As a chicken who loves to travel I’ve been woefully coop-bound the last few years.  Other than our annual elk hunting trip and a few weekend getaways I’ve not gone much of anywhere. This year I’m attempting to make up for it!  The sweet lady I work for had a family reunion in D.C. last month and I was selected and elected to drive her and her husband there.  In a bright, fire engine red Winnebago no less!  Ha!  I even got to take Addie, who turned 7 last week (sniff, sniff, wail!) along for the trip.

I’ll not bore you with all the details but I would like the share a few of my favorite pictures from our journey.

Enjoy!

We began our trip in the early hours of June 19th…….headed thru Arkansas and into Tennessee, dining at road side parks along the way.  We also made a short detour onto the Blue Ridge Parkway.  A much-needed break after 16 or so hours of interstate, then on to visit Thomas Jefferson.

He had a perfectly lovely home.

We spent the rest of the week exploring D.C itself.  I think you could spend a year here and MAYBE touch on everything.  It was completely over-whelming yet completely wonderful at the same time.

We jumped into the Smithsonians the first day.  We hit the Castle, the American History museum and the Natural History museum.

We saw the slippers Judy Garland wore as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we saw Nancy Reagan’s inaugural gown, we saw Martha Washington’s dishes, we saw the Hope Diamond, we saw T-Rex and everyone had butterflies land on their head in the Butterfly garden.  A well-rounded day.

Also, an exhausting one.

The next day we toured the Botanical Gardens, the Library of Congress and the National Art Gallery West.

This was one of my favorite days.  🙂

In case you can’t tell, the Library was one of my FAVORITE things.  One of the most, if not THE most beautiful buildings I’ve ever had the privilege to walk in.

We also spent a day at Mount Vernon, you can see it here.  It was a beautiful estate and a great way to spend a day out of the city.

Having an almost 7-year-old on the trip, we could not avoid the zoo.  It was a great zoo!  We only saw a small section of it, the heat was quite bad, but what we saw was thoroughly enjoyable.  After bidding the creatures farewell we headed over to the National Cathedral.  It is the 6th largest cathedral in the world and completely awesome.

We also spent a day at Arlington but that was to somber for this post and shall have its own very soon.  The last day it rained.  And rained.  And rained.  And I had not been to the Mall yet to visit Lincoln, Jefferson or the WWII memorial.  So in spite of the rain Addie and rose early and took an Uber into the city and walked the Mall in the rain.  Our driver gave Addie a trash bag and it kept her dry for a little longer than me, but not much longer.  We were as soaked as if we had jumped into the Reflecting Pool itself.  When we saw everyone (missing Jefferson because the poor soul it stuck kinda off from everything else) we tried to find the Metro because I’d promised Addie we would ride it.  After asking for directions 3 times we finally found the station.  I had to read the directions several times before I figured out how to buy a ticket then discovered the “Silver Line”, the one that went to our hotel, was down.  So we had to take the “Orange Line” and connect to the “Silver Line” across town.  All in all it went pretty smooth for this Maydelle native.

As it normally happens, this imperfect day turned into one of my best memories of the trip.

Hope you enjoyed our pictures and go, go if ever you can.  A trip worth taking!