Monday, October 20, 2008

October 12-16 - Washington DC

Greenbelt National Park in Maryland was a great base for exploring Washington DC. The park was beautiful & filled with deer, grey squirrels & black squirrels. They were an interesting sight. Walnut trees surrounded our RV & kept our adrenaline pumping each time walnuts dropped onto our roof. We hardly felt like we were just 10 miles away from our nation's capitol. The Metro station was a couple miles from us & we became quite adept at navigating the train system. We took a double decker bus tour the first 2 days in town. This allowed us an overview of the city & the opportunity to hop on & off as we pleased. DC was much more spread out than we expected, so we were glad to be able to see all the major sights for one low fare & not having to drive or park. The monuments & buildings were awe-inspiring & beautiful. It really made us even more proud of our country to be standing in the middle of so much history & importance. We even saw a motorcade on day one! Also saw a diplomatic license plate but didn't take a picture since we thought we'd see more. We didn't, but we did see a "Member of Congress" plate & quickly snapped away. Lesson learned! Once we knew where we wanted to go, we again took the Metro & then walked to the museums we wanted to explore further. We stood in line at the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution & are very glad we did, but we were surprised that they were more faded than we thought they would be. The main guard on duty cracked us up - he was power mad & very thorough in giving everyone very detailed instructions about where they should stand & how they should move through the line. Oh well, it was pretty good unintended comic relief. We had a great Maryland crab cake dinner near the park with friends Darcy & Bobbie. Well, Darcy had the salmon but we let him sit with us anyway. They were kind enough to drive about an hour from their home to meet up with us. As always, we had lots of fun & laughs with them.

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