Final Days in DC...and Back to Belmont Bay Marina

Day #371; Loop Miles to Date = 3,541

Washington, DC was terrific, but honestly, we were ready to move along after the 4th. We walked our legs off for 2 weeks, saw some amazing sights, spent quality time with good friends, and generally had a fantastic time. In the final segment of our stay here, we added these to our list of sights seen:

• National Botanic Garden
• American Indian History Museum
• Smithsonian Air & Space Museum
• Union Station
• The Holocaust Museum

Sandy ventured off one morning on her own to tour the Botanic Garden and the American Indian Museum...and saw some absolutely stunning flowers in the garden. Here is just a sample of the many beautiful plants that were there.

 

One disappointment was that we were unable to hook up with a fraternity brother of Rob's (Jeff) for the fireworks on the 4th as we had hoped and planned. The weather took a miserable turn on the 4th, and it just did not make good sense for him to fight the crowds/traffic, waste an expensive hotel stay, and risk not seeing any of the fireworks in the event they were canceled. As it turned out, the fireworks did occur, but our anticipated perfect view was partially blocked by the very low cloud cover. So, we only saw about the lower 1/2 of the display. In the end...a good decision for him not to make the effort. The good news is that we will have ample chances to get together another time while we are in the upper Bay region.

We also had fun one day when we decided to just jump on the train and find our way to Union Station. There was a Metro stop just a couple of blocks from the Marina, and we only needed one transfer to find our way. Lots of shops in the station, and the station itself is a magnificent building. Not too many pictures here, but we had a fun and relaxing outing (more or less away from most of the tourist crowds).

Our vantage point at the Capitol Yacht Club on the Washington Channel (just off the Potomac) allowed us to see first hand the amount of overhead security that occurs over the Capitol. The area where we were is closed to private and commercial air traffic, and open only to authorized security and government aircraft. We are pretty sure that we saw the President being shuttled back and forth a few times, mostly because we saw 3 USA helicopters in formation, which is supposed to be how they travel.

However, we also learned that there are plenty of practice runs flown in addition to actual shuttle runs. There is an enormous amount of helicopter traffic...on the order of 50+ helicopters per day were flying over us at all hours. Here is a sampling of the variety that we saw:


DC Metro Police

US Park Police

United States of America

This guy was looking right at us!

Here are the 3 USA helicopters flying in formation.

US Coast Guard

These guys went right by us a couple of times a day. Yes, that's a pretty big gun on the bow...

 And so now we are off again. Our friends on Act lll left DC yesterday, and our friends on Corkscrew are staying in DC for about another week. We are off on our own for awhile, and very much looking forward to seeing some of Rob's family as we make our way north on the Chesapeake Bay. For the next week or so, we will be re-tracing our some of our recent steps, but we'll be checking out plenty of new spots for the rest of the summer on the Chesapeake. Bring on the heat!