Day 25: Washington DC

Another glassy morning on the Washington Channel. A duck and 6 ducklings say 'good morning'. Lorraine comments that you just wouldn't know that we were close to downtown. The jets at Reagan are all we hear.

I hoof up to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, a 30-min stroll. The queue outside the door is already about 49 miles long, but I manage to secure a morning pass on my phone, and then I go baaaaack to the end of the line. It moves pretty soon and I'm IN! I won't go into how delightful the whole place is... technically brilliant! Please Google it if you'd like to know what it looks like, but I WILL show a few images that resonated with me. You can move on quickly if the subject matter is of no interest to you.

After I'd satisfied myself--including coffee and a grossly overpriced toastie for breakfast--I departed for the nearby Metro station and the Silver Line train out to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, near Washington Dulles Intl Airport, about 1.5 hrs away by train and bus. This is WAY out of town and is the annex to the Air & Space Museum in DC. It's superb too! I choose to do the 2-hr guided tour. Our guide is an old navy aviator with a Biggles moustache. It suddenly occurs to me that there's probably two generations now who don't know who Biggles is/was (sigh...). I get a good orientation of the museum and an intensive description of some of the major exhibits (e.g. the SR71 Blackbird spy plane, the prototype Boeing 707 that test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled--twice--in front of a crowd at Seattle two years after I was born, the B-29 Superfortress--the actual one--that dropped the first Atomic bomb on Japan, the actual Wright Flyer that made the first manned heavier-than=air flight, and numerous others). Our guide acknowledged that a NZ farmer may indeed have beaten the Wright brothers to that first flight, but stated--quite reasonably--that until there's verified evidence, then Orville and Wilbur have it.

Preston returns tonight and we're intending to catch tomorrow's ebb-tide around 0800. It is sad to be leaving, but we can't hang in one place forever. DC has done pretty well for us, but we have to move on.

G&L were unsuccessful in their attempt to get into and up the Washington Memorial. They're about a fortnight too late. Next time!

We eschew the numerous nearby eateries, and have lamb chops, coleslaw, and spuds on board.

Goodnight Irene...Weiterlesen