Saturday, March 31, 2012

Day 60: C&O Canal Trail

Today we rode bikes! They are so fast! We easily covered more ground today than we would have in two long days of walking.

Tonight we are camped in a hiker/biker site along the Potomac River near Point of Rocks, MD. We've seen more users along this trail in two days than we did in more than a month of walking the Natchez Trace. Although it has been nice to have company along the trail, we've missed the relative emptiness and solace that we experienced along the Trace.

We'll get into details about our bike gear and everything in a few days after we get back into the swing of things. In the meantime, we're taking it easy these first few days until we get our biking legs about us.

Photos today: sunset at last night's campground and the Monocracy Aqueduct, which is how the water filled canal crossed over the Monocracy River (a bridge of water for boats!). There's no water in it now, so we crossed right on top!

Friday, March 30, 2012

Day 59: Escape from DC

Man, what a day. For as much as we wanted to leave DC, DC sure didn't seem like it wanted us to leave. However, after struggling with last minute gear purchases, wrong turns onto busy roads, and a ridiculous subway ride, we made it to the C&O Canal Trail.

As you may have gathered from yesterday's post, we bought bikes. So in two hours today, we traveled what walking would have taken us the entire day. Although this latest chapter is quite a change from our original plan, we are excited about some of the opportunities it will afford. We do not know quite yet where our bikes will take us, but we do know a lot of options will be open to us.

In the meantime, stay tuned for our new bike adventure!

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Day 58: Video!

Okay, so we made a little video about the next bit of our trip... Can't figure out how to load it here with the fancy-pants iPhone, so for those of you who are friends with Jen on Facebook, go ahead and pop over to my profile page for the latest!

Otherwise, it's late, we are exhausted, so we will update soon! Here's a little photo to intrigue you for now...

Monday, March 26, 2012

Day 53-55: Washington, DC

Sorry for the lack of blog posts over the past few days!

Here's a quick recap of our weekend... On Saturday we visited the American history museum, where we saw the original star spangled banner! It was so delicate looking, it's amazing that it ever survived to today. There was also a really cool exhibit called "America Moves" about transportation through the history of our country. Neat stuff. We spent about 4 hours at the museum, and we didn't even make it through each exhibit.

After the museum, we hopped on the metro and rode into a cool DC neighborhood where we met up with our good friend Steph! Steph was up in DC for the weekend visiting a friend, and we were fortunate enough to be able to nab her for a few hours to catch up :)

On Sunday, we went to the Holocaust Museum. This museum is one of the most amazing ones we have ever been to. This was Jen's third visit and Chris's second, and it is equally as powerful as it was the first time. The exhibits are extremely well put together, and we saw an excellent special exhibit about Nazi propaganda that was really interesting.

Today we went to the National Archives and saw the original Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Then we visited the Air and Space Museum, where we saw the original Wright Flyer, a WWII airplane exhibit, and a space race exhibit. Chris was geeking out over all of the airplanes and impressed Jen with his aircraft naming abilities! We walked over to the WWII memorial and then called it a day.

Photos today: WWII memorial, outside of the Archives building, the Air and Space Museum, and the last of the cherry blossoms falling on someone's car.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Day 52: Washington, DC

Today was a hot and sunny day, and since the forecast this weekend looks rather wet we took advantage of the weather to do some outdoor memorials.

First we rode the metro to Arlington Cemetery and saw the changing of the guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then we headed to the Mall to see the Lincoln Monument, the Vietnam Memorial, the MLK Jr memorial, and the FDR memorial. The last two are relatively new, so neither of us had seen these before. We were pretty beat after walking around in the sun all day, so we saved the WWII memorial for another day.

We forgot to mention a couple of things yesterday! The first is that Chris would like to express how bummed he is that Tim Tebow was traded to the Jets. Now Chris has the tough decision of whether he should still root for the Broncos or switch allegiances to the Jets. Of course, Jen thinks he should jump ship entirely and come on board with the Steelers. The other bit of news we forgot to mention is that we get to have Easter with family! Chris's Dad and Stepmom are flying out this direction in time for Easter, and we are excited to be able to see family during that time!

