Sorry for the delay in blogging. Everything in our lives right now revolves around the Fremont or Elk Grove house. We did another U-Haul trip on Sunday and still didn’t get it all out or all cleaned. Tonight is pretty much our last chance, so wish us luck!
Any how, I know you are all anxious to hear about the spontaneous DC trip! What I can tell you straight out is that there was a lot of sleeping going on, as Cameron and I both were lacking when I got there. My flight out was met with a ton of turbulence. So much so, that the flight attendants were forced to stay seated for a good hour of the flight. On top of that, my flight from Long Beach to Dulles was delayed an hour, so I got in an hour later than expected. Cameron was already in class for the day when I arrived at the National Conference Center. Luckily getting there was easy, thanks to modern day technology and is accessibility. GPS navigation has become cheap enough that the Dollar Rent a Car place offered it for only $12 a day with the rental car. This was music to my ears at 7 AM Friday morning, East Coast time. I simply set it up, entered in my destination and I was off. The model they use is the same model our friends Matt & Lynde have, which Cameron and I have borrowed from time to time, so knowing how to work it was easy. Not that the touch screen button options are hard to figure out. We definitely need to get one of these handy little devices soon.
When I got to the conference center, Cameron stepped out of class to meet me. After parking, he showed me to his room and where the all important Diet Pepsi could be located if I got up before he was done with class. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I got back to his room and crashed, crashed hard. I barely noticed when he came back to the room during a break. When class was through, Cameron joined me on the napping front since he had barely slept the night before. I attribute this to the noisy AC unit in the tiny room. One person can barely move around in it and two people cannot move around it without someone walking on the bed. Cameron continued to snooze after I got up to get some work done. When that task was completed, we both got ready to head to the city, but first, Cameron wanted to take me to the outlets nearby.
They were your typical outlets. We’d stop into stores we are familiar with just to look at what they had and also get out of the humidity. We also popped into unfamiliar stores to look for a shirt for Cameron’s nephew Connor to wear as our ring bear. No luck, unfortunately. After the little shopping trip and exercise, we both realized we were hungry and wouldn’t last the hour drive to DC. So, using the handy GPS device, we searched for nearby delis. We chose one that was called Poolesville Beer Wine Deli. A glass of Chardonnay sounded like a nice idea with a yummy sandwich. We thought it was 5 miles away. We miss read that – it must have been 15 and we had quite the adventure in those 15. The GPS took us on this small country road, or so we thought. At first, we were only following cars – we hadn’t passed a car on the road yet, which would be a little difficult being that the road was narrow. Then a flood of cars from the other direction came at us. Where had all these cars come from, there wasn’t a metro area in site? Then we rounded a curve and saw it, the Potomac River and the Ferry we would have to take to cross it.
Any how, I know you are all anxious to hear about the spontaneous DC trip! What I can tell you straight out is that there was a lot of sleeping going on, as Cameron and I both were lacking when I got there. My flight out was met with a ton of turbulence. So much so, that the flight attendants were forced to stay seated for a good hour of the flight. On top of that, my flight from Long Beach to Dulles was delayed an hour, so I got in an hour later than expected. Cameron was already in class for the day when I arrived at the National Conference Center. Luckily getting there was easy, thanks to modern day technology and is accessibility. GPS navigation has become cheap enough that the Dollar Rent a Car place offered it for only $12 a day with the rental car. This was music to my ears at 7 AM Friday morning, East Coast time. I simply set it up, entered in my destination and I was off. The model they use is the same model our friends Matt & Lynde have, which Cameron and I have borrowed from time to time, so knowing how to work it was easy. Not that the touch screen button options are hard to figure out. We definitely need to get one of these handy little devices soon.
When I got to the conference center, Cameron stepped out of class to meet me. After parking, he showed me to his room and where the all important Diet Pepsi could be located if I got up before he was done with class. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I got back to his room and crashed, crashed hard. I barely noticed when he came back to the room during a break. When class was through, Cameron joined me on the napping front since he had barely slept the night before. I attribute this to the noisy AC unit in the tiny room. One person can barely move around in it and two people cannot move around it without someone walking on the bed. Cameron continued to snooze after I got up to get some work done. When that task was completed, we both got ready to head to the city, but first, Cameron wanted to take me to the outlets nearby.
They were your typical outlets. We’d stop into stores we are familiar with just to look at what they had and also get out of the humidity. We also popped into unfamiliar stores to look for a shirt for Cameron’s nephew Connor to wear as our ring bear. No luck, unfortunately. After the little shopping trip and exercise, we both realized we were hungry and wouldn’t last the hour drive to DC. So, using the handy GPS device, we searched for nearby delis. We chose one that was called Poolesville Beer Wine Deli. A glass of Chardonnay sounded like a nice idea with a yummy sandwich. We thought it was 5 miles away. We miss read that – it must have been 15 and we had quite the adventure in those 15. The GPS took us on this small country road, or so we thought. At first, we were only following cars – we hadn’t passed a car on the road yet, which would be a little difficult being that the road was narrow. Then a flood of cars from the other direction came at us. Where had all these cars come from, there wasn’t a metro area in site? Then we rounded a curve and saw it, the Potomac River and the Ferry we would have to take to cross it.
We started laughing the second we saw it – were we really going to have to take this thing across? Where are the bridges? How do boats travel across the cable that tows the Ferry from shore to shore? The last question is still unanswered. The only thing we could think of was that the cable, when not towing, lays low in the water. As for a bridge – there was no bridge. We would take the ferry.
We made it!
We finally got up at 8 PM and walked over to the Capital Building, as it was only 3 blocks away. From there we strolled on down to the Washington Monument and the World War II memorial. By this time it was about 10 PM and we decided we should find a late night diner to eat at. We walked for ages in search of any thing. How could a metropolis like this not have late night dining? We hadn’t even come across a bar when we finally happened by a McDonalds. We debated on walking just a few more blocks in hopes of finding something better. But we decided against it, we had walked this far and found nothing what would 3 blocks difference make? A whole lot. After we finished eating at McDonald’s, we headed toward those 3 blocks since our hotel was in that direction. Soon we came upon tons of late night restaurants, including the Hard Rock café, which is on the corner near Ford’s Theatre. Oh well. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying wine and margaritas in the hotel bar and chatting with the bartender. We stayed through him closing the bar down. We finally got tired at about 2 AM and headed to bed. We wouldn’t get up until noon the next day. Mind you, this was only 9 AM to us. Cameron was still on West Coast time too.
Until next time,
Sarah
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