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I bet the President never does this much walking...

July 18th - Hershey, PA to Washington, DC Area

It was a long walk, but we finally made it to The Mall.

After a day of small-town fun, it was time to head back to the big city. Originally, we had planned on going into Philadelphia for the morning before heading on to DC. We changed our plans, however, and ended up skipping Philadelphia... I was concerned about how we were going to get around in the city since I had never been there. So we ended up hanging around the Hershey campsite in the morning... the girls slept, Janet did some more laundry, and I took advantage of the high-speed Internet to catch up on this website. We didn't get out of Hershey until almost lunchtime, but we didn't have far to travel, so it wasn't an issue.

The drive into DC was pretty much uneventful (we made a point of avoiding rush hour). After finding our campsite (we stayed at the Bull Run Regional Park campsite... a bit more rustic than the KOAs, but much more scenic), we headed back into some areas more familiar to me (since I used to live there). We did get to see some old friends (Paula and Tom) and then we headed to the Reston Town Center for dinner and a movie. It was a late night, but it was a relaxing late night.

The next morning, we got up and headed into town for a day at The Mall... not a shopping mall, but The Mall where all of the monuments and The Smithsonian are located. Now, I was a bit concerned about where we were going to park. The DC Metropolitan area is really designed for small cars... my Chevy Nova was perfect for this area. So, we hoped to drive to a Metro station, park the camper, and take the Metro into town. Unfortunately, the majority of the parking at the Metro station consisted of garage parking (i.e., 8 ft. height limit), and all of the open parking spaces were already taken.

So, my first backup plan was to drive to Arlington Cemetary and park there (I knew they had a nice, large parking area). However, I have a history of missing the exit for Arlington Cemetary (the whole area confuses me), and sure enough, we passed right by it. My second backup plan was to drive to Pentagon City (this is a shopping mall), park there and take the Metro to the sites. My concern with this plan was that whenever I've gone to Pentagon City, I've parked in a parking garage, and that wouldn't work with the camper. Fortunately, while looking for Pentagon City, we found a tourist info center and they gave a directions back to Arlington Cemetary. It turns out that I haven't been missing the exit for Arlington all these years... there is no exit for Arlington Cemetary off of I66. So, we made it to the Arlington Cemetary parking lot, found a perfect spot for the truck, and began our tour.

Since we were already there, our first stop was Arlington Cemetary. We did our first bit of walking up the hills towards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to watch the changing of the guard. It's a remarkable, solemn, and dignified ceremony that everyone should experience at least once.

I'll finish up this narrative soon....

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