from shore to shore.... again!

And so we drove from Edgewater, Maryland to Shoreline, Washington.  (Isn't that cool?  The edge of the eastern water to the shoreline of the west?)  We had such a delightful trip!  Seriously!  62 hours of driving!  Listening to books as a family gave us plenty of laughs and little inside jokes.  Staying with different people provided meaningful reconnections, some cousin bonding, and a new appreciation for the gift of hospitality.   The landscape was incredible; we like how the hills turned to prairies and the dry lands turned lush.  We watched rain storms come and go across the big skies.  We found little spots in all this beauty to set up our tent. 


In Michigan, we enjoyed a visit to a butterfly garden with friends.  The girls made paper flowers to wear so that butterflies would be more likely to land on them.  They were all so precious standing as still as statues with arms outstretched, hoping to lure butterflies.

Michigan snow!  We loved being in a place with big piles of snow and ice!  (And then, well, ... driving on to a fairer land.)

our children loved the huge icicles!

stopping by the woods on a snowy evening

Midwest humour!  These t-shirts in a mid-west gas station had us laughing pretty good....

I also appreciated eating in a small-town restaurant where a large group of older men sat together at one table and every single one of them wore a baseball cap.  The ladies sat at another table and they all wore lots of makeup and old-fashioned, bright shirts.  The restaurant was alive with  familiarness, such tight community chatter.                                    

We, however, were definitely the city slickers in the place.  Eggs and toast were our only option for breakfast (since we coming from the local hotel who had this arrangement).  When we asked our hostess if she had an ingredient list for the bread, she looked at us in sincere surprise.  "It's just... bread," she said.  We explained that our daughter was quite sensitive to a particular ingredient found in some breads and she looked baffled.  "Well, this is just bread," she explained again.  So I guess bread in this small town doesn't actually have ingredients.  :) 

Marijka celebrated her ninth birthday on the road.  We found us a celebratory mid-west hotel complete with waterslide.

We took a new route westward.  From our visit with family in Iowa, we drove I-80 across Nebraska and southern Wyoming.  Then I-84 took us up through Idaho and to highway 20.  I loved highway 20!  Eastern Oregon is a fascinating place!  We drove through open dry land, meeting no other cars or stores or gas stations for miles and miles.  Here's a photo:

Or, to see it more fully, you can go to this Google Maps link and look all around this spot!  I just love it!

And then, we approached a little store.   It was a small building, one storey, with many haphazard additions.  They sold all sorts of art and Native gifts and random antiques.  I got the feeling that the stuff for sale has been for sale for a very long time.  Sure enough, we found out that the store has been in the family for years - the owner's great grandfather set up this shop as a stagecoach stop in the late 1800s.  Here's the link to see that spot.

By the time we stopped in Bend, Oregon, we were pretty tired of driving and ready to stop for the night.  We had supper in a restaurant (we often eat meals in the van because you can get so much driving done while you eat!).  While eating, we overheard talk of an incoming snowstorm.  We checked the weather which predicted a good six inches of snow, forecast to arrive in an hour or two!  We decided we would try to stay ahead of the snow - it didn't sound pleasant to cross the Cascades the next morning in fresh snow.  We gobbled up our burgers and headed into the mountains!  

As we crossed the summit, Jon and I noticed something at the same time.  We could see a few deciduous tree silhouettes and it sure looked like some of them had new leaves opening up!  We also caught a whiff of something.  We opened our windows and inhaled.  Sure enough.  It was the smell of new growth, that delightful green smell!  We all sucked up that Northwest smell hungrily!  We were home!

We slept in Albany, visited with great friends and family in Corvallis and Portland, and deeply appreciated this sort of beauty:

We cheered quite loudly when we entered the city of Seattle!  We were home!

From Maryland to Washington: 3,673 miles.  62 hours in the van.

In total we put 23,000 miles on our van during our nine month sabbatical!

The White House

While the Obamas were waking up on Saturday morning, there was a crowd of people walking through their living room.  We were a part of that crowd.

Our appointment was for 8 am, and there were many people already there, lined up outside the White House. We tried to stand still and polite, what with all the security guards around, but most of us were bouncing and shifting and rubbing our hands together to stay warm in the nippy early morning air.  We were all traveling light, since it's recommended to not take much stuff with you.  After we went through security (which included standing in a certain spot near a curtain - a dog was behind the curtain, sniffing each person), we followed the crowd through the house.  In each room there was a Secret Service Agent, who was happy to answer any questions.  Each item in each room has a story, and if you ever take the tour, I recommend you ask lots of questions!

We weren't allowed to take photos on the tour, but you can see exactly what we saw on many sites online.  I found this site to be pretty good:

virtual tour of the White House

We really enjoyed the tour, especially because we had read plenty of interesting books ahead of time - the kind that tell the fun stories of what President kids did and such.  All these stories came rushing back to us: "Here's where the Roosevelt's children sneaked their pony Macaroni up the elevator to visit a sick brother who was bored in bed!"  "Woah.  President Lincoln stood right here!"   So neat!

Posing after our tour

We finally said goodbye to DC and went home to pack.  As I sorted through closets and put our stuff into boxes, the phone rang.   A man said, "Hello?  This is Dave over at the White House.  Is this Erika?"   I kid you not.  Dave, over at the White House, gave me a call.  And he asked me to come back.  Return to D.C., he said.  It's true.

Apparently I had dropped my driver's license on the front porch of the White House.  It probably happened when I pulled my phone out of my back pocket so the above picture could be taken.  Dave was suggesting I come back and get it.

We packed up the cottage, and then, on our westward way across the country, we swung by the White House.  As we pulled into a parking spot, I called Dave over at the White House on my cell, as he had suggested.

"Hi, Dave.  It's me, Erika.  I'm here." Dave and I met just outside the White House for the exchange.  Yep.



 

Touring the Capitol

You need to request a visit to the U.S. Capitol Building and White House several weeks in advance.

When you do, you provide a list of days that you're available.  This we did, happily, listing as many options as we could leading up to our departure date to try to ensure that we'd get a chance to go.  We didn't hear back for a long time, but in our last week in Maryland, when we were busy pretending we didn't need to pack, we learned that the White House was expecting us on Saturday morning, and the Senate was planning to see us on Friday.  We quickly realized that there was no way we'd be out of our house by Monday morning.

Thankfully our landlords were happy to extend our stay.

And so, once again, we postponed the perils of packing and headed to D.C.  Twice!

Friday - Capitol Building Tour

We got caught in quite a rainstorm! 

There are statues all throughout the Capitol Building.  Each state provides a statue representing a part of their history.  Linnea has always been fascinated by Helen Keller's story, and was glad that Alabama chose her.  There's a list of all the statues here.  It's pretty neat who was chosen - lots of stories.

For the tour, we were put into a group of about forty people.  Our tour guide handed out headphones that allowed us to hear his voice clearly - and not the voices of the other tour guides.  It was a efficient system and our tour guide provided lots of stories and fascinating tidbits of information.

Here are a few photos.  Quite the grand place!

 There is a lot of great information about the Capitol building here. The video is a little cheesy, but you can see a lot of what we saw! 

After our tour, we walked over to the Library of Congress building.  What beauty!  I loved it!

Here's the actual library.  Looking down from a balcony....

...and looking up....

This tile mosaic is at least two storeys tall.

 Here's the view at my eye-level:

By this time, our legs were just aching to sit down and our eyes were starting to take for granted grand and beautiful things.  We headed back to our cottage and gratefully crawled into our beds, with alarm clocks set for 5:30 am so we could get to the White House on time the next morning.