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Washington DC

by Brian on October 21, 2010 in Washington DC

Washington D.C. may be our favorite U.S. city. It’s large enough to have everything you want within easy reach but small enough that you don’t have to fight for space on crowded streets. They’ve even opened one of our favorite New York restaurants, Carmines, and will soon open a Crumbs cupcake shop. But most of all, Washington is simply beautiful. Probably due to its origins as a planned city with European roots, Washington just seems like it was put together by people who valued aesthetics. It is no surprise that six of the top ten buildings in a recent “America’s Favorite Architecture” survey reside in D.C. Naturally the great government buildings, like the Capitol, and the fabulous monuments are highlights, but many of the city’s lesser buildings are absolutely gorgeous too. Walking down miscellaneous streets while surrounded by the dizzying mix of grand architectural styles is a joy.

And as a tourist, I’ve never seen so many free things to do in any other city. In what must be a socialist plot to undermine our capitalist democracy, the Smithsonian’s 12 museums, the national zoo, the National Gallery of Art, the Holocaust Museum, the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, the U.S. Capitol, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, all of the national monuments, and probably a whole host of things I’ve missed or forgotten, are completely free. What other city can top that?

Afternoon Delight

by Brian on October 19, 2010 in Food & Drink, Washington DC

Who are we to argue with such a spirited tradition? After a stroll past the White House, we stopped at the Round Robin Bar in the Willard Intercontinental Hotel a few blocks from the president’s digs for an afternoon cocktail. (Technically this was “literary research.” If you’d like to know which famous writers tied one on here, click over to NovelDestinations.com.)

Fixings for Mint Juleps sit on top the bar, waiting for weary sightseers like us to sample the Round Robin’s signature drink. Kentucky senator Henry Clay introduced the (not-for-lightweights) libation to the nation’s capital in the 1850s, and it’s still mixed using his recipe. And yes, it stands the test of time.

Suck it, Alexandria

by Brian on October 18, 2010 in Washington DC

The Great Library of Alexandria was charged with accumulating all of the world’s knowledge and was the largest library of the ancient world; or at least that’s what I learned from the game Civilization, which is pretty much where I get all of my history (that and certain Mel Brooks movies, of course). But the “Great” Library was just a trifle compared to the 142 million items contained in the Library of Congress, the largest library ever assembled.

As with much of our history, we owe a lot to the Brits who destroyed Congress’ first library during the War of 1812. The original library was narrowly focused on legal texts assembled to aid Congress in its role as a law writing body. Its destruction gave Thomas Jefferson the opportunity to successfully argue for a more comprehensive library; his: considered, to be one of the best in the U.S. at the time.

The acquisition of Jefferson’s library was a bit controversial as the collection covered a wide range of subjects, from science to philosophy and included a large number of foreign language texts. But Jefferson, an adherent of the Enlightenment, argued that legislators should be well versed in all manner of subjects. “I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer”, said Jefferson.

Over the years the Library of Congress continued to expand under this Jeffersonian philosophy of universality. As a result, our government now has the finest collection of information in the world to which it can refer and then, apparently, ignore.

Fit To Be Towed

by Brian on October 15, 2010 in How To, Planning and Prep, RVing, Travel

The convoy has rolled to its final stop. We traded in our Audi for a Jeep in New Jersey, and got our tow assembly installed in Washington, D.C. For those who’ve asked us, incredulously, over the past several months why it’s taken us so long to set up, it’s because the whole thing is a bit of an ass ache. You can’t just throw a couple of bungee cords on the bumpers of any two vehicles and head off. The list of stuff needed to make this work reminds me of an earlier “Reality Bites” post. Things are never as easy as they should be, or as they seem.

To get ready to tow we needed to trade in our car. Call this “Ass Ache Number 1.” We liked our car and didn’t plan on parting with it for a long time. So running off to get a new one wasn’t something either of us was excited about. And our choices of new vehicle were severely limited. Most cars can’t be towed with all four wheels on the ground; even fewer with automatic transmissions can be. So we had to give up a car we liked for one that we were lukewarm on, at best. Yay! Our choices were further constrained by weight issues. The trailer hitch and the motor home itself are only rated to tow so much weight.

Height also ended up being a limiting factor, and one that we almost overlooked. Tow bar manufacturers recommend a vertical difference of no greater than four inches between the motor home trailer hitch and the tow vehicle base plate connection. After some research, we discovered that the base plate pegs for the Honda Fit, our original tow vehicle of choice, were 13.5 inches off the ground whereas the tow receiver on our motor home is 22 inches. Math is hard, but even I can figure out that 22 minus 13.5 is quite a bit more than 4. It is more than 4, right?

A robotic breaking system for our Jeep

Keep in mind that there isn’t anyone who will tell you this. You have to figure nearly everything out on your own, and hope you don’t mess it up too badly. Had we bought the Fit as originally planned, we probably wouldn’t have been able to tow it without a dolly. That would have qualified as a bad hair day.

After we side stepped that landmine, all we needed was a tow bar, base plates, safety cables, wiring to connect the tail lights of the motor home to the tow vehicle, a supplemental breaking system, and a mechanic to install it all. Piece of cake.

Setting this all up adds about thirty minutes to the front end and probably fifteen minutes to the backend of our travel time. It adds 20 feet of driving length to our 35 foot motor home and raises a whole host of potential problems, limitations, and hazards while in transit. But somehow this still seems more sensible than driving across country in tandem. Not by much, though.

At The Zoo

by Brian on October 14, 2010 in Washington DC

“Someone told me
It’s all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it,
I do believe it’s true.
Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Whoooa. Mmmmm.”

I don’t blame Paul Simon because he was probably stoned off his ass when he wrote those lyrics, but there really wasn’t much happening at the Washington, DC, Zoo. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park is a pretty standard zoo; lots of critters in cages. They don’t try nearly as hard as the Henry Doorly Zoo, in Omaha, but what do you expect, it’s free?

We did spend a good amount of time watching a lion watch us. You could almost see the little wheels turning in his lion head trying to figure out how to get past the moat and over the wall to all of those tasty humans. Just to be safe, I made a point of standing near a bunch of slow looking women and children, because you can never be too careful in situations like that.