Posts tagged national zoo

Wassy and I have arrived in Washington DC. I'm typing this up this morning while she's getting ready for us to head down for breakfast and the other associated activities of today since I didn't have much time to do so last night. Or the energy for that matter. So…here we go. Well, actually, before we go, I just want to point out that all of the pictures I took (that were deemed acceptable for internet consumption) are located here at flickr.

I left from my place at 5:30am and arrived at her place by 6, as per the scheduled plan. A quick pit stop to gas up the car and we were off driving. Wassy had the wheel first, so I hesitantly turned over the control of the Rogue to her. Not that she's a bad driver or anything…but I'm just a little nervous when other people drive my car. The trip started out pretty foggy. I mean…very foggy. We basically were driving into a cloud as we drove down route 12. Eventually we ended up at around 7:00am stopping at a McDonalds in Norwich, NY for breakfast. At this point in the trip we still didn't really realize that vacation was here at last after weeks of waiting. We were also worried about zombie attack in the fog, considering Norwich had a large pharmaceutical corporation, a hospital and a fairly scary looking cemetary all right next to each other.

I should also mention that I had my first Egg McMuffin as well. We should have taken a picture but alas, I forgot. The trip was proceeding very nicely up to this point, with the only snag being that it seemed like one of Wassy's debit cards wasn't working right. But we pressed onwards anyway, leaving the fog behind us.

We entered pennsylvania ahead of schedule as it seems my time estimates were a bit too large. No problem as it gave us some time along the route to relax a little bit and not have to worry about getting there in time to do anything.

The first thing we noticed in Pennsylvania was that they were offering free coffee 24/7 at rest stops on I81. This seemed…kinda strange as there were actual people manning the free coffee stations. I'd imagine this would get pretty darn borning when nobody needed coffee. Additionally, we questioned the effectiveness of this safety campaign as if you're tired enough to need coffee in order to keep driving, you probably shouldn't be driving in the first place.

The other interesting thing was I81 South through Scranton. We came upon a road sign that told us that to stay on I81 we needed to go to the left when the road split, but the GPS lady was telling us to go to the right. So Wassy decided to follow the GPS lady and we hung a right. And on the right there was another sign saying I81 south, exit right. So we took that exit and ended up on I-81 south…the road that went off to the left. We have no idea how this was physically possible and looking at the intersection in google maps only helps slightly. I think it's a dimensional warp or a wrinke in space-time.

We had planned a stop in Hazleton, PA which was pretty much the midpoint of the journey to get gas and switch drivers. However, at a rest stop earlier I had noted that the vending machine had 3 types of skittles, so that caused Wassy to want something sweet and fruity. Which ended up being Tropical Skittles at the gas station in Hazleton. I got myself a white chocolate big cup peanut butter cup. Mmm… And after Wassy's debit card didn't work at the pump, we determined the problem…she was using the wrong card. Oops. At least it wasn't a big problem.

With me at the wheel, we continued down the road to Washington DC, heading south again on I81. It should be mentioned we passed the fateful exit for Tremont, PA, the run down mining town that we had stopped at for gas on the trip down last year. Thankfully, we were able to bypass that this time around with a little more solid planning.

As we passed through harrisburg though, we began to notice curious signs. Signs that advised us that "Motorcycles are EVERYWHERE". We looked around and saw no motorcycles which eventually led us to believe that we were walking into a motorcycle ambush and they were going to jump out of the trees at us. For the rest of the trip every time we saw a motorcycle, we repeated the phrase "Motorcycles are EVERYWHERE!". Another interesting road sign we passed was for a roadside stop. It advertisded "Snacks. Soda. BEER". With "BEER" being about 4x the size of the snacks and soda part. Other interesting road signs included a billboard for an "Ultima Massage II" with "Tractor Trailer Parking". Uh huh…so that's what they're calling it now.

The most interesting series of road signs though was just outside of Gettysburg. As we were traveling down 15 there was a little white sign on the side of the road advertising "Fresh Honey" or something. And every half mile or so there was another sign. It started off appetizing enough. Fresh honey, hand picked strawberries. But then it turned into things like raw goats milk and strange turkey parts. The two best signs had to be "Do you like pottery?" And then later down the line "We have pottery!", followed by "Meet the potters!".

We decided to skip the exit. We eventually ended up taking a break and eating lunch at a Ruby Tuesday's in Gettysburg which was nice. We had planned at stopping at Arby's but we had enough time to do something a little more healthy and relaxing.

After lunch we took the short drive down and entered Maryland, with the obligitory state sign picture taken by Wassy. The traffic started to pick up here (which is why I had taken the second driving shift, since I was more comfortable with my car.)

Things really started picking up once we got past Frederick, MD. Sorry, I was unable to locate the giant stick they have there. And eventually we arrived at the beltway, which would be more aptly named as a parking lot. It seems that we had finally encountered the memorial day travelers coming into Washington DC.

Things were basically stop and go for about 20 minues, in which we covered about 4-5 miles. Of road. But eventually we got through it and ended up at the hotel, after driving through the scenic roundabout again. Fun.

We arrived a little early expecing not to have a room ready since they made such a big deal about being full up and all. But there was almost nobody in the lobby when I went down and we were able to get a room right away. So after taking our stuff up to the room and getting settled in (Wassy instantly took over the bathroom with her suitcase full of bathroom related items) we headed out for the metro and for a stroll around the national zoo.

The zoo was particularly busy, although I guess we should have been expecting that considering it was a really nice day as well as memorial day weekend. We tried to hit the buildings first because they were going to be closing before the grounds did. The ape house was a madhouse. People everywhere trying to look at the apes, so we wern't really able to see much of anything there.

Eventually though we made our way past the crowds of people to a less crowded part of the zoo where we saw some sea lions and seals. They also seemed to have a lot more fish than I was expecting they would have at the Amazon rainforest type exhibit. Really cool stuff as I had wanted to see some fish at the national aquarium before realizing that the one in DC kinda sucked and the good one was out on Baltimore. But anyway, we saw some really big fish which I took some pictures of which are located in my flickr feed since I don't have the space to stick them here.

I do want to mention though, that the theme of the zoo trip seemed to be animals having a little too much fun together. Well, except the ducks…

We were a little bit concerned at first when two seals looked like they started to go at it in the water. That probably wasn't what was going on of course…but it sure looked like it to us! Take the photographic evidence there as proof. And then we saw a bunch of rapist ducks. It was…strange. There was a bunch of male ducks who were pretty much tackling a female duck. She'd scurry away but then a male would leap on her back and pin her to the ground. Nature at it's finest!

After we got back from the zoo, we went down to the hotel's restaurant which was very nice, just as it was the last time we were here. We had the palce pretty much all to ourselves which was nice because the waiter was right on top of everything. The service is very very nice there. After dinner and desert (mmm, white chocolate cheesecake) we headed out in search of some drinks. We started out at a bar just next door to the hotel (where we discovered the wonders of enjoying a nice Bob Marley. Mmm, fruity goodness), and eventually ended up back at the hotel lounge and then up in the room watching Knocked Up on HBO for a bit before nodding off to sleep (as it turns out we both fell asleep before the end of the movie so nobody knows what happened exactly)

Plans for today are the National Gallery of Art, and then Crab Smashing at night. Vacation continues!

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