Friday was our last day in Washington DC. Laela and I got up early, went downstairs and had breakfast by ourselves while we let Miranda sleep. It waas nice to sneak away for a couple of minutes on our own. It was one of the few times that Miranda's habit of sleeping late didn't drive me bat sh!t crazy. We got French Toast take out and delivered it to Miranda so she could have breakfast too. We packed up the room and had the hotel come get the bags and bring the car around. We hopped in and started making our way towards our last Washington, DC site: The Arlington National Cemetery.
Getting to the Arlington National Cemetery required us to travel the DC streets in a direction we hadn't gone before. One would think that when the United States declared it's independence from Great Britain that we'd have have left some of their more stupid ideas on the other side of the pond. Case in point....roundabouts. Roundabouts are the absolute stupidest means of traffic control for more than six simultaneous cars ever created. We had to pass through four of them before we got across the river into Arlington, VA. Fortunately I was was able to successfully navigate all of them but the other drivers had a little more trouble. Accidents were avoided.
Once we made it to the cemetery, we set out on foot. Let me state for the record that I'm glad we only had one activity today because it was super hot. Our car's outside temperature thermometer actually hit 103 at one point today. We didn't know what to expect or have a real plan. We walked through the visitors center and then onto the footpaths. We visited the Kennedy Eternal Flame, saw the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier, visited the Arlington House, the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia memorials. It's tough to put into words the patriotic feelings that swell while walking through the cemetery and the profound respect and honor for all of those who have paid the ultimate price for defending the freedom of the United States.
I had the foresight to program our into the GPS destination before we left so that was helpful because we didn't have to give AT&T Navigator ten minutes to figure out where it was. So we left Arlington and proceeded onto I-95. I thought I was doing great. The traffic was kind of slow and the highway split into carpool lanes and normal lanes. The car pool lanes seemed to be going much slower so I didn't even bother to try to get over to them. I stayed on the "normal" lanes. I was passing all kind of cars in the HOV lane and was getting a little smug about it. Big mistake. Before I knew it we were stuck in a huge gridlock and what should have been a quick two and a half hour jaunt ended up turning into a five hour ordeal. About two and a half hours in my nerves were frazzled and Miranda was hungry so we got off the highway for a quick bite to eat. We stopped at McDonald's and went inside. After a quick meal we were starting to head back out onto the highway when Laela spied a Border's Book store. Surprisingly, Miranda has been reading quite a bit and had exhausted her literary supply. So we stopped and got her restocked. I got quite tired after eating so I relinquished the wheel to Laela and she guided us safely to our hotel in Williamsburg, VA.
We got into the Holiday Inn, got our stuff settled, and then went across the street to the 7-11. DC had been so go go go, that I wanted to have a couple of beers tonight and then enjoy the hotel's hot tub and swimming pool. That's exactly what I did. Laela, Miranda, and I went down to the pool around 9:00 and stayed until a little after 10:00. So here I am, cranking out today's blog entry and getting ready to go to bed. Forecast calls for 106 at 3:00PM tomorrow (feels like 116), so it's going to be a long day trudging around Busch Gardens.
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