Rowkin Rovings Blog

This is a summary of our ten day trip to Washington DC to spend time with our very good and long life friend Linda and her family.

Linda was very kind to let us bring Toque along. This dog has a lot of frequent flyer points. It was a flight from Calgary to Toronto and then onto Washington DC. She travelled in the cabin with us on both flights and was a hit at the airports.

Linda and Steve and the boys have a gorgeous home in Potomac where we had our own guest suite.

We loved how the letter boxes were built to match the houses.

Off to the aviation museum out near the Dulles International Airport. Enola Gay has the infamous reputation of dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

This is a must visit place when in Washington.

We spent almost a full day there.

Next day it was off to George Washington’s home Mt Vernon which is where he lived prior to becoming the first president of the USA. There was a great museum here which put the early history of America into chronological order for us. We realised just our lacking our knowledge of political history is when it comes to the US.

Next day it was a (very quick) drive up the motorway in Linda’s beaut Tesla to Pennyslvania to an Amish community.

Their mode of transport was somewhat more sedate but a lot less comfortable.

A huge day spent walking along the National Mall. It was pretty wet as you can see by the photos but didn’t deter us from clocking up over 20,000 steps.

Young Darcy teaching Fraser the theory of relativity.

Lincolns Memorial.

Vietnam Memorial Wall – very moving.

Korean Memorial.

Huge day out for Toque and just out of view is Linda’s dog Bella.

Fala, FDR’s Scottish Terrier. Toque not overly impressed.

Jeffersons Memorial

That evening it was off to watch Darcy play hockey.

The days were starting to blur now. We watched the changing of the Guards at Arlington Cemetery.

Well worth the time spent doing the tour.

When visiting the city, we caught the light rail which was super efficient and clean. This is Union Station in Washington DC – very grand!!

We organised to do a tour of the Capitol Building. It was partly under renovation but still very accessible.

Capital Rotunda.

Capital.

Committee Room at the Capitol

Now this was a very special building as it was just gorgeous. We could of sworn we were in Vienna visiting one of the ornate palaces there. This is the Library of Congress.

Main reading room in the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

Supreme Court. Couldn’t go in there and the policeman wouldn’t let us – not the friendliest of chaps.

Linda put us onto this Grill called the Old Ebbitt Grill which was just around the corner from the White House. The interior of the grill was sumptuous and took you back in time. You could almost hear the walls seep out all the political intrigue that they has absorbed over the years.

Joe’s White House

Washington Monument. It was just as we get to the monument that we saw Joe’s Cavalcade. There were six motorcyles, 10 huge black suburbans and a military carrier that we were told was a mobile ambulance – definitely over the top as the Americans are great at doing.

View from Washington’s Monument – yeap, it was wet. It is well worth going up as the trip down the elevator is very interesting and the history of the monument it quite intriguing.

Gallery of the Presidents – Barrack Obama. Trumps portrait wasn’t in place at that stage – guess they were still trying to come to terms with the insurgency of the 6^th January 2021.

After what was a very busy ten days it was then time to back track to Calgary. It was the flight from hell due to cancelled flights because of mechanical reasons, cancelled flights because of weather and an unplanned over night stay in Toronto. It took us 30 hours to get home. What made it worse was that we were meant to get back to Calgary the day prior to Fraser’s nephew Alistair arriving for a weeks stay with us. Thankfully our great friend Sue rescued Alistair from the airport and looked after him for us for four hours until we made our way home.