AMiable Solution #60: Where to Go When You’re Not at Your Desk, Option 1

The start of summer is just weeks away.  Whether you want to take time off or you’re being forced to, and whether you plan to take off multiple days in a row or singles here and there, you’re going to have calendar days to fill. 

Whatever will you do with your time?  This month we propose four local, D.C. day-trip ideas, one for every type of marketer.

Up first: a day trip for the marketer who can’t leave work at work.  The location: the National Postal Museum on Massachusetts Avenue, D.C.

Located in the old Post Office building next to Union Station, the National Postal Museum, which opened in 1993, examines the postal system’s history of innovations and successes. It also serves as a good reminder that, despite the USPS’s modern financial struggles, the organization has been operating far longer than most of the ones we work for.

What’s there to see?  Exhibits include

• “Systems at Work,” which “recreates the paths” of mail from sender to recipient over the last 200 years
• “Mail Call,” which examines the history of military mail and its importance to the government, military members, their communities, and their families
• “On the Road,” which looks at the history of city mail vehicles from 1899 to the present and features a 1931 Model A Ford
• “Binding the Nation,” which examines the importance of mail itself from colonial times through the 19^th century
• “Postal Inspectors,” which examines the role of today’s more than 2,000 postal inspectors

If you want to check it out before you go, the National Postal Museum offers a pretty impressive virtual tour on its website, http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/museum/1_museum.html. 

But be sure to consider seeing it in person.  You’ll get some much-needed time on your feet instead of behind a desk.  And best of all, it’s free.  And air conditioned, for when you want to escape the summer heat.