Friday 20 October 2000

Longest drive so far - 280 miles - down to College Park between Baltimore and Washington DC. The I95 which we were on most of the way actually has service stations along it which helped enormously; on all the Interstates we've driven on so far you have to come off and then rejoin them if you want petrol or a cup of coffee.

The campsite - Cherry Hill Park - is enormous, with small individual sites. Ours was supposed to be a pull-through, but it took a bit of shuffling around to get in. It also turned out to be 50 yards from I95, which has unrelenting traffic day and night, but we pretty much got used to the noise after the first night. That's the price you pay for being within Metro range of DC. Good modem facilities, and the office gave us lots of useful info about how to get into Washington, where to go etc. Free cable again - we'll start to get used to this if we're not careful.

Saturday 21 October 2000

Christine a bit poorly, so we had a lie-in. Spent the day in Patuxent Wildlife Park, including a film about woodpeckers and a tram trip round the park. Not a huge amount to see, except for a small basking turtle, a few beaver lodges at a distance ...

... and a lot of trees. Very peaceful though.  Walked round one of the nature trails; it looked autumnal and very English, not at all like the New England fall.

Long chat with the people in the next trailer: a retired lecturer and nurse, formerly from Chicago, once worked in Cambridge (England), currently travelling on the East Coast, and retired in Northern Arkansas.

Sunday 22 October 2000

Booked tickets on the TourMobile - a tram tour of Washington - at the campsite, drove to the Metro station and got the train in. Waited at the TourMobile stop for five minutes until we spotted the small notice advising us that it was cancelled for the day due to a marathon. Never mind; we'll start on the fifteen Smithsonian Museums, all of which are free - a pleasant change from those we've come across so far.

Did the Postal Museum, with not a stamp in sight; walked down the Mall past the Capitol; tried to visit the Botanic Gardens: also shut (until mid-2001); tried to visit the Native American History Museum: building not due for completion until 2002; finally went into the Air and Space Museum which was open! Excellent exhibits, including the original 1903 Wright Flyer  and the claustrophobic capsule in which John Glenn orbited the Earth in 1962 ...

Walked back along the Mall at dusk, with good views of the Capitol ...

... and the Washington monument ...

Washington is a much nicer city then New York. We were very taken with it: little traffic, pleasant people, free museums, attractive architecture and city layout. Highly recommended.

Monday 23 October 2000

Day out at Mount Vernon, George Washington's country estate in Virginia about 25 miles south of Washington. He was always a farmer at heart, so after winning the War of Independence and being president for a bit he went back there and developed innovative agricultural techniques such as a 7-year crop rotation, a circular barn for threshing wheat using horses, and improved seed dispersal machinery. The location on the Potomac River is beautiful ...

... so it's not surprising that he wanted to go back there. He's also buried on the estate; he requested in his will that a new family vault should be built there for him, but it took his descendants 32 years to get round to building it ...

Cooked our first proper meal in the trailer. A bit nervous about making it smell like a restaurant, but the cooker hood coped ok.

Tuesday 24 October 2000

Second day in Washington for more museums. Started with the Art Museum (East Wing), which had a  'Small French Paintings' display comprising excellent works by most of the better impressionists, some of which we knew from books but had never seen. The main exhibit was of Art Nouveau, including the classic Lalique dragonfly and other jewellery, plus furniture, sculpture, paintings, posters, a reproduction Paris Metro station entrance, and one of Charles Rennie Macintosh's Glasgow tearooms..

Went on to the Smithsonian visitor centre, housed in its original building known as the Red Castle. Mr. Smithson was a British philanthropist who had never visited America, but for reasons best known to himself set up a foundation of over half a million pounds for the Institute to be set up in Washington: no mean sum in the early 19th century. The trustees have done a good job over the years, as the various Smithsonian buildings now occupy a large part of the centre of the city and the quality of the exhibits is superb.

Finished off with the Freer Gallery (Eastern Art), and the S. Dillon Ripley Centre (300 Years of Pianos).

Got a takeaway veggie Indian meal at the station food court - our first in America, as they're a bit thin on the ground.

Wednesday 25 October 2000

Got the pickup serviced, then drove to Baltimore after lunch. Very attractive harbour area ...

... not unlike Sydney.

Tried to visit the house where the original Star Spangled Banner was sewn, but it was shut: the story of our lives. Then the Museum of Visionary Art: a glorious place containing superb and disturbing works by loonies of varying type and intensity. An absolute must for all visitors to the city. Great meal of Maryland crab cakes at restaurant overlooking the harbour.

Thursday 26 October 2000

Our third and last day in Washington, and we finally use our TourMobile tickets. Not the best day for it; following several beautiful days, this one was foggy and damp (this has been the driest month in Washington for 37 years). The tour includes Arlington National Cemetery, a vast place mainly comprising war graves. There are about 20 funerals there every day.

Finished off with Thomas Jefferson Library - very impressive architecture, but impossible to hear the tour guide due to excessive echoing in the marble halls - and the Museum of American History, at which we saw the original Star Spangled Banner undergoing restoration. This was not as impressive as it could have been, as they had it turned face down and all we could see was the linen backing. Hadn't realised that large lumps of it had been cut off the end and even out of the middle for souvenirs many years ago, so there's a lot of restoration to be done.

Tomorrow we head for Williamsburg in Virginia, near the site of the first English settlement in the US and the centre of a huge War of Independence tourist industry.