Our drive through Virginia was perfect. The weather was beautiful and I have never seen that side of the mountain range before. OH MY KALE was it beautiful. All the colors were just gorgeous and mountain tops as far as the eye could see.
Hubs was on the grumpy side but nothing we couldn't handle. Veg, as always was a trooper in the car. He and I have to stop a lot for pit stops, but Hubs wanted to stop for different food options or trying to find something at a Walmart that he needed. It ended up taking us 9hrs to get there.
Upon arrival the hotel greeted us with free wi-fi for being part of the conference, free continental breakfast for being on the executive level, a program brochure and some lemon water. It was the most awesome check-in ever!
We got to our room, dropped everything off and decided that we had 4hrs to walk around DC. Well let me first say that DC is a BIG CITY, with a lot of one way streets, a LOT of traffic and some really insane traffic patterns. They have Round abouts in the middle of nowhere that don't really go "round". Now add to that the closure of streets for the pending Marathon and soon we were redirected down the wrong one ways. As if I wasn't confused enough. Garmin was NO help, Hubs was NOT happy, and poor Vegkid just wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial. (Oh, this was after sitting on the interstate for an hour in traffic and trying to navigate the toll booths, as if we needed any more confusion)
By the way, did you know the WHITE HOUSE doesn't show up in the Garmin. The Washington Monument wasn't even listed as an attraction nor were any of the Smithsonian stuffs... Ugh!! Apparently you can't really get there.
I was about to tell Veg... "There, look in the distance, that is Washington DC, now lets go home"
After nearly getting plowed over by two cars, a messenger bike and a person, we finally made it to a parking spot. A PARALLEL parking spot, of which I don't do that so good. But we couldn't find a parking garage. Is there a parking garage or something? I dunno!!
I got in our little parking spot, and we started pumping quarters and dimes and nickles in to the little machine. We were digging change from under our seats and finally got the thing to 90 minutes...
OKEE DOKEE, we have 90 minutes to see everything we are going to see in Washington DC and get back to our car... We were on a mission!
The sunset was truly spectacular and I don't use that word often.
We saw the Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Reflection Pool, the World War two memorial and Vietnam Memorial all up close.
From a distance we saw other buildings and memorials but Not the White House and still made it back to our car in that 90 minute window.
By now everyone is too hungry, very tired, lots of sore feet, it is dark, roads are closed, traffic is being redirected for that same marathon, and we are still lost!! But Veg wanted to see the White House. We drove around for another hour in circles it seemed. Someone should have left us some bread crumbs....
And finally made our way back to the hotel after 3 more flippy turns, wrong roads, a very angry Garmin and no White House.
Plan was to never drive in to Washington DC AGAIN in my entire life... There are shuttles, buses, and the Metro... But not from our hotel. Taxi was going to cost $80 each way... but I'll tell you what, if the kid wanted to see the White House I was going to pay $80 each way rather than ever trying to drive there again.
Unfortunately the storm started getting closer..... To be continued!