kay's mother started having medical problems and we had to delay our trip until later in September.

On September 11th, we watched TV in shock as all the events of the day unfolded. We heard that the plane that crashed in PA was headed for the White House. We got out our tickets and discovered that our White House tour tickets were for 8:45AM on September 11th!