Our Nations Capitol

This past weekend we took a trip to Washington, D.C. The kids have never been down there and we thought they should experience this important destination.  We did not travel in the camper this time since we were only spending one night.  We found a hotel in Gaithersburg, MD for only $67 for the night.  They had a pool, fitness area, and hot breakfast in the morning!  For a family of 5, we couldn't beat it.

We left home around 8:15 am and got down to the city around 10:30.  We thought we had everything planned out until we actually got there.  I used an awesome parking app on my phone to show me all the parking garages in and around where we were going.  I used google maps to get us to the $11/day parking garage only to find out that it had a clearance of 6'2"!  We drove down in our van which had our bike rack on top and left us sitting at the entrance pondering what to do next.  After driving around to every parking garage in the area and learning that D.C. was designed to accommodate the compact car, we started looking for street parking.  

We finally found a metered space directly across from the Air and Space Museum.  So, by 11am we were situated and off to our first destination!

The museum was amazing!  It's been years since I've been there myself and it was incredible to see how technology has changed and how far our country has come.  My favorite area was the section dedicated to WWII.  My pappy was a gunner in the ball touret of the plane during the war, so I grew up hearing his stories.  It's been 5 years since he passed and visiting this section brought all those stories to life for me once again.

After we left the museum, we had to situate our van again.  Dave spent 15 minutes removing the rack from the van so we would fit in one of the garages.  We learned a very valuable lesson about the parking garages that day.  The cheap garages are $11 because you turn your key and car over to the attendant and they park it for you!  This was not an option because we had not been to the hotel and had all our belongings still with us. We finally found a garage on 6th and E streets for $20 and it was a self park!  It only took us an hour!!!!  So, by 2pm we were ready to head to our second destination...the Capitol.

We walked several blocks to get to the capitol and then realized the visitors center was on the other side and across a parking lot.  I must say, it was one of the coolest things we've done.  I don't ever remember touring our nations capitol and it is well worth it!  There are no fees to do the tour.  You watch a 15 minute introductory movie and then the tour is about a half hour.  Walking into the rotunda is breath-taking.  The fresco on the dome is just beautiful and the 2-D painting surrounding it is gorgeous.  I was so impressed with Camden and how many statues of our famous leaders he recognized!  Yeah for K12's history program!

 After the capitol, we walked back down toward the National Archives.  I was hoping to see them before the museums closed for the day.  We got there is time, but there was a 20 minute line that looked more like a 2 hour line so we left.  The kids were hungry since we totally forgot to eat lunch in the midst of our adventure.

The kids had their first experience in a Hard Rock Cafe!  They completely loved it as I knew they would.  My kids love all kinds of music so it was the perfect place for them to kick back and relax after a crazy day.  We got awesome sandwiches and watched awesome music videos from the 80's.  I can't lie, I loved it too!  So that concluded the day in the city.  We drove to our hotel and got settled.  We hung out in the hot tub and pool and got ice cream for dessert.  It was a great day!

On Sunday, we got up and had our yummy breakfast at the hotel.  We had all the parts to make our own egg mcmuffins!  We worked out in the exercise room and packed up to head out for our next adventure. 

We visited Great Falls National Park in both Maryland and Virginia.  If you haven't been there, it's a must see!  The falls are beautiful, but the entire area is packed with history and beauty.  You can see the canal and lock system that use to exist to move goods up the Potomac.  It is truly a visual treasure and our pictures don't begin to do it justice.

 Finally, if you noticed in most of our pictures there is a colorful monkey, it is not by accident.  This is Matisse and he will be joining us on all our trips.  Lauryl is in charge of our little friend.  So remember to look close and see if you find Matisse in the mix.

Stay tuned for a few more local adventures in March and then it's off to Florida to experience some of the south!

The First Trip

After a few weeks of living in our camper, we decided to take our first trip.  We traveled over to Gettysburg and stayed at Roundtop Campground.  It was a great learning experience for us.  We were only an hour from home, but we learned so much from the long weekend. 

The first thing we learned is just the basics of pulling into the site.  We not only had to make sure we were close enough to the hook-ups, we had to be far enough away from the tree to open our slide, and perfectly situated on the pad to level the stabilizing jacks.  I think it will become easier as we do this more, but it's stuff we never really thought about.

The next thing we realized is that we could hook up to cable at our site so we needed to buy coax to keep in the camper.  Setting up the camper itself went really well.  The kids worked hard too so things went relatively quick.  We had to pick up some things we forgot to take off the shelves, but nothing breakable.  Thanks to pointers from several friends we anticipated what to pack in bins to travel to prevent any issues.

Finally, we learned what we need for cold weather camping.  We were not totally prepared for the extremely low temperatures over the weekend.  After several trips to Wal-Mart we had all the necessities.  A few unexpected issues, like the battery on the camper dying in the middle of the night, made life interesting.  We had to hook up the truck to keep the camper heated through the night until we could make another trip to Wal-Mart to buy a new battery.

So, it was a great first trip that taught us a lot about our new home.  Aside from the camping experience, we had a wonderful time exploring Gettysburg!  Stay tuned for our next adventure and enjoy the video of trip.