We are staying as close to DC as we can in an RV. There is only one other park we know of;it is a private campground charging $60 a night! So we're staying at a county park, I believe, and it's only $24 a night, but there is no water or sewer, just electricity provided. It is a pretty nice park, though, and the neighborhoods around it are very nice--lots of a few acres with big, pricey-looking houses, some with horses.

There are only a dozen or maybe 20 sites for RVs open this time of year, and they are all taken. It's maybe in the 50s during the day, and a little rainy and grey. When Mark and I got here at 5pm on Saturday, he backed the RV in easily onto our wet, gravelly site. The gravel wasn't perfectly smooth, but it looked good enough to me, but-- well, so he put down the leveling jacks, these four steel legs that push up the front or the back or one side or the other, or some combination, so that we're level. Well this time something went wrong. It seemed to be struggling to level, and Katie and I watched from outside as the RV was lifted off the ground (no wheels were touching--it's never supposed to do that) and then it started to fall towards me and Katie. I thought it might fall on top of us, but it stopped wobbling and settled down. I looked underneath and one of the legs was no longer perpendicular. So Mark brought up the levelers, and we pulled forward a little... the gravel had given way in the soft ground under that one leg, and I guess that's what caused it to bend. We tried again with better success, but the damage has been done, and it being 5pm, there was no one to call and find out exactly how much damage. The leg, although functioning now, is still bent. Mark is worried that the RV frame too could be bent, but I am optimistic that that won't be so. The soonest we can call is tomorrow, which is Katie's birthday. I hate to ruin her day, so maybe we'll wait till Tuesday to start calling round.

We are a 15-minute drive from a metro station (it's closer if you want to take the bus instead), where we can park all day for $3.50 and take the train into the city, on daily passes costing $6.50 apiece (Katie is free). So we're paying $16.50 daily for transportation & parking...more later... I gotta go to sleep and tomorrow is Katie's birthday so I want to get a good night's rest.

Our first day in DC, we took the metro in to the Smithsonian stop and got out and wandered through the Satcher Museum (Asian art--it had an exhibit on games where we got to see the oldest known set of dominos in existence, and neat old board games too, and sit and play pachisi--Katie liked that part the best) and the Museum of Natural History (dinosaurs, live big insects, stuffed lions, gorgeous building, and the biggest elephant known to have existed, which was hunted and sent to the Smithsonian in 1951, I believe. Now it stands in the rotunda of the building. Its skin weighed two tons!! Next we walked through the American History museum, which is my favorite. It has Dorothy's ruby slippers, the flag from the Star Spangled Banner, and Julia Child's kitchen, among other cool stuff. Here are the pictures:

Katie and Mark in front of the original Smithsonian building, which is now an information center

The poofy shirt from Seinfeld, along with part of the script for that show. Can you believe that aired back in 1993?

Julia Child's kitchen. They have a TV in the exhibit showing highlights from her TV appearances, and it's really fun to watch. I always liked watching her, she just seemed so smart and friendly at the same time.

Katie's birthday...

Here's the booty she got from us. She also got stuff from our good friends Mark and Karen, as well as her grandparents and cards from Molly and Norma and the Van Alstines. As usual, she had quite a haul. Here she is wearing a top I made her:

Here's the cake she helped me decorate:

We've had rain all day today, on Katie's birthday, but still we were able to go to the post office and get our mail (mostly stuff for her) and take her to McDonalds for lunch and then to Toys R Us to spend her birthday money. When we returned it was a pretty hard thunderstorm and the lake here overflowed at the dam and flooded the picnic area and then it flooded the road. We didn't cross at first, but let the park guys do it. They said their truck was lower than our RV and that we'd be fine, so Mark forded it, which was exciting for me. Here's the road:

Here's somebody camping in their tent. They rode out the storm somehow...

