The first three days of the trip was devoted mostly to rest stops and driving to get to D.C. by Friday, Ocotober 15th. We took pictures of flowers and dogs and trees beginning to turn color, and -- finally -- us by the White House.
On Saturday the 16th, we walked to The National Mall (our hotel was around 15th Street and Rhode Island Ave., so it was about a half-mile away), and spent the day in just two museums.
The next day we took an Old Town Trolley tour, intending to loop around the city and see an overview of the sights. We saw the Northwest section of the city on the tour, before they let us off at the Lincoln Memorial . From there we sat the Vietnam Memorial and the World War II Memorial, and . . .
from the WWII Memorial we walked down past the HolocaustMuseum and the Bureau of Engraving, etc., and saw the Jefferson Memorial and the FDR Memorial and then caught a tour bus over to Arlington Cemetery and back to the Lincolm Memorial where we took a tour bus the rest of the way around the South side of The Mall past Capitol Hill to Union Station, and then back West and North to our hotel. Whew!
Today was going to be another museum day. We walked to the Mall, taking pictures on the way (frustrated that we couldn't get near the White House), then along the Mall, past the Smithsonian Castle, to the National Air and Space Museum, and then . . .
. . . walked down to the Hirschorn Gallery, and walked underneath it and through some of the sculpture gardens. We're not big modern art fans, so we kept moving on to the Sackler Gallery, where we saw a lot of exhibits of Eastern Art, and some stuff by Whistler.
So the next three days, we were leaving D.C., driving to Pennsylvania (Lancaster area), arriving in Lancaster, and taking pictures of leaves and pumpkins and gourds and stuff. Around mid-day on the 21st, we headed toward home, driving a couple-hundred miles to Staunton, VA, where we spent the night.
The next day, we headed Southwest through Virginia, thinking we would drive along the Blue Ridge and/or I-81, heading toward Abingdon, VA, our stop for the night, only another couple-hundred miles away. It was foggy on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and there was a massive pileup on I-81, so we shifted back and forth, and ended up in Abingdon after sunset.
The last three days of our trips, we are usually rushing as fast as we can to get through the hot, muggy South. This time, though, we were planning a stop in Birmingham to see friends of ours, Sue Ellen Brown and Don Stewart. We had breakfast with them and their boys, and stopped to see their art studio before we made the final push for home.