For Gambler's 30th birthday, Twister and Lilbit planned a 3 day trip for him. The trick to this weekend, is that they planned it for about three months and at Gambler's request, did not tell him where they were going. They made all of the arrangements, reservations, ticket purchases and even packed for him. He did not know where they were going until the day we left. The trip agenda was revealed to Gambler as we started it.

First time that any of us had taken a train and the first time Lilbit had flown commercially.

After work on Friday we all left for Jacksonville Florida. Caught the Amtrak train number 98 from Jacksonville to Washington DC. The train was late due to rain so we left about 8:50. Because of the delay we went to McDonalds and had some snacks.

Gambler got up while Twister and Lilbit were still sleeping and walked around the train for a little while to take a few pictures. At 6:00am we were in Rocky Mount NC. We pulled into Washington DC at about 10:30 at Union Station. We went over to the National Mall (aka Monument Park) and took in the sights there. After getting enough of DC and getting pretty hungry we went on up to Philadelphia, PA to get some Philly Cheese Steaks at Geno's.

After eating we headed on up to New York City. This was Lilbit's first trip to New York so we stopped off at Liberty Park in New Jersey. It was a cool chance to see the city before actually going into it. It was also a good place to see the Statue of Liberty. We took the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan then went looking for Time Square. Twister and Lilbit got some really good pics in time squre. We then drove down to Ground Zero (former home of the World Trade Centers) It is still in a shambles and the buildings around it are still damaged almost 4 years later. We got into NYC at about 7pm and left at about 10:30 pm heading for Atlantic City New Jersey.

Ok everyone, we let Lilbit use the camera this trip so there were a lot of pictures on Saturday, but Sunday was mostly driving. We pulled into Atlantic City, NJ at about 1:00 am. We got in so late and knew we had to fly out of Philly at 7:40 am so just went on a quick trip through Cesar's, then went to IHOP for breakfast. After breakfast at 3:00am we headed back to Philly, returned the rental car and got a little rest in the airport before flying back to Jacksonville. When we got back to Jacksonville, we had to catch a cab across town to pick up the car and drive home. We got home around noon.

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