So what’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened on Nerd Trip? My mom and I attended the funeral for a woman we never met.
It happened during a visit to the President Garfield Memorial at Cleveland’s Lakeview Cemetery. In this post, we’ll take a trip to see the memorial for our 20th president and share the story of our unintentional funeral attendance.

Baltimore’s Washington Monument has 227 steps winding up a tight spiral to the top. If you thought climbing up was scary, it’s even scarier going down. However, there is much to explore on the ground floor, including some incredible ironwork on the fences and gates. Check it out in this Nerd Trip.

Many New York City tourists want to see the Empire State Building or Radio City, but history buffs may appreciate a trip to the Upper West Side to the final resting place of President Ulysses S. Grant.
The memorial is massive, rising 150 feet on a hill overlooking the Hudson.

We had neither a GPS nor smart phone, so we were relying on printed Internet directions, which didn’t work so well. We had a tough time finding the memorial. I recall thinking, “Poor William Henry Harrison, if he had been in office longer, his memorial may have been better marked.”

While in Dallas, we visited another Kennedy-related location – John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza, which is very close to Dealey Plaza. It’s hard to miss because it’s a large monument in the middle of downtown Dallas.
According to the postcard I picked up at the Sixth Floor Museum, “renowned American architect Philip Johnson designed this ‘cenotaph'(open tomb) to symbolize the freedom of Kennedy’s spirit.”