Washington DC Trip
We have not typically taken an April vacation. We all thought DC would be a great trip and found a place to stay in town using AirBnB. We decided to drive to DC instead of fly. It was a long drive - we drove to DC in one day. We broke it up with a stop about halfway to hike up Bear Mountain on the Hudson River. I have driven by this "mountain" before and always wanted to hike up and see the Hudson River and NYC views. Nice hike and very crowded on a nice Sunday. There is a paved road up the hill that would have been great for a bike hill climb if it wasn't for all the yahoos driving fast in their cars and motorcycles. There was some nice eye candy on the road - Ferrari, Lamborghini, Elise, GTR and more. |
| Some steps on the way up Bear Mountain |
Worse part of the drive was New Jersey - traffic backups on Sunday afternoon and many tolls. Best part was Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. We took this alternate route just so we could drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
For the first night, we ate dinner at Beefsteak Veggies. This restaurant would do very well in Burlington, anyone want to open a franchise? Despite the name, they sell rice and quinoa bowls with fresh vegetables. Grabbing some milk and cereal for breakfast at the grocery store requires a 15 minute wait in a line to check out. We thought that this was an anomaly, but there was a long line every day. We were shopping at the Whole Foods on the GWU campus so that may have been a factor.
We had some tours scheduled with the help of Leahy's staff. The first tour was the FBI Educational tour. It is intense and a bit depressing since most of the tour is about murder and mayhem. They had a large 9/11 exhibit with a piece of twisted I-beam and a crushed NYPD card. I can't believe that they are still worshiping Hoover. Yes, he modernized the agency, but he used his power excessively.
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| FBI courtyard photo - no other photos allowed. |
Our next tour was the Capitol Visitor Center. This tour felt very rushed. There were hundreds of people in dozens of lines. We had to wait in line to get screened - then wait in line to choose a tour and then wait in line for the tour. We barely had time to see anything and were always in a crowd. We had to wear headsets to hear our tour guide who was just 10 feet away from us.
After the Capitol tour, we walked over to the Library of Congress and did a self guided tour. There is a tunnel which connects the two buildings. Very ornate and beautiful building. I only saw one book though - the Gutenberg Bible.
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| Google enhanced photo of LOC |
We also visited many, but not all of the Smithsonian museums.
The Natural History musuem had many nice exhibits, we could have spent more time there. I do want to go back just to see the Hope diamond since its only on exhibit on weekends.
The American History let me down. The exhibits felt disjointed. Out of context, most of these small exhibits would be great destinations. We got to see the flag seen by F. Scott Key that based the Star Spangled Banner off.
The Air and Space museum was incredible of course. From seeing the first flight of the Wright brothers to capsules that went to the moon, it was all there. We spent nearly all day there, but Carolyn was saying that she had seen enough airplanes for one day.
Renwick gallery was incredible.
The rainbow over Carly's head is over a thousand threads 60 miles long. It filled an entire room. Here is a video that better shows it:
| There was also a room at Renwick that was painted entirely with ink made from beetle blood. The room had designs on the wall created from bugs: |
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| View of one wall |
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| Closeup of the skull |
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| Closeup of one eye in the skull |
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| Another cool exhibit at the Renwick was made entirely from 1 million index cards. |
We booked a tour through Capital City Bike Tours. This tour was a bike ride around the monuments at night and was awesome! We had a great tour guide. It was a leisurely ride - just 7 miles in 3 hours! The Washington and Lincoln monuments are impressive and imposing. The FDR monument is more reserved but very thought provoking.
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| FDR Memorial |
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| Lincoln Memorial |
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| Lincoln Memorial |
Senator Patrick Leahy hosted a meet and greet the next day. There were over 30 other Vermonters there. We all got to talk with Sen. Leahy and get a personal photo with him and his wife. Afterwards we walked around the Senate office buildings. We visited Bernie's office too - he was busy at the time campaigning in New York. His staff gave us Gallery passes to the House and Senate. Since we were escorted by a staffer, we were able to take the special Senate subway that connects the Senate office building with the Capitol.
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| Senate "subway" connecting the Senate office buildings and the capital |
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| Senate and House Gallery passes |
House wasn't in session so we sat in the Senate gallery. They were debating the Energy Appropriations bill. I say "they", but I only two Senators present - Lamar Alexander and Barbara Boxer.
We also had a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It was neat to see paper money printed. Interesting stat was that 90% of all money printed is replacement money for worn out currency. They print about 560 million dollars worth of paper money daily.
Some random DC photos:
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| We missed Cherry Blossom season but got to see piles of pink leaves on the ground: :-) |
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| Great Ethiopian food at DAS in Georgetown. No silverware, just grab a handful of the bread that is under the dal and eat. |
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| We saw a bit of the C&O canal and now want to visit again with bikes to tour more of it. |
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| Carly is enamored with Norway so we stopped by the Norwegian embassy |
We had a great time in DC and we all want to go back to see more. More of the museums, more of the bike paths and general exploring.
On our drive home, we did one overnight in Pennsylvania. We stayed at a real cool AirBnB in the Poconos. The lady who rents the room is an artist and her touch is evident throughout the house. She also has an artist's studio in an old schoolhouse on the grounds and a chapel in which she holds events.
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| AirBnB house |
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| Schoolhouse where she teaches art classes. |
We took a leisurely drive around Amish country. We saw several horse drawn buggies on the road, one with two kids peeking out the back as we passed. We also saw a girl on a scoot bike taking a trip to the store. I was expecting to see small farms in Amish country, but the farms were larger than most Vermont farms. We saw a very large field being tilled by one guy and two horses.
Before we started our long drive the next day, we hiked up Mt Tammany over the Delaware Water Gap. It was a quick 40 minute hike with 1000' of elevation. In this picture you can see the parking lot down near the river and Interstate 80. The guidebook said to take a different way down since the trail was so rocky, but it was normal for us compared to any of our White Mountain hikes.
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| Delaware Water Gap |
