My mom is a member of the National Educators Association and got sponsored to attend their convention in Washington DC. She had already invited my sister Jennifer to tag along, and asked if my family and I would like to join them. The circumstances and timing worked out reasonably well and we decided it was a good opportunity to take a vacation.
Mom and Jennifer arrived at our house in the evening on Tuesday, June 26. They boys spent the next day playing with their Grandma and I took advantage of the babysitting to run some last minute errands. Matthew took Hyrum to his last swimming class on Thursday morning, and we left for DC after lunch. We borrowed a portable DVD player since I couldn't find ours (I think it actually broke and got thrown away) and after napping for a while, the boys watched The Lion King. We stayed the night at a motel in Pittsburgh, and I'm pretty sure the boys thought it was just about the coolest thing they had ever experienced. It was a fairly rough night. Four adults and two young kids in a single room after several hours of driving is not exactly the ideal recipe for a good night's sleep, but we did get some rest and were able to bathe. After a quick continental breakfast, we were back on the road around 10am.
I thought Ohio was beautiful, and Pennsylvania breathtaking. The scenery was stunning and we got to drive along some really gorgeous roads. It was lovely, but much more hilly than we expected and our car struggled a bit with many of the steeper slopes. The boys watched He-Man while Matthew drove and I took in the view. We took a break at a rest stop somewhere in West Virginia (I think). There was a pedestrian bridge across the highway and stairs you could climb to get a good look at the cross sections cut in the mountain.
We drove into DC around 4pm. I was at the wheel this time, which was poor planning on my part because I do not enjoy driving in the city and get especially stressed in traffic. There are some interesting rules of the road in downtown DC (like lanes that are used for both parking and driving at the same time, and lanes that change direction based on time of day) which I'm sure follow some sort of logic and are perfectly navigable by local professionals. I missed the quick turn into our Hotel on Connecticut Avenue and had to drive around narrow, one way streets for 10 minutes before finally pulling in and handing the keys over to the valet. We quickly got settled, and walked a couple blocks down the road and had dinner at Subway. It was hot and we were all tired, so not much else happened that day.
No comments:
Post a Comment