Oct 13th
We had a short drive to College Park MD, where we are staying for the next few days. Cherry Hill RV Park is the nicest private park we have ever stayed at. It is immaculately clean and has playgrounds, a waterpark, mini golf, dog parks, an RV parts store, a small grocery store, a ball room, a concierge service, their own bus for tours, RV detailing services, a dog walking service, and more. It is expensive, but not as expensive as our parking lot in Jersey City. The best part though, is that the DC Metro bus stops at the park and we can ride it to the Metro subway which takes us right into Washington DC. At 4pm everyday, the park has a tourist meeting in one of their many halls. We went and learn all about the bus and Metro services. We had met two full time families, on the ferry in New York City, and they had told us about this park. We met up with them this evening, and talked for hours. Marcus and Missy have a eight year old son, and Brook and Megan have a 10 year old daughter. Truly nice people. They have been living on the road for over two years. Mia and the kids became fast friends. They may visit us in Sonoma County next year.
Oct 14th
This morning, I called and set up an appointment with the dogwalker to let Oreo out in the late afternoon, because I knew we would be gone all day. She told me to call her later in the afternoon, to verify that we still needed her services, and then she would take care of it. We rode the bus to the Metro station, and the Metro into downtown DC. The Metro is very easy to use, and the cleanest and most modern subways we have been on so far. We exited the Metro right near the National Mall. There are so many sites and so much history here, that it would take weeks to see everything. We only have a couple of days, so we had to set our priorities. We walked to the Capitol, then back the other way to the White House. There are police officers everywhere and they were from everywhere, Chicago, Portland, Miami, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. Kathy finally asked a DHS officer what was happening. He told us it was National Law Enforcement week, and that officers from all over the country come to take part. Across the street from the White House is Old Ebbitts Grill, which was recommended to us, and we stopped for lunch. The food was very good and the atmosphere even better. After lunch we walked by the White House and then headed to the Washington Memorial. All of these sites are national monuments, so Mia was trying to get her Parks passport stamped everywhere. By this time, it was after 3pm, so I called the dogwalker. She asked me what time we would like Oreo walked, and I said between 4 and 5pm. She said she couldn’t do that. The earliest she could get there is 6:30 or 7pm. What??? We will be home by then!! We cancelled her services immediately. It was going to take us over an hour and a half to get back to the trailer. Kathy called up the new friends we had met and asked if they were at the park and if they could walk Oreo. Without hesitation, they agreed. We were so grateful. Next, we visited the WWII memorial, Lincoln memorial and Vietnam memorial. This is Mia’s history lesson for the week. We had wanted to visit Arlington, but the Metro line that goes there had derailed yesterday, and there was no service across the river. By this point we had walked over 8 miles, and we were exhausted, so we caught the Metro back home. I stopped at the store and bought a six pack of good beer for Marcus, who had walked Oreo for us, and left it on the steps to his trailer.
Oct 15th
The plan today was to go back to Washington DC and see a couple of the Smithsonian museums, pick up a package at UPS that Megan sent us, and then come back to the RV park so Mia could play in the water park. It didn’t quite go as planned. First, the bus we wanted to catch, didn’t show up. We had to wait 45 minutes for the next bus. Mia chose the Museum of Natural History as our first museum, but we did not expect it to be that big. There are three stories of displays (geology, human origins, mummies, dinosaurs, the oceans, etc, etc…), and the building is a block long. We couldn’t even finish one museum. To top it all off our package did not arrive. We were supposed to be leaving the DC area tomorrow, but now we have to extend our stay until we can get the package. When we arrived back at the RV park, Kathy went and asked the front desk if they had any open spots for us for Saturday night. They did not. She explained our dilemma, and they were very understanding. They said we could park our trailer in their overflow lot, and spend all day in DC, but they could not let stay the night there. Hopefully the package arrives tomorrow. Mia got her swimsuit on, and I took her over to the water park. Its just a bunch of fountains and showers that the kids run through, but Mia had fun. Marcus, Missy and Megan, our new friends, were also there with their kids. After dinner, we went to their site for a nightcap. The three kids watched a movie together. Hopefully we can meet them again somewhere down the road.
Oct 16th
We hitched up this morning, and moved the trailer to the overflow lot. Because of the bus issues yesterday, we decided to drive our truck to the Metro station instead. As we were heading to the station, we received notification that our package had arrived. A lot of our stress was lifted at that point. Our trip to DC was pretty perfunctory. We got off the Metro, walked 5 blocks to the UPS store, retrieved our package, walked 5 blocks back to the Metro and headed back to our trailer. After a late lunch, we started heading south. We will be staying at the Battlefield Country Store in Fredericksburg VA. The traffic here is insane. It took us three hours to drive 55 miles. The Battlefield Country Store is a coffee shop/ice cream parlor/deli/market. It’s a very popular place judging by the number of people here. There is only one other RV staying the night with us.
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