Observing Presidential Birthdays

February is a confusing month for presidential birthday holidays.

Abraham Lincoln's birthday is February 12th. Some states, including Missouri, celebrated it as a state holiday on the 13th. It is not a Federal holiday. George Washington's actual birthday is February 22, but in 1968 the Federal Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved it to the third Monday in February. The day soon became known as Presidents' Day,. As Wikipedia says, the day:

"provides an occasion to remember all U.S. presidents, to honor Abraham Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays together, or any single president of choice."

However, officially Missouri still calls the day Washington's Birthday. Confused? 

In my mind, as long as I get the day off it doesn't matter what it's called. Both of the priests at the parish I work at had plans, so I didn't have to go cook dinner. The temperature was forecast to hit the mid-60 degree Fahrenheit range. Hubby Tony and I wanted to plan an outside adventure, maybe something that also included a road trip.

We couldn't find any interesting official Washington's Birthday or Presidents' Day events, but we did some out of the box thinking and decided to head to the city of Washington, Missouri and make our own celebration.

Washington is a historical town along the Missouri River with a small downtown area. Our plan was to walk around, pop into shops that interested us, and maybe get dessert to go along with the lunch that we were bringing from home. (I thought that cherry pie would be a nice tie in to the George Washington cherry tree myth.)

Tony and I pulled into town at 10:00 AM, right when independently owned stores usually open up. However, it didn't take long to figure out that many of them had signs indicating they were no longer open on Mondays, and some others were closed for the holiday. 

We made the best of it, though, by walking along a riverfront trail. The area was quiet, scenic, and serene. I went from having my lightweight winter coat all the way zipped up, to halfway zipped up, to taking it off. While I walked I munched on the finger food lunch, and by the time we got back to the starting point it was gone. We never found a place to get dessert, but before we started back home a cafe was happy to sell us cups of coffee to go.

Five years ago today: Fun With The Health Kiosk