One sunny day we took the train into DC and then walked to the Lincoln Memorial. Katie had her cow with her, that she picked out in Williamsburg. Here are the pictures:

Then we walked past my father's name on the Vietnam Veteran's memorial. Here it is; Katie is pointing below it a bit. His name was James D. Birchim:

Next we walked toward the Washington Monument, and played by this pretty pond just over the grass from the reflecting pond:

Apparently, spring is the high season to visit Washington. It is cold and rainy and the cherry blossoms aren't blooming yet, but there are lots and lots of people here. Everywhere, especially the zoo, the natural history museum and air & space, had so many people that I worried we might lose Katie. It was hard staying all together sometimes, and a little hard to appreciate what you are seeing sometimes. But other times, we find a spot like this one near a calf at the zoo:

Nearby was a pizza play area. It was more like the rest of the zoo in crowdedness:

Many folks were there to see the giant pandas. They waited two hours in line to catch a glimpse. We happened to stop for lunch at an overlook, and looked down, and saw them! The picture ain't great, but it was as good as those that took 2 hours to get.

Goodbye zoo...

We found a sweet bookstore in Dupont Circle. It would be fun to live in that neighborhood; it had old brownstones and modern lofts, lots of cool restaurants and places to work too. We sat in the tiny kids section, all three of us taking up the whole thing, and I read "Rats" about rats in NYC, and Mark read a book about what airline pilots know that they're not telling us, and we both read Katie some kids books. We bought a book for Mark and Karen (can't tell which one till they open it).

Twice, Katie and I used a book called "Washington DC with Kids: 68 great things to do..." to give us places to go while Mark worked, and both times, it failed us. The first time, we drove an hour north into Maryland to Crayola Works, where we hoped to make fun art projects and maybe buy some Crayola stuff. The place had closed and there was no forwarding phone number. The second time, I took Katie on the Metro out to Union Station, to walk to the Capitol Children's Museum, which shows itself to be a member in my children's museum 2004 list, is on every map of DC I have found, etc. It was a cold, windy day (50 mph gusts), but Katie was up for the supposedly short hike from Union Station (on the map it was 3 blocks). First we had to walk 7 blocks to get to the end of Union Station (apparently we exited from the wrong side). Next we found ourselves in a marginal neighborhood of row houses, demolished buildings and liquor stores with barred windows. Here are a couple of pictures of the row houses up there. I didn't photograph the liquor stores or demolished buildings. There was a house for sale much like the ones here, and I grabbed a spec sheet on it. For a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath they asked $800K.

We kept trying to get to H Street but so many blocks didn't go through, then when we did get to the street, nothing looked like a children's museum; it was all abandoned storefronts. So we kept walking, to try to pass right by it. Sooner or later, we were gonna see the darn front door! The map said it should be a long block away, or maybe a block and a half, since there was now an overpass in front of us. Below the overpass was an abandoned building. I saw no signs of what it was, but I didn't want to walk over the overpass with Katie in the wind, so we walked behind the building, and found this little sign. I was relieved to finally be at our destination, but so disappointed for Katie. Her nose was running, it was so cold.

Here's a picture of a guy in front of us on the Metro that day, wearing a Harley jacket and pushing a stroller:

Mark's friend Eric is a pilot and had to fly down to DC for work, the day before my birthday. Mark took the Metro down to Reagan International and stayed with Eric at the Doubletree (hey--they have bathtubs and pillow-tops there!) and they watched the NCAA Championship game together. The next morning he stopped downtown and waited in line for an hour to get tickets for us to see the Washington Monument on my birthday, which I'd mentioned was what I'd love to do. The monument has been closed for years to upgrade security and make some repairs on the elevator, and it opened a few days ago.

He made it back to our RV by 9:30, when Katie and I were just poking around and getting breakfast, and we all celebrated my birthday, opening presents and hearing about his night. I was so happily surprised that he had gotten tickets for us already, as tickets sell out fast these days, since the monument has been closed for so long. It was the nicest day here so far, warm and sunny, and we set out to go downtown.