Photos today include the DC metro, the Lincoln monument, the Vietnam memorial, Arlington Cemetery and the Mall.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Day 51: Washington, DC

Today wasn't a photo heavy day, but it was a fun one. We rode the metro into town and stopped off at a Starbucks before heading into the Museum of Natural History. At the Starbucks, we noticed a guy wearing a shirt that read "walk across America", so we asked him about it. Turns out, this guy Alan has been walking across the US to raise money for cancer research. He started in San Francisco and will finish in New York City- so he's almost done! His blog is www.alanwalksamerica.com if any of you are interested.

The Museum of Natural History was great! Again, there were so many people that it was overwhelming at times, but it was good to see people out and about and taking advantage of the museums. We still can't get over the fact that they are free! Anyway, Chris really enjoyed the climate and earth sciences portions, while Jen liked the dinosaurs and ocean exhibits. There was also a very compelling exhibit about the Chilean miners who were trapped in the mine for over two months before being rescued.

The only photo for today is one that captures a recurring theme here: the Segway... For people who don't like to walk.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Day 50: Washington, DC

We've been taking our time here in DC so far. We've each been here several times, but neither of us has really seen the historic sites and museums thoroughly. We have a whole list of things we'd like to see here, and we are gradually checking them off.

Today we did a tour of the Capitol building. There were over 10,000 people signed up for tours today, so it was super crowded! Unfortunately, the tour didn't last nearly as long as we would have liked, but we were able to see a lot of interesting sites within the building. We did go into the rotunda, the ceiling if which is shown in several photos. We tended to take photos of the ceilings instead of the overall rooms - there were just so many people!

After the Capitol tour, we walked through the underground tunnel to the Library of Congress. Again, the architecture was beautiful and the attention to detail was incredible. The photos of the brightly colored ceilings were in the Library of Congress.

Tomorrow's lineup includes the. Arlington Cemetery and one of the museums - perhaps the Air and Space Museum. There is just so much to see that we can hardly decide what to do next... Does anyone who's reading this (IS anyone reading this?!) have a DC favorite, museums or otherwise?

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Day 48 & 49: Washington, DC

On Sunday evening we left Savannah to arrive in DC on Monday morning. Our previous experiences actually riding on the ol' Dog (minus the time spent inside the terminals) have been alright. But, we boarded an already packed ride, so we couldn't sit together for the first 10 hours. Bummer. Also, we had two lovely layovers, and spent almost 2 hours in both Fayetteville, NC and in Richmond, VA. Oh well, we arrived in one piece on Monday morning but were so exhausted that all we managed to do was walk to the metro, walk about 1.5 miles to the campground, and walk to the grocery store and back.

Today was a much more enjoyable day. We ventured into town and explored the National Mall a bit before walking through all of the cherry trees in full bloom and heading over to the Jefferson Memorial. Chris is not feeling too well today, so after walking around a little bit more we called it a day.

Day 46 & 47: Savannah, Georgia

We had a great weekend in Savannah! We stayed with Lise, who we met about a year ago when we swung through Savannah on a winter break road trip. Funny story, Lise is actually the sister of a girl who is married to a guy whose dad was the first boss Chris had when we moved to Utah on 2007. Crazy, huh?

On Friday we drove over to Tybee Island and saw the beach and ate delicious food right along the water.

Saturday was St. Patrick's Day. Savannah boasts one of the largest St. Patty's Day parades, with about 15,000 people participating in the parade itself. That means hundreds of thousands of spectators, so needless to say things got a bit rowdy. However, Lise and many of her good friends are musicians who know the local bar/restaurant owners, so we had the VIP hookup and saw the spectacle from a much more civilized angle on a second floor balcony.

On Sunday we took it easy and went for a little stroll around town before saying goodbye to Savannah.

Also, I had written a bunch more about Savannah, but the iPhone gobbled it up! So I apologize if this post sounds like a laundry list of events, but my blogging spirit was low after a failed post :(