Washington DC Area

Jan. 13 and April 20, 2009
Over four months I spent in the Washington DC area. There area consists of several parks: National Capitol East, National Capitol Central, Baltimore Washington Parkway, Suitland Parkway, Greenbelt, Rock Creek Parkway, Clara Barton Parkway, George Washington Memorial Parkway also not far out of town is Prince William Forest Park and Fredricksburg.

Some highlights of driving included passing the tour bus' of rappers Flo rida and Bow Wow.

Some of the "lowlights" of the area included the crazy hotel in Greenbelt deleting me from their system while I was staying there...what? Finding a place to park the truck is always a challange in big cities. The truck had a bad isolator which created several headaches at various times. While collecting Baltimore Washington we needed a pilot car to help keep the speeding traffic from running us over since we go 35mph and the speed limit is 55 or 85 depending if you follow the posted signs or not. Our truck had some power (isolator) issues which caused a few turn arounds along the parkway but to top it off the warning truck that was following behind us lost a belt! I think some of our luck rubbed off. The park contact said he could have driven that truck to Florida and back a couple of times with no problems but when we come around the truck looses a belt and is out of commission.

Overall, I'm proud to say that we made through collection with no accidents or scrapes. The traffic around DC can be pretty crazy, although there was one near scrape it was avoided...just as a side not I was not driving :).
During our early days in the area we were "lucky" to witness the biggest snow storm the area has had in years. Again, for us a good work day depends on dry roads so this meant more sightseeing opportunities for us. We tried to take advantage of being in our nation's capitol and see all that we could. We were able to check most of the monuments around the area and also go to places like: The National Archives, go up in the Washington Monument (March 26), tour the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (March 26), tour Arlington National Cemetery (April 20) and see Arlington House (home of Robert E. Lee), tour the US Capitol (a couple of times, March 26), spend the day at Mount Vernon (March 19), attend a Washington Capitals Hockey Game (Feb. 18), attend a show at Ford's Theater "The Civil War" (April 17). What a list and in between collect all of the paved roads in the parks mentioned above! All of the sights were great but one of may favorites was the musical "The Civil War" at Fords Theater. The performance was awesome and the venue is hard to beat. Mount Vernon probably took 2nd place. I didn't think we could spend all day there but we did and the time flew by. Another "event" that tops my list was seeing the trio of Marine One helicopters flying in the sky. When there is a group of three that means the president in on one of them. It was an awesome sight, and well worth taking a cab to a restaurant that turned out to be closed. It is wasn't for the walk back we would have missed it!