Destination achieved!

Mile 3885

Well, we FINALLY reached our destination in Columbia, Maryland last night! We will spend a little over a week here and down in Calvert County visiting family. Unfortunately, Yvette already caught her flight this morning to return home, and won't be joining us for the return trip. It was nice having her company on the way out. Thank you, Yvette!

We didn't cover a whole of ground since our last post, but we sure did see a lot! Here's how it happened:


We got up Tuesday and had a leisurely morning, having breakfast with Steve at his home. We are so fortunate to have friends open their homes to us! Thank you all who have offered to have us over or have met us along the way of our trek across America. We are sorry that we didn't get to see everyone, but we had to get to Maryland so that Yvette would make her return trip in time. After breakfast, we packed up and made the very short trip into downtown Richmond to visit the Virginia state capitol.

After that, it was about 100 miles to the Washington, D.C. Luckily, we found parking right next to the Washington Monument which was our first stop. For those of you who have been there, you know how rare that is to find. There are more famous landmarks in this city then anywhere we have been. So we did our best to see the big ones.



Lincoln Memorial


Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial


The Capitol Building which had some nice cool grass.


We did our best to see the White House, but security is so strict around there now, we couldn't find parking close enough to walk over to see it. By the time we got to it, it was rush hour. Rush hour in D.C. really limits your parking options. If you are parked on the street in a restricted area after 4pm, they actually ticket you and then tow you car up onto to the curb to open up traffic lanes. There are so many cars to move that it's too difficult to tow all of them away, so they just drag them all up onto the curb. Anyway, we only caught a fleeting glimpse of it the White House. Maybe we can go back and see it later while we are here in Maryland.

Unfortunately, we left D.C. in the middle of rush hour so it took awhile to get out of the city. The spectacular thunderstorm at the time probably didn't help matters much either. Once we got out of the city, however, the roads opened up and the sky cleared. So we had a pretty nice drive the rest of the way to our destination, arriving in Columbia, MD around 7pm.

While we were out for dinner with family that night, Yvette caught very first firefly. Like many of you west coasters, she had never even seen a firefly before last night near Richmond, let alone caught one before. For those of you don't know, during the summer, this is a favorite activity for children (and adults!) in the evening. Fireflies, or lightning bugs as they are sometimes known, come out just as night falls and use bioluminescence to emit a yellowish glow to attract mates and prey. They fly slowly enough so that anyone can easily catch one. Little biology lesson there. You can read more about them here.

With a belly full of Maryland crab, we were able to settle down for the evening and get the full nights sleep we had been missing on our week long journey. No need to hit the road so early the next for a long day's drive this time.

We will be here for a little over a week and will continue to blog if anything significant happens. We will get back into the full swing of things on our way back west, this time taking a more northerly route. So keep an eye out on the blog to follow along with us on our way home. Our friend Jen had posted a message asking why there are no people in the pictures we post. So here's one from the road:


The front seat is usually dog-occupied on these road trips, and there was no reason for it to be any different on this road one just because there was an extra person along for the ride!