View of the U.S. Capitol building on our way into Washington harbour.
Sweden point marina was not a good stopover place. The area is very shallow, and the slips were too small for our boat. The slip info was buried on their website, so we only found out about it from another looper that had stopped there before us. We had already booked our stay there, and it turned out to be a pretty windy day, so we decided to play dumb and request a tie up on their breakwater rather than anchor out. We got approval from the marina just as we entered. As we came in we found pretty shallow water, but had no incidents and got settled in on the breakwater. The electrical here was broken, but no worries, we have a generator.
Menu from the restaurant we went to in Colonial Beach. Autocorrect strikes again.
The temperature continued to drop all afternoon, and it was sweater weather when we arrived. Louise went for a walk around the park, while I snoozed on the boat. We had to break out blankets overnight as it got a bit chilly overnight. The winds, which were forecast to drop off, actually got gusty in the middle of the night. Even though we were not at a very nice location, it was better than being anchored, which was our original plan. There were no really good anchorages nearby, and the weather was very different from the forecast.
Fleet of bass boats waiting for the tournament to start. The photo does not do justice. It was still dark out and every boat was lit up.
In the morning we woke up to a spectacle. A bass tournament was staging. The harbour was FULL of bass boats waiting for the starting gun, easily over 50 boats. It was just before sunrise, so they were all lit up with their nav lights. At 6 am they started to take off at max speed, rooster tails everywhere! The place was emptied out in about 10 minutes.
Our departure was easier than our entrance, as we were now at high tide and had plenty of water under the keel. The wind was still blowing however, so the ride to D.C was a bit choppy. As we came under the Woodrow Wilson bridge the city opened up before us. We were right in-line with the Washington monument and could also see the capitol building. We were also right under the Dulles flight line. Every minute or so, a plane would pass right over us and land at the airport. Quite the show. Since it was windy, the sailboats were out in full force, so we had to weave our way through a couple of flotillas of them.
Louise took a selfie at the reflecting pool. Lots of people here saying "Forrest?"
We had a bit of a delay getting to our slip, as there was a bunch of kayakers in front of the docks. After we got tied up, we showered off and set off on our scooters for a tour of the monuments. We started with the Jefferson memorial, then went to the F.D.R. memorial, the M.L.K. memorial, the Korean War memorial, the Lincoln memorial, the Vietnam Veterans memorial, the Vietnam Women's memorial, the National WWII memorial and finally the Washington Monument. All this took about 4 hours, so we stopped off on the way back to the boats for a drink. Needless to say, it was an early night.
Jefferson memorial. The memorials here are very large. Inside there was a statue of him, and along the walls some of his wisdom from various writings.
The inside of the Jefferson monument. You can see two of the inscriptions on the walls behind him. I really like this kind of style, keeping the statue inside keeps it cleaner, and you are out of the elements to be able to read the inscriptions inside.
The FDR monument was actually a series of monuments spread over a very large area. Here, there is a kind of waterfall. At each locations they had quotes from FDR inscribed on the stone.
Louise at the statue of Fala, FDR's dog.
This was at the Korean War memorial. Very well done, and even a bit eerie. The statues are now off limits, but at one point you could walk among them.
Martin Luther King. This monument was very open and large like the others. There were quotes inscribed on the wall, but I could not find the "I have a dream" inscription.
View of the reflecting pool with an actual reflection.
Inside the Lincoln memorial. The steps to get here were really high, and some of them were worn. Millions of people climbing on the marble have worn some of the treads. The memorial had the text of the Gettysburg Address inscribed in stone. There were more people here than any of the other memorials by a large margin.
One of the park police. They had several horse-mounted officers walking around. The horses were really well behaved, which I guess is important this close to this many people.
Vietnam Veterans memorial. This is a really big wall, and makes a very strong impression. It lists the names of all the soldiers killed in Vietnam. Each name is small, but the wall has to be huge to accommodate them all.
This is the Vietnam Women's memorial.
When the original Vietnam Veteran's memorial was created (the wall), some veterans objected and wanted a more traditional type of memorial. This statue was created as a compromise to get agreement for the original memorial to be built. It is a good statue, but it does not have anywhere near the same emotional impact as the wall does.
One of the side walls of the WWII memorial.
The WWII memorial had several parts to it. We were not as impressed with this memorial the way we were at some of the other ones.
A view inside the WWII memorial. For me, this did not convey the right atmosphere at all. What does it suggest to you?
Washington monument. They ran out of money when they were building it and had to stop construction. When building started again decades later, they used the same stone, but quarrying methods had changed and so the stone has a different colour. The colour changes again as you go up when they ran our of stone and had to get it from a different location.
Vietnam veterans memorial. You walk down into the ground, and see the names of all the dead inscribed on the black granite. The size of it and the design have a kind of power that really sets it apart.
On our way back to the boat we passed by the mint. Unfortunately, we could not get a tour. The numbers are very limited, and you need to sign up for tickets more than a month in advance.
