Resilience and Beauty

We started the long drive back home around 8:00AM this morning. By 9:30AM, we reached the Mono Lake Vista Point and hopped out of the car to take some photos.

Like a Rolling Stone

We arrived home from DC on Wednesday night. Not being ones to gather moss, we were on the road again less than 36 hours later for a quick weekend trip up US-395N to the Lake Tahoe area for the wedding of our friends' son.

This is what ChatGPT gave me when I asked for a rolling stone with no moss 🤣

The Votes Are In!

We had a lot of fun in the DMV over the past nine days! Here are the highlights that marked our ballots...

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Since we had time before our flight home later today, we decided to pad our stamp stats with a re-visit to Manassas National Battlefield Park. But we took a slightly longer route to get there via VA-28 and VA-234 so that we could check off two more municipalities, Manassas and Manassas Park (see my earlier post on collecting counties).

40 miles, 1 hour

Around the Beltway

For our penultimate day in the DMV, we planned to visit four parks in both Maryland and DC proper. Two of them are official units in the National Park System, and two are managed as part of the National Capital Parks unit. Because our first stop was in Maryland on the opposite side of DC, we decided to drive a clockwise loop around the Beltway (I-495), getting a little later start than usual to avoid morning commuter traffic.

80 miles, 2 hours

Pick Your Battles

To date, we haven't traveled very much in this part of the United States. Aside from visiting Manassas National Battlefield Park with the family in 2010 and Monocacy National Battlefield while on solo business trips in 2017 and 2022, our NPS checklist is missing a lot of units interpreting sites from the eastern theater of the Civil War. (Gettysburg really needs a re-visit because I was in grade school, and the cyclorama is the only thing I vaguely recall.) Needless to say, I was looking forward to today's first stop: Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park! 

Thought this was R's 200th unit, but I miscounted! Doh.

Sunday Drive

This morning we checked out of our hotel in downtown DC and took I-395 S to I-695 E across the Anacostia River to I-295 S. Once we entered Maryland, we continued south on MD-210 to our first destination of the day, Fort Washington Park. This checks off my 200th park visited, and it just so happens to be celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. How cool is that?!

200th for #200!

Girl Power

The first item on today's itinerary was the 10:00AM ranger-led tour of Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument. So after grabbing breakfast from the lobby this morning, we walked a few blocks east to the Metrobus stop at New Jersey Ave NW & K St NW and rode the 96 Capitol Heights bus past Union Station to Massachusetts Ave NE & 2 St NE (5 stops). It was a short walk south to Belmont-Paul (0.2 mile). 

☑ Unit #198

We're Going on a Stamp Hunt

Because the K St NW & 4 St NW stop was right across the street from our hotel, we started our day riding the P6 Metrobus this morning. We had already loaded SmarTrip cards onto our phones, so it was super easy to "tap to pay" when we boarded. Four stops later, we hopped off at 11th St NW & F St NW and walked the rest of the way, passing by the statue of Revolutionary War hero Brigadier General Casimir Pulaski on the eastern side of Freedom Plaza.

The stone pavers represent a map of Washington, DC

Monuments by Moonlight

Our hotel is on the corner of K Street and 4th Street NW in Mount Vernon Triangle, which I had read was a safe neighborhood. So it was a little disconcerting to hear a woman screaming from the street below when we were upstairs this afternoon. We found out from the front desk that someone had snatched her purse/bags while she was on the sidewalk nearby. Needless to say, that made us rethink our plans to walk the 0.75 miles to Union Station this evening and called a cab instead.

We grabbed a quick dinner from Raising Cane's inside Union Station before the 7:00PM check in for the Monuments by Moonlight Tour that we had reserved with Old Town Trolley Tours. Here's the view we had looking southwest at Columbus Circle and the Capitol while we waited to board the trolley...

The Freedom Bell is a double-scale replica of the Liberty Bell

We're Golden

Thanks to the National Park Travelers Club, I found out about another website which allows you to keep track of the counties you've visited. While I'm not as die-hard as my some of my fellow NPTCers when it comes to county collecting, it is a fun way to see where we've been. In Virginia there are 38 municipalities that are independent cities which are not under the jurisdiction of any county, so those are slightly harder to get. Having already "counted" Fairfax and Alexandria so far on this trip, we took a small detour through Falls Church this morning so that I could mark it off on our county map.

Really, it was on the way...

Ok, so maybe I *might* have a problem... 

Today's route: 30 miles

By George

The first stop on our tour of the DMV was Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, VA. Although the performance season ended in September, we were still able to access the park and hike the grounds this morning.

☑ Unit #191

Going to the DMV

Our Wagons Ho! road trip in May allowed us to make some significant progress towards our amended goal of earning the Gold Master Traveler Award from the National Park Travelers Club in 2024.

 

    Units: 36 (minimum 50)

    Stamps: 83 (minimum 100)

    Regions: 4 (minimum 6)

And now that we have visited 190 National Park Service units (184 for R, technically), the 200-unit Silver Lifetime Achievement Award is also within reach. So, this trip to the DMV (DC-MD-VA) will put us over the top for both! 🙌