After circling the "full" lot at the metro station for 15 minutes hoping someone would come back to their car, we gave up. Both lots were truly full, the first time ever for us. It's the biggest stop on this line and there's only one other stop with parking, and Mark said it only had a surface lot. I thought we'd have to change plans, maybe go see Mt. Vernon instead. But Mark persisted. We took a chance and drove down the highway to try to find the next stop, and, despite poor signage, we found it and it had a parking structure, with plenty of spaces. Yea, we'd make our tour time. We headed to the Mall and ate our PB&Js on the lawn and then wandered over to the monument. We saw three big helicopters roar over to the White House, where one landed and two banked away. Maybe it was GW, or the elusive Cheney. Here is Mark playing with Katie before we head over for the tour:

So if you think you might go to the Washington Monument, don't expect much. You'll be told to arrive a little early, and then, like us, might wait an hour longer than the ticket time to get in. Here is part of the line:

That tacked-on box looks even cheesier up close; it's the new "security" area and is so incredibly ugly beside this majestic building. Couldn't they have spent an extra dollar or two to make it attractive? They spent years to do--this. Inside, a grumpy black woman snaps at folks to jam inside and that they better not have any drinks other than water. But once inside the elegant part of the building, there is still Washington's statue and the pretty floor tiles, still the wonderful air conditioning and the pretty, old elevator. Here's Katie waiting for the elevator:

So you go to the top and see this:

Every other window is completely blocked by ugly white plywood. I saw a docent and asked why. "Security." "How could this possibly make us more secure?" "There's a camera behind that." Now we all know that the government could buy cameras so small that I probably couldn't find them, tuck them away or put them outside the windows. But instead they've chosen to wall off half the views. So you wait in line for the four that are still open. Here's Mark and Katie looking toward the Lincoln Memorial:

Here's the mall, you can see the museums on either side. I didn't realize from below that the old Smithsonian juts into the mall from its side:

Here's where the helicopter landed:

From up here the views are hazy (I cleared up that pic in Photoshop) and the grass looks bad. Overall, it was a little disappointing. But afterwards we went back to the American History museum and saw more of it, which was fun, then rode to Georgetown and took Katie to a neighborhood park there (where we saw kids playing with their Asian and Hispanic nannies), and then had good Vietnamese food for dinner a few blocks away. At the park we met a real estate agent who was there with his daughter and her nanny. We asked him about prices in Georgetown and he said "you have to want to live in Georgetown beyond rationality." He said prices would start at a million for a 3-bedroom home we'd want to live in with a kid. (Then of course there's the cost of the nanny!) He gruffly asked about our trip, "Sounds expensive--how do you do That?" I bet he makes twice what Mark does, and his house is worth more than twice what ours is. He could do this tomorrow if he wanted to.

Georgetown is so pretty and has such a nice location. The homes are all varied and small-looking but all look well-kept up and so historic. I'd love to live someplace like that. And the restaurants are great too.

The day after my birthday, Eric flew back to spend a day or two with us, on his days off. We picked him up at Dulles, near where we are camped, and then drove over to the new Air and Space museum near Dulles, where they have more room than they do on the mall, for big planes like the Enola Gay and the Concorde. It was uncrowded and very very interesting. Here are some pics:

Enola Gay

Little Stinker, a plane owned by a female aerial performer who was only 5 feet tall (my size!). This plane (hung upside down, as some of the stunt planes were) would fit me! I wanted it.

Mark, Katie and Eric in front of a really fast plane. Here's the info on it:

Here's Katie in the museum shop. We all loved this jacket on her, but at $62 it was a bit pricey, so we left it.

I'm sad to be leaving Washington today, but we are heading for Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway next, and soon we'll be seeing friends in New Jersey and my cousins perhaps in New York. Also we have to get our jack looked at in Pennsylvania, so we can't stay here any longer. Bye bye! There was so much to see, and I wish I could have gone back to the Library of Congress to see their Folkways reading room, and I wish we could have stayed to see the cherry trees blossom. Yesterday the trees were blooming finally, but we didn't make it to the tidal basin where they are supposed to have the lines of cherry trees. Here are a few last pictures from yesterday.


Katie in the fountain behind the American History museum

She really liked holding hands with the boys (how early they learn!)

the new WWII monument, a nice place to sit and end the day.