We use an app called Nebo to keep track of other loopers. One of the things this app does is record your boat's track each day. Every once in a while, Louise forgets to shut it off and it records our track in the destinations we go to. It has recorded trips to restaurants, laundry facilities, shopping and even trips to the marina washrooms! Here, Louise accidentally recorded our tour of the major monuments in downtown Washington.
We had a couple of small chores to do in the morning. One of our wiper blades had broken the day before as we were coming into the harbour. Luckily, I had a spare on board. In principle, you can get wiper blades anywhere, but we have pantograph wipers which take spacial blades (its a boat thing). These are not easy to get, you have to order them, so I had ordered one as a spare last winter before we started the loop so we would have the necessary spare if the need ever arose. So far have been very glad on this trip to carry the spares we have. It was expensive when we were first getting ready to leave, but it has helped us avoid delays or hassles when things have broken in the middle of nowhere.
We planned to visit a few museums this day, and also needed to defrost our fridge, so we emptied the fridge before we left so the frost could melt while we were away. The fridge was a bit "ripe" the past week or so, so we had to do this now. This is the third or fourth time we have done this job on the loop.
Our first stop of the day was the Air and Space museum. We had to get tickets a few days in advance. This is a super-popular museum, and you can only enter at certain times depending on the ticket you get. Admission is free, but they need to control the crowd size. Our entry time was at 10 am, which is when the museum opened. When we arrived at the museum there was a line all the way down the block. Popular for sure.
Lineup for opening at the Air and Space museum. We could understand why you needed to get passes in advance.
Most of the good stuff at the Air and Space museum was closed for renovations. This was one of the better exhibits, an X-wing fighter from Star Wars! We overheard some people saying this should not be in this museum. To be honest, I thought the X-wing was cool. In fact, I was hoping to be able to see the studio model of the Starship Enterprise from the original series, which is here. Unfortunately, it was located in the section being renovated.
Overall this museum was a let down. Less than half of the exhibits were open, and the really good ones (spacecraft, WWI planes, Starship Enterprise) were closed for renovation.
Next on our list was the museum of Natural History. We spent a lot of time in the fossil area, including a special section about human evolution. We got to see fossils of Lucy, all the way through the various humanoid lines to present day. Pretty interesting to see things their actual size, our ancestors were much smaller than humans are today.
Lots of dock queens at the yacht club in D.C. A few of the boats had permanent pump-out hoses attached.
They parked us right beside the public pier in the harbour. There was a fire-pit that was lit each night, and we had ring-side seats to watch.
There was even a Pokestop!
Back at the boat, we had a relaxing afternoon. Louise walked along the waterfront while I snoozed on the boat. This was a sunny Sunday, - Mother's Day and the waterfront was packed. People walking along the shops and restaurants here, along with a steady parade of boats on the water. There were the usual wankers, who did not know what "no wake" speed means, but this is pretty normal for boating.
Early the next morning we trundled over to the Wharf marina to get fuel, then back to our slip at the yacht club. We then set off for the Holocaust museum on our scooters. When we arrived we got a bit of a shock, the place had lots of uniformed security police. Now, all the museums in Washington have security, but they are always low key, and mostly wear dark uniforms. At this place they were special police officers and wore bright white uniforms and there were LOTS of them. As we approached the front door with our scooters, a couple of them told us to stop as we were not allowed to bring bicycles or scooters close to the museum. They were pretty firm about it. OK, we asked them where to park, and set off to lock up the scooters. With them secured, we entered the museum. Lots of security here, with metal detectors and X-ray machines, a lot like the airport.
Outside the Holocaust museum. You can see a couple of the security guards they had here. There was lots of security, and they were very serious about it.
When I was waiting for Louise at the museum, I asked one of the guards about the heavy security. He told me that it is the real deal, that there was a real threat at this museum. He directed me to this memoriam which made it crystal clear why they had such tight security.
The Natural History museum had a special display that included the Hope diamond. It is about the size of a loonie.
Lots of really nice crystals on display. Here they had salt. Very cool to see the perfect cubes.
After the museum, we scootered over to the White House, which it turns out you cannot get very close to. There is serious security here. You have to apply at least 90 days in advance to take a tour and you have to ask your congress person to apply for you. We then returned to the museum of Natural History to go through the gemstone collection. They had a special display with the Hope Diamond and many other large diamonds. All the gems here had been donated by the super-rich, and there was even a gem donated by Angelina Jolie. After going through the gems, we were both kind of tired so returned to the boat for the afternoon, then we went out for dinner with Chris and Julie at a Mexican place.
As close as we could get to the White House. The nice thing was that this area was tourists only, there were no protesters or wackos.
Our last day in Washington was a grey rainy day. We did laundry and other boat chores, getting ready for the next leg of the journey to Annapolis and Chesapeake City.
View from the stern on our way out of Washington. It had rained pretty hard overnight, and there were still low-lying clouds when we were getting underway. Here you can see how they obscured the top of the Washington monument.
Boat name of the day: Plug N Play (electric boat)
