22 July 2010

Although I tried to sleep in, I still woke up at 5, and pretended to sleep until 6; eventually everybody was up and mixing around, getting ready for breakfast. And a fine repast it was; the entree was duck eggs, supplied by Boyd's other daughter Robin.

Eventually, things got loaded onto the bikes, and we left our most pleasant stop on the trip. Up the road for a couple of projected National Park stamps, with stops every 90 minutes or so for rest or gas.

At a rest stop in mid-Virginia, as we pulled off the interstate, we saw a sign for a National Battlefield. These don't always mean anything; quite often the site is many miles away, but there was an information center close by the exit; we pulled in there and asked. "It's three miles west of here..." the very helpful ladies said, and plied us with maps and Virginia peanuts. So off we went for a bonus stop.



Good thing, as it turned out; after fighting miserable traffic and oppresive heat / humidity to get to Mount Vernon, where there was supposed to be a "Potomac National Scenic Trail" stamp. After a couple of false loops, we parked the bikes and walked over to where the waypoint said the stamp was, but everything was being run by a private commercial company; they disavowed any knowledge of such.

Back on the bikes and some more miserable afternoon commuter traffic around Washington DC to the Greenbelt Park in Virgina. As we're inching along, I'm seeing our projected arrival time get closer and closer to 1700, the usual closing time for National Parks. Finally, we turn into the park road, and loop through the administration center.

I pause and ask Boyd--the stamp location is supposedly a couple of miles up the road, although it looks pretty primitive. We decide to try for it, and get there just at 5, to find a parked ranger truck and some tourists just leaving. The sign on the window indicates that they closed at 3:45. We can see the stamp through the window in the closed door--so close! So we take a couple of pictures for backup proof, and decide to try the admin center.



That door is locked also, but there are lights on inside, and a doorbell, which I press. Just as we're giving up, Juanita pokes her head out, and takes pity on us, breaks out the stamp(s) and sets them to the correct date: success at last.



I punch "Lodging" into my GPS, and a few minutes later we're checking in to a Days Inn in Lanham, MD. No grocery stores, but we're so beat we probably couldn't have walked there or decided what to buy anyway.

States: North Carolina, Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland

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