Back to Day 19

Friday, 7 AM

Sorry we didn’t post last night. The hotel internet was ridiculously slow. Dana figures people were all trying to use Netflix or something. What’s bad is that we still have to plan our route through Quantico. What’s worse is that we couldn’t watch another episode of The IT Crowd.

Here’s yesterday’s post….

5 PM

In a motel outside of Mount Vernon. I totally screwed up the hotel planning for tonight. We should have gone another 15 miles today, but I read the maps wrong and didn’t think there were any hotels. We’ve been trying to coordinate the Google maps with the ACA maps, discussing them from across the room. This time it backfired on us. From now on, we will both look at all of the maps together. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here feeling guilty and lazy, while Dana is very happily napping.

Since we knew today would be easy, we had breakfast in Alexandria, and when Dana went to pay, he realized he’s lost his Visa card. I called the barbecue place we ate at last night, and they had it. Here’s the place – great food, great sculptures on the walls, and they were very nice about the lost credit card.

Then we rode the bike trail to Mount Vernon. It was packed with tour buses of seniors (as in both “high school senior” and “senior citizen”). We did not get a tour of the estate, but we sat around for a while, eating ice pops.

We continued onto our hotel, and found George Washington’s grist mill and distillery. So I figured we should take the tour, since we had some time, and I want to do more touring anyway. We learned how George Washington built and ran a very successful whiskey distillery for the last 2 years of his life. And here’s a picture of the water wheel used to mill the corn and wheat. We came all the way from Lowell to learn about water power!

We saw this t-shirt.  If you change the A to an E, it explains one of my major fears for this trip.

After checking in, we crossed Route 1 to have lunch at Roy Rogers, then came back across to buy ice cream, and tomorrow’s Gatorate, at the 7-Eleven. Then I showered and changed into my bathing suit and did laundry! I’m SO excited about having the laundry done!

So… an afternoon at Roy Roger’s, 7-Eleven, and the laundry room. As second honeymoons go, I don’t think this one ranks 5 stars. But as I pumped quarters into the washing machine, and crammed it with every outfit we both own at the moment (4 each), I thought how this should be teaching me to be happy with less, and to really appreciate what I have at home. But honestly, when we get home, I’m probably just going to fall back into spoiled comfort.

Tomorrow we will try to make it to Fredricksburg. We have plotted our route through Quantico, and with luck it will be a 55 mile day. If we get lost, or there are too many hills, we may spend the night in Stafford, but I think getting to Fredricksburg will alleviate some of my hotel-finding guilt.

10 PM

Just came back from dinner in Occoquan with Laurie and Bob.  Occoquan is a very quaint little town on the Occoquan River – which I suppose makes sense. We ate right on the water, and it was a wonderful evening. We will be riding through Occoquan today, which is sort of frustrating, and every mile in the car reminded me that I will have to do it again on the bike. We asked them for a ride through Quantico today, which Laurie thinks that’s cheating. At this point, I’m OK with cheating – but if we cheat, I will be honest about it.

 

On to Day 21