Day 130 Elizabethtown Pennsylvania Wahsington DC
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
137
205
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Washington DC,
District of Columbia,
United States
Saturday, September 13, 2008
We are quite practiced in having breakfast and then getting rolling. Gee we wonder why? J
The track we chose took us up towards Harrison (The capitol of Pennsylvania) and then skirted down around Baltimore. We asked Mandy to take us to a Super Wal Mart on our way, good old Mandy, managed to take us to a Wal Mart, but not a super one. Oh well we stock up as best we can and find a grocery store around the corner to finish off. We did manage to obtain some pictures; we hope to post in the next couple of days.
We head away to our target RV park, Another KOA near Washington DC.
We arrived at around 1:30pm and checked in, the site we were given was not a real good site (read unlevel and tight) so we chose to ask for a better site and also take a trip into the Capitol city of this Nation. We were relocated to a more convenient site and then headed out with the instructions to the rail station to catch the metro system into the city.
No big deal until we reach the car park of the station, it has barrier arms across the entry and being a Saturday there is no cost to parking, the barrier went up ok, BUT, yes a big BUT, it didn't quite lift clear enough for The Castle to pass through.
Earnie had to hop out of the Castle and give the arm a little assistance to stand up straight and salute us correctly so we could pass through.
We parked the Castle and headed to the metro, we have done this before so no big deal! Right! Except the ticket machine was a little difficult to follow and wanted to charge us more than our expected fare cost!
We played with this for a while and noticed a guy checking the tickets etc, so asked for assistance, the problem was a simple button to reduce the amount you spend. Gee another different way to perceive ways of doing simple tasks!
We hop on the next train, again the system works well for us and appears to be regular and clean and easy to understand (NOT the announcements), this was a Saturday and they were running around every 15 mins, a good service.
We hop off the train at the Smithsonian stop and climb up to what is called The Mall.
This is a walkway and avenues of trees, flanked by the Smithsonian museums. We were a little late arriving in the city (by this time it was 4pm) but our task was to sort out the transport system for our onslaught of the tourist destinations over the next couple of days.
We crossed the road to begin our museum search, the first being art was bypassed, the next was from the road, a simple looking rotunda, we walked in and bags are checked, then down some steps to find it opened up to three levels underground, amazing!
They had a Jim Henson display of his work and the development of the Muppets, Rick being a Muppet fan, was wrapped, the displays of his notes and early artwork and Kermit sitting in a glass case to greet us with other characters also on display, in a lot of corners were TV's running with various shows running, as well as a section for kids to play with the puppets that showed up on a small TV screen they could watch. What a lot of fun, the other travellers grabbed Rick so we could make some progress through some more museums before they closed at 5:30pm.
We found ourselves in a museum of African art, but decided to find our way back to the surface.
We came to the surface further down the Mall than we entered and chose to head into an unusual building built up in the air on concrete, it is the sculpture museum, lo and behold, Earnie showed some hidden talent in this museum, he managed to name (sometimes correctly) some of the funny looking objects, we reckon he will be very busy in his shed when he gets home, using his creative talents to recycle some of the wonderful artefacts he has gathered over many years!
We headed out of there and found ourselves in a structure built like a castle and within the walls are many and varied objects as would be gathered for walls in a castle but relating to the USA.
Moving on we tracked ourselves to the Air & Space Museum, by this time we are pushing for time simply because the museums close at 5:30pm, we managed a very short walk through this museum and eyed the Imax theatre options, this was similar to allowing the boys into an ice cream shop but telling them to wait until tomorrow before they are allowed one. A couple of truculent boys left the museum, we then walked up to Capitol hill to view the building as well as the statues at the entrance at the steps. The monuments are of General Grant and flanked by two statues of the Union soldiers and horses pulling a canon through the battlefield, quite a timely portrayal for us considering we have just experienced Gettysburg.
We walked down the opposite side of the tree lined mall heading back to the Metro, on our way we encountered the Washington DC police in action. Earlier we had heard a lot of sirens and observed the flashing lights, but as everyone knows, you become immune to that noise a little, especially in the cities we have visited, maybe a little sad, but true!
Well about halfway back to the Metro station the police had set up an exclusion zone in the middle of the park of around 150 metres, this included, the pathways blocked by police cars with lights flashing, the entrance to a bisecting path blocked with cars, a mounted policeman patrolling.
In the centre of this excitement was, what appeared to us from the distance, a homeless man with his shopping trolley of his worldly possessions, being searched by a solitary policeman. Wow! what did he have in the shopping trolley? We will never know, we continued walking through the many people watching and talking on cell phones, reporting eyewitness stuff to "whoever they considered should be aware of this happening"
The Aussie Travellers kept walking with the occasional glance back, (Heeding fireman Earnie's warning about the high crime rate in Washington,) the searcher had finished throwing the possessions onto the ground and was proceeding to remove what appeared to be wads of news paper from the person's body (most likely his insulation cover for his night's sleep).
We found our metro station and had around a 15 min wait for our train, hopped on and returned to the Castle.
The exit from the parking was a tight squeeze, but we managed without any damage, headed home and chose to stop off on the way to re-stock the alcohol levels in the Castle and have a meal in the Chinese buffet, (it was getting late) we will not return to that particular Chinese shop, but suffice to say it filled a gap, and allowed us to eat before 8:45pm.
Home and into our spot for the night, late, tired but deciding to spend another two or three days in Washington.
