A year with my sister, a lesson in survival, sanity and/or stupidity: (Minor) setback after (minor) setback

The nights are definitely getting cooler as our constant refilling of our propane bottles will testify. Definitely time to continue moving south. Leaving Pennsylvania for the second to last time (we’ll be back at Christmas) we headed to Delaware.

Hate to imagine the size of the pills that
would be dispensed out of a bag this size

Our plan for the first day was to travel until we stopped. We saw a couple of intriguing items along the way including this oversized doctor’s bag and this scary skull silo at Frightland. Would have been keen to see this attraction at night time – it’s along the lines of the Headless Horseman that we went to in New York but since we had just been to the Headless Horseman in New York decided against another frightening (I use the term loosely) so soon.

Skull silo came complete with glowing red eyes

We also saw this steampunk treehouse at the Dogfish Brewery. Looks pretty cool even if they don’t allow people up in it. Good thing there’s plenty more fun things in this country to satisfy our inner child. Now, before you read this next sentence, make sure you’re sitting down and don’t have a drink in your hand. We went inside the Brewery for a tour (complete with free samples) – the tours were finished for the day so we left … without having a drink!!! The queue at the bar was 4 deep – and it was a huge bar – and the noise levels were higher than 10 school buses of screaming children. Some days you can yell and scream and elbow your way to front with the best of them, other days you just need a quiet place to sup your brew and contemplate and I guess today was one of those days. True story.

Pretty cool tree house huh?

Had a bit of an issue when we parked up for the night when the bunk room slide wouldn’t extend out fully. Too dark (sun goes down around 5pm at the moment) to do anything that night so lucky Sue got to sleep in the bunk cave that night. In the morning light Sue drew the short straw to crawl underneath to try and figure out what’s wrong. Just at that moment a random stranger (Chris) pulled up next to us to see if we needed a hand. Never one to turn down a helping hand even if his knowledge of RV’s was about the same as ours. Between the 3 of us we worked out what the problem was and fixed it.

With that little issue out of the way, it was full steam ahead to Laurel in Maryland where we were planning to meet up with our Pennsylvania friends, Sue & Jim to watch their daughter Lily skate in a synchronised skating competition. We were going great guns time wise until we got to the Bay Bridge. Some walkers/runners decided this particular Sunday would be a great day to have one of the two bridges closed off to vehicular traffic for some event. Crazy people. Took us over half an hour to get to and cross the bridge – should have taken less than 10 minutes.

Wye Mills? ... we know why

We still had a bit of time up our sleeves so weren’t stressing too much as we made our way to the campground that was to be our base for exploring Washington DC and Baltimore. Halfway to backing our RV into the site when we discovered the pick up had a flat tyre. Bloody hell! It’s like the travel gods are trying to tell us something. It was our first flat in the pick up so not overly familiar with where everything is and how it works. Had just figured out how to get the spare out from underneath (Sue drew the short straw again) when help arrived in the form of Travis who knew F250’s well. Shame his name wasn’t Chris as previous random helpers have had that moniker and that really would have us taking the whole St Christopher thing seriously.

We made the skating with a couple of minutes to spare … only to find they were running 10 minutes behind schedule. Could have had that bathroom stop after all …

No further problems ensued and the next day we located a Ford service centre. Booked in for a service and to fix the flat for Thursday (3 days hence) and, as it was a beautiful day, decided to head back into Delaware and take the scenic drive along the Atlantic Coast that we didn’t have time for the previous day with the RV problems. Barely an hour up the road when the Ford service centre called to say they can fit us in tomorrow. Yay! The travel gods are smiling on us once again. Of course they wanted us to bring the pick up in that afternoon and by 4.30 if we wanted a ride back to the campground which put a bit of pressure on us for our return journey. I won’t say that we broke any speed limits heading back into Maryland but lets just say that traffic was flowing nice and quick and we just flowed nice and quick along with it and got our ride back to the campground.

Back to the fun stuff. Took the Metro into Washington DC for a day of touristing. Was planning on taking the tourist trolley but several roads blocked off due to either Veterans Day celebrations and/or free concert that night so we decided to hit the Smithsonian. Our first museum was the Air and Space Museum and that is as far as we got … for the rest of the day. Good thing we are here for a week. While we had seen a lot of the air travel history at other museums, the space travel was just fascinating. As much as the idea of space travel appeals though … nah.

Skylab - the complete version for you Aussies
that had one rain down on you back in 1979

Space Race be blowed - Buck Rogers got there first

Definitely an oops moment or, for you Kiwis, a minties moment.
This $100,000 tool bag went floating off into space - it could
even be seen from Earth for a while through a telescope

We may not ever get into space but we can eat the food
of astronauts - Freeze Dried Ice Cream - apparently a favourite
of our cosmic travelers

No problems with the trolleys running the next day. Think of any famous Washington DC landmark and, chances are, we went past it today.

Smithsonian Castle ... yes, of the Institute fame

Washington Monument

Stopped off at Arlington National Cemetery for an hour or so. Very sobering place. There’s an average of 27 burials a day there – we saw 4 during the time we were there and we were only in a small part of the cemetery. There is a changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that we were fortunate to arrive in time to observe.

Sad that people need to be reminded of cemetery etiquette

Tomb of the unknown soldier, has a 24 hour guard posted

We also had a wander around the Lincoln Memorial and Korean Veterans Memorial. A bit too much of a breeze in an otherwise glorious day to get a decent reflection of the Washington Memorial in the Reflecting Pool and can’t see us getting there at the crack of dawn for the optimum photo either. Yeah, I know, no dedication.