Following a lovely breakfast at our host’s place, we ventured off into the city of Washington DC. First stop, the Air and space Museum! The ride into the city from Arlington is gorgeous. It almost seems as though a Roman citizen entering the city of Rome itself would be in awe in a similar fashion. In DC, the landscaping, architecture and pure grandeur of the city proper are mesmerizing. What was also mesmerizing for a completely different reason was the street parking. We pull up to a 2 hour parking spot and are about to figure out how to get some quarters. First we needed to find out how many quarters were needed. It turns out that 25 cents will only buy you 7.5 minutes. There was no way that we could scrounge that many. On to the public parking! Apparently they’re in Federal buildings and I can’t park in them because I have a Gerber multi-tool in my locked side case. That’s a dangerous weapon they say. Lastly we arrive at a privately owned parking lot that will cost us each $15 for the day even though together we only take up one spot.
After paroozing the Air and Space Museum and eating a rather delicious packed cold cut lunch, we ended up walking around the Mall and seeing the usual monuments and memorials. Strangely, we couldn’t get on the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue. They closed it right in front of us. On our way back from the Lincoln Monument, we decided to head over to the Jefferson Monument. This was, of course, until we finally saw more of it than the top through the trees. Seeing its actual distance away, we decided to skip it. I have a feeling that quite a few people do the same thing. Walking around a bit, we were still a little hungry and we ate a couple completely bland hot dogs. Seriously, there was no flavor to it and it was purely a substance that condiments could be applied to. With our stomachs filled we headed into the Museum of Natural History. Beautiful building and architecture, but the exhibits weren’t quite what I had remembered.
While we readied our motorcycles in the overpriced parking lot a man, who was also named Mike, approached us on a bicycle and started talking with us. Apparently he saw our bikes and knew we were doing a cross country trip. Apparently he had also done a motorcycle trip around the United States. He also avoided highways, but was able to take 3 months to do the trip. We asked him about local dining options and he recommended a place and said if we waited that he would go to his house a block away and grab his motorcycle so that he could take us there and talk about adventurous motorcycle rides. This would have been good, but it turned out that we had a pizza night happening back at our host’s. The pizza was delicious and the night was relaxing.
Now I must retire to my sleeping bag and settle in for an extremely cold night after an entire long day of cold riding. I will hopefully give you some updates from day’s 4 and 5(today) tomorrow evening. Oh yeah, by the way we’re at a nice camp ground just west of the Great Smokey Mountains National park.
I loved the hot dog I had in D.C. It was fantastic. This hot dog story makes me really sad. I love the singing mouse. How cute is that!
ReplyDeleteYou lied to me about the delicious DC hot dog.
ReplyDelete1) That V8 is sweet.
ReplyDelete2) Weeble Wobble statue!
3) Can we agree that it is "paroozing" from now on?