Washington DC (Stop #4)

We headed to our final spot on Wednesday after leaving the beach and riding the ferry.  It was a decent drive, but it was congested going out of the city.  Our hotel was in a good spot near the National Mall; Jeremy does a great job finding good places to stay. 

That night, we decided to jump on the DC Circulator bus, which runs a free bus route to all major stops around the National Mall.  We headed to see some of the monuments when the sun wouldn’t be pounding down on us.  We got off at the Washington Monument and took a picture.

We hopped back on the bus and bypassed some of my favorites – FDR and Jefferson and MLK – to head to Lincoln, a pretty cool one, too!  It was beautiful and the lighting was amazing for looking at the Washington monument from a distance. 

        

Also, there was a small church group singing hymns inside of the Lincoln Monument.  It sounded pretty cool. 

  

DC Mileage day 1: 2.8 miles

Day 2 started off early for me.  I wanted to get in line for (free) tickets to a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.  This is where they make all our bills; the coins are made at mints.  I stood in line with a pretty funny nine-year-old and his mom who helped time pass quickly.  I made it back by about 8:45, at breakfast with everyone, took a quick shower, and then we headed back that direction for our 10:15 tour.  It was pretty neat to see and hear about the process of making money.  We learned a lot of things, but one that surprised us was it takes a 10 year apprenticeship to learn how to make the plates for the engraving.  And each person only specializes in a small part of the engraving, so that no one person knows how to do the entire bill. 

From there, we went to the American History Museum.  Some interesting stuff here.  Batmobile, First Ladies Inauguration dresses, and (obviously) a lot more. 

    

We moved on quickly to the Natural History Museum.  The girls were more interested in this one.  If we hadn’t been so tired (or rushed) we could have stayed here a long time.  We saw the famous gigantic elephant, the Hope diamond, a few living creatures, a lot of stuffed ones, and an overload of written information.  It was pretty cool.

    

We headed quickly to the Capitol building.  We had arranged for a 2pm tour through Anthony Gonzalez’s office (our representative).  We piled down some food and pretty much ran to his office to make it on time.

    

The tour was given by a junior from Ohio State (an intern) from Wooster.  It was interesting seeing all the old locations where the Senate, the Justices, and the Representatives had met before they added more space. 

    

There was a chandelier with 4,000 crystals that Jackie O had purchased from a church auction in her time.  Can you imagine cleaning that?

There was a mural in one dome.  You can see George Washington in the blue robe.

Then, we waited to go watch the House of Representatives in session.  It was more interesting that I expected.  Very formal format.

Afterwards, we went to a real ice cream truck to get some sno cones.  It was so hot and humid! 

    

We were going to try to get to the White House, but a incoming thunderstorms detoured us back to the hotel.  The girls were glad about this; they were exhausted. Jeremy went out and brought supper back to us.  After eating we headed to the much anticipated pool.  It was fantastic… for the first 30 minutes.  Then, there were multiple groups of girls that started coming in.  The pool was small.  It was inside.  They were screaming like girls do.  It was overwhelming.

    

Eventually, we called it a night and left the pool to them.  It was enough anyways.

DC Mileage day 2: 9.8 miles (13.3 for me with my walk to get tickets!)

Last day of vacation, we headed to the National Zoo. 

Ellie loves the panda, and they have one… or a few.  The Zoo only has 67 parking spots, and had we gone a different day we would have taken the metro, but because we were leaving after that, we decided to drive.  It is tricky finding a spot, but Jeremy found one he could reserve at a nearby hotel parking garage.  We enjoyed seeing many animals, the naked mole rat tunnels and a tri-color squirrel,

    

but the most unique was the panda.  You can’t see these at many zoos, so that is why it is worth it to go here.

    

We tromped back out of the zoo, climbed our tired feet and sweaty bodies back into the van, and took off through some sloooow traffic home.  We made it by 9:30pm to our clean house and happy dog.

DC Mileage day 3: 5.1 miles

Trip stats: 10 days, 2 countries, 9 states, 4 destinations, 24+ hours of driving, 51 miles of walking, over 550 pictures, and 100s more memories

Cape May (Stop #3)

We had about a 3 hour drive from NYC to Cape May, New Jersey.  We stopped for supper and groceries before finding our lodging.  The girls were very excited when we rolled into Colton Court Motor Inn.  We unloaded the car and changed directly into their suits.  Although it was already 7, we knew from past experience you can’t go to the beach and not expect to get wet. 

    

They loved it.  You could see the freedom of the open ocean and beach unleashed in them after being tied to our hips in the city. 

    

We called it a night as the sun was setting and headed back to settle in at the room. 
Mileage day 1: minimal (2 miles in NYC)
The next morning, they slept – pretty late, if I remember right.  It was our “worst” day for the beach; meaning, it was only going to be upper 70s with a chance of rain.  They put on their suits anyway and headed to the beach.  I went with them, and Jeremy went to the laundry mat to wash some clothes for us.  While they skipped around in the ocean and played in the sand, I wrapped up in a towel and read a little.  The beach was basically deserted, not many dared to come.  There were some sprinkles that fell. 

  

After almost 2 hours, we headed back to the motel, jumped in the pool briefly before more sprinkles came, and headed in for lunch.  After lunch, we decided that shopping might be a better option than the beach.  So, we joined all the other people and went in and out of shops to see if there were any treasures to be found.  We had lobster and shrimp rolls at a local cafe. 

              

That evening, the skies cleared off.  We decided it would be a good night for Sunset Beach.  It was beautiful.  We captured the sun. 

                 

And had an impromptu close up photo shoot.  Just Madison…

   

Just Ellie…
        
Together….

      

Mileage day 2: minimal
Day 3 donned with sunshine and warm temperatures.  It was beautiful  It was perfect for the beach.  While many others agreed with us, it never felt overly crowded on the beach.  We headed down the beach a little ways toward a little jetty.  The waves were a little calmer there.  They played in the waves, built sand castles, hopped in the pool, and took an afternoon inside break. We realized that we enjoyed low tide waves and ocean to the high tide that was rolling in all afternoon filled with more sand in the waves that stung a bit. 

         

Mileage day 3: minimal
Day 4 was our last day.  We spotted dolphins in the ocean from outside our door.  (not sharks!)

We had a morning – with low tide! We went to a cove to enjoy the last hour of beach fun.  We could walk out a long way, and the waves were never overwhelming.  It was hard to walk away, but our check-out time was quickly approaching.

                   

We checked out at 11am.  And we headed to eat before catching the ferry from Cape May to Lewes at 1pm. 
The ferry was a good way to go.  It was 1-1/2 hours of being able to walk around instead of sitting in the car. 

          

There were about 3 hours after that to get into Washington DC.