Next summer, community members young and old from the Callaway County area will travel as a group to tour Washington D.C., New York, Boston and Philadelphia. The organizer of this trip is Jeremy Divers, an art teacher at Auxvasse Elementary School. He will host an informational meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 7 at the Auxvasse Elementary School on this trip, and all community members are welcome.
The tentative dates of the trip will be June 1-10, 2016, but Divers said those dates are dependent on the attendants' schedules and are subject to change.
Divers said that in the past when he has organized similar trips the groups have been smaller, and he is hoping for a larger group this year for next summer's trip. He stressed that the trip is for students (fifth grade and older) and adults. Anyone in the community and surrounding areas can attend. He also said that for students going on the trip without a parent, there will be three or four adult teacher chaperones on the trip.
Attendants will fly to Boston on the first day of the trip, take a bus between cities, and fly out of D.C. on the final day of the journey. It will include stops in major tourist sites in all the cities aforementioned including: Washington Monument, Lincoln Monument, the Smithsonian, the Empire State Building (at night), Arlington Cemetery, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, a Broadway show, the site of the Boston Tea Party and Independence Hall.
Divers said the estimated cost of the trip, which includes travel and two meals a day, is approximately $2,600. This will cover everything except one meal a day and any extra spending money that participants might want to take on the trip.
"(The trip is) planned out, so all you have to do is pay the money and go," Divers said. "It's going to be packed full with something to do every day."
All the excursions are planned along with the trip, with some options and free time incorporated into the schedule.
A fifth-grade student of Divers, Zeke Gilman, is considering attending the trip next summer. Gilman said he is most excited about seeing the nation's capitol in Washington D.C. as well as the Statue of Liberty.
"It's a trip around a part of the U.S. that I haven't seen," Gilman said, "and it seems like a good experience."