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...

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

A Journey of a Thousand Miles...

...begins with a single step.  -Lao Tzu

Or, in this case, a journey of *three* thousand miles begins with a single *park*!

In order to get to our last two stops in Independence, MO before closing time, we had to stick to a tight schedule today. So we said our goodbyes to my parents and were on the road by 7:45AM. 

An hour later, we arrived at Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield. Since we have been here many times before, this was just going to be a "stamp-and-run" stop. But because the visitor center wasn't open yet, we walked over for a selfie in front of the house while we waited.

Escape from New York

To start off our last day in New York City, we walked with MH over to Central Park, stopping by Grabstein's Bagels on the way. We sat on a bench near the East Meadow to enjoy our picks. My toasted bagel with a schmear of cream cheese was sooo good!

From the Seashore to Saint Paul's

Yesterday's festivities didn't end with the reception. The father of the bride convinced R and two other buddies to join him for late night Korean fried chicken at Pelicana Chicken in Bayside (open 'til 2AM!). Guess R and RH thought they could still eat like they did when they were college roommates, which was more than *30* years ago?! 🤣

As much as I would have liked to join them, I stayed behind to finish packing and get some sleep because I knew that we had a lot of driving ahead of us. Even though it's nowhere near the mileage we usually cover on a typical road trip, today would be our longest day in the car on this vacation. 

160 miles

A Day in the City

Our plan for today was to visit the national park units in Manhattan which are only open on the weekends. More accurately, that was *my* agenda. Thankfully, R loves me enough to allow himself to be dragged all over the city in the spirit of checking off boxes and still be a good sport about it. How blessed am I?! He's definitely a keeper!

We were up early and grabbed a quick breakfast in the hotel before driving from Roslyn to the Long Island Rail Road station in Port Washington, where parking in the commuter lot is free on weekends. We hopped onto the 7:40AM train, paid the $9.25 off-peak fare in the MTA Train Time app, and arrived at the Grand Central Madison terminal around 8:30AM. (Alternatively, we could have taken the 8:08AM train, arriving at Penn Station at 8:55AM.)

The Power of Water

To get to Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park from West Orange, the iPhone sent us there via small local roads instead of the Garden State Parkway. I'm usually happy to avoid traffic and tolls, but the problem with blindly following directions on this alternate route was that we didn't see the usual signage directing us to the park as we got closer.  On top of that, the streets of Paterson were super congested with kids getting out of school nearby, so we had a little trouble figuring out exactly where we were supposed to park the car. But after an extra trip around the block, we managed to find a spot in the lot next to Overlook Park.

25 miles

The Wizard of West Orange

After leaving Morristown, it took us about 30 minutes to drive to West Orange, NJ and Thomas Edison National Historical Park. 

☑ #166 of 424 NPS units

While Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph (1877) and incandescent light bulb (1879) in his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, by the mid-1880s his business operations had outgrown the facilities there. He moved his industrial research and development laboratory into the West Orange complex in 1887, a campus ten times the size of Menlo Park. Here, along with his teams of scientists/engineers, he perfected his phonograph, developed motion pictures, and invented many other devices and technologies.

Where America Survived

After we finished our visit at the Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Sites yesterday, we stopped by the Jockey Hollow area of Morristown National Historical Park on the way to our hotel in Parsippany, NJ. 

We arrived about 5:45PM, long after the visitor center closing time of 4:00PM. But since the grounds were open from 8:00AM – 8:00PM, we still had plenty of time to check out the outdoor portions of the park. And we were back again first thing this morning to finish up what we missed, all before the visitor center opened at 10:00AM. How's that for maximum travel efficiency?! 😉 

Ten Crucial Days

When R and I received an invite to the wedding of our close friends' daughter, we decided to tack on some extra days and make a vacation out of it! Working son (M) and college son (J) didn't come with, so just us two empty-nesters flew into Newark yesterday. 

The air quality is so much better than it was a week ago!

Travel tip: Seats 48A/B on a Boeing 777-200 are great because there is no third seat in the row = extra room for economy price!

Divide and Conquer

Wednesday, January 4

Taking advantage of cheaper air fares after the holidays, R and I flew back to Illinois for a welfare check on our folks. But we decided to split up so that we each would get more time with our respective parental unit(s). After the norovirus debacle last year, my secondary objective was to make sure to get some Lou's this trip.

Who cares how cold it is outside when you have hot pizza in your belly?

¡Sí, Se Puede!

After our visit to Lake Mead NRA last month, I was only one unit short of achieving the National Park Travelers Club Bronze Master Traveler Award for 2022. The closest place we could easily drive for a passport stamp to satisfy the requirement was César E. Chávez National Monument in Keene, CA, about two hours away. 

¡Sí, Se Puede!  Yes, we can!

So on my first day of Christmas vacation, my true love came with me on an impromptu road trip!

Be Like Water

Since we didn't walk back for biscuits and gravy at the Stehekin Pastry Company on our last day there, C made us her delicious version for breakfast this morning! What a treat! 

Our agenda for today was to visit a couple places in Seattle. RH, having been baptized into the crazy way we travel, was still willing to tag along with us, but C couldn't go because she had other things she needed to get done today. 

On our way into the city, we stopped by the salmon hatchery in Issaquah. After seeing them in the wild, it was fun to get a closer look at the chinook and coho through the windows of the fish ladder.

Nidoto Nai Yoni

Since it was almost 90 miles to the state capital, we checked out of Lake Quinault Lodge and were on our way well before 8:00AM this morning. It was quite foggy, so we decided to stick to US-101 through Aberdeen instead of the small, winding roads that the navigation apps were trying to kill us on. As we drove, R looked up online reviews of breakfast places along the way - Phoebe's Pastry Café in Olympia got our business because it was open (some places weren't) and pretty close to the capitol. I had a yummy breakfast burrito, and R's bacon and tomato quiche was quite good, too (no pics, sorry!)