West Point Museum

Spring-break spoiler alert: West Point is now a “citizens-or-green-card-only” zone 🌊 Caught the tail-end of spring break and road-tripped the kiddos to West Point—a.k.a. the U.S. Military Academy, a.k.a. “where generals are printed.” 🏫 Founded 1802, parked on a postcard bend of the Hudson River, views so pretty they should charge admission to the scenery alone. 🏞️ Eisenhower and Patton walked these hills—no pressure, current cadets. We rolled up playlist-blaring, zero research, ready for spontaneous patriotism. 🚗💨 Museum? ✅ Easy. Gift-shop grenade-chocolate? ✅ Purchased. Then we tried to drive onto the actual campus—BAM—gate guard pops out like a Whac-A-Mole. New rule, new world: only U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents may enter. And “may” is doing a lot of work—first you have to: U-turn back to the Visitor Center (basement level, dungeon vibes). 🏰🔽 Hand over photo ID + SSN for an on-the-spot background check. (Under-18s get a free pass—tiny mercies.) 🧒📋 Wait for the cyber-gods to approve you. 🖥️⚡️ Friday afternoon line wasn’t long, but the ping-pong still ate 60+ minutes of daylight. So we traded parade-ground selfies for fluorescent-queue selfies. 🤳 Moral: even spring break can’t outrank OPSEC. Bring docs, bring patience, and maybe a snack ration—West Point now runs on red-tape flavor. 🍬 Still worth it; just pack citizenship, green card, or a time machine next time. 🇺🇸🪪 #WestPoint #NYCFamilyTrip #SpringBreakPlotTwist 🌊