Washington DC

Jennifer really deserves a lot more credit than I give her. Generally, she is very willing to let me drag her to any location (-20 degrees in Jackson Hole) or any activity (riding ATVs in 120 degrees in Phoenix, AZ. The latest great idea I tried to pull her into was 'stealth' camping. This type of camping is similar to what we did in North Carolina, with the key difference being that I wanted to camp in areas that didn't really allow camping.

While we were in DC, I wanted to stay close to all the attractions, namely, the national mall. But hotels in this area were way more than I was comfortable spending so I thought that we could instead camp in the car....in a parking garage. Yes, this sounds sketchy, but I convinced Jen that we would park at Union Station in DC (think: Grand Central Station, NYC), and since this lot was under camera and car surveillance 24/7, we could feel comfortable staying in the back of the 4Runner at night. This would let us stay just a few blocks from the heart of DC, while only spending $20/night.

So, straight to Union Station we went, arriving at around 2:00 or so on Monday afternoon. Here's Jen trying to glam up our camping spot:

One important note to anyone else considering a road trip into DC...Driving in downtown DC is interesting in that their are VERY subtle differences in seemingly identical street names ... see illustration here:

Once we figured out how to get to the garage & parked, we set out to explore the National Mall. The first landmark we happened upon was the Capitol Building.

We continued our walk around the National Mall, passing several of the Smithsonian museums and the Washington Monument. We then made our way over to the Jefferson Memorial, where Jen sat out for a brief conference call for work. After that, we continued down to the Lincoln Memorial and back up past the White House (which, for the record, looked to be on pretty serious lock-down).

As it was surely 5 o'clock somewhere, we decided to stop in for a cool beer to regroup & decide our plans for the remainder of the day. Given that today was Game 6 of the Stanley Cup, we elected to hop over to a bar called Penn Quarter to watch the first 2 periods of the game and then to Capital City Brewery for the final period.  Boston won in dominating fashion to force a game seven to be played on Wednesday.

Here's a picture of Jen digging in to an order of fish tacos at Penn Quarter...the lady in the background was seriously thinking about mugging her out of the remaining 2 tacos.

After the game, we headed to the 4Runner for night 1 of stealth camping. Since we didn't want to draw too much attention to the car, we used the public bathrooms to wash up.  Then, we jumped in the car with a few windows cracked and slept comfotably through the night. The breeze on the roof kept the temperature nice enough to not use our portable fan.

We woke up around 7am and wanted to hit the museums.  We started with the Air & Space museum, which we spent a solid 2 to 3 hours in.  We spent the most time on the 'space race' section and the new Wright Brothers section.  We also took time to pay respects to an important marine, pictured below.

Next, we stopped by the NationalArchives to see the constitution, declaration, etc.  We tried to get in at the large door at the top of the stairs - Jen tried knocking, but no one opened the door or presented Alice in Wonderland style cake. 

The real entrance was at the beginning of a long line circling the building, so we decided to skip the documents and try one more stop before lunch.The Natural History Museum was close by and was interesting enough, but we started to grow tired of the endless stream of grade schoolers running around.  But before leaving, we did have a chance to go back in time and see what we would have looked like a few hundred thousand years ago.

We walked to a Thai place for lunch not far from the national mall.  Funny enough, it was right in the middle of 'China Town.'  After eating, we walked back to try out the American History Museum.  Again, it was an interesting place, but the kids were draining and we were starting to reach an information overload and got out of there shortly.

It was probably around 4:00 in the afternoon and we realized that our chances of finding attractions that did not attract the thousands of out-of-schoolers in town would be slim. So, we decided instead to do a sort of a date night - heading out to catch "The Hangover 2" at the downtown movie theater.

On Wednesday morning, we got an early start with a jog down the National Mall and then headed out toward Baltimore.We made a couple of stops on the way out, including at this Walmart to cook breakfast in the parking lot.