Last month, Daph and I took our Spring Vacation which we’ve been looking forward to for quite a while since we didn’t get to take one last year due to circumstances. We’d been planning in 2007 to do a bit of a New England road trip, visit various cities along the way, see the sights, work without a really solid plan, just going. That was the idea anyway. Reality is, if you’re trying to squeeze a road trip into 9-10 days, you really have to do some planning. We booked a hotel in DC and planned to drive there and spend a few days seeing the sights before heading north through New York state and then turning right at Montreal.
Of course we had to bring Steg Blomquist, our Rally team mascot.
The first day we went to the National Zoo. On the scale of Zoos we’ve visited I’d rate it a 6 or 7 surprisingly. The animals were well kept but there was very little presented information available. A few lines on each critter at best. This appears to be a surprising theme with all of the Smithsonian Museums. They’re geared much more to a ‘Look at this thing!’ concept than actual information. Kind of dissapointing.
One of the 5 Pandas resident at the Zoo.
The next couple of days we used DC’s excellent Bus and Subway system to get around and see the larger than life monuments around the city.
The Lincoln Memorial at dusk.
The Man himself.
The World War II monument with the Washington Monument in the background.
Of course DC is currently wrapped up in election fever. Come October/November the place must be a zoo.
A picture sampling can be found here.
After leaving DC we headed into the Adirondacks where we spent an evening at The Fern Lodge which was an absolutely amazing bed and breakfast that I’d found online. We had an absolutely amazing room with a beautiful view of a lake. Huge comfortable bed with a fireplace, two person soaker tub and a granite steam shower. We didn’t get much of a chance to use the rest of the facilities but there’s a 15 person theatre room, exercise equipment, beautiful great-room and a pair of very friendly Golden Labs named Hudson and Shadow.
After that we spent a few days in Montreal staying with Daph’s grandfather and of course visiting Ikea for some home stuff. We also got a chance to visit Carl at TRAC Racing which is something I’ve been hoping to do for quite a while. After that it was off to home with a grand total of 4501.6 KMs driven.
I’m glad we went and I enjoyed the trip, I’m fortunate to be able to spend that kind of time in a car with Daph and not have it be a problem. I know lots of people who would dread that sort of thing with their significant other. Overall though, I think we tried to pack a bit too much into the trip. Between the driving, moving on and the trying to do everything in a couple of days at each spot I found we didn’t get the time for just relaxing that I would have liked, or at least more slower paced casual ‘vacationing’. It was definitely fun and with gas prices going the way they are it was the time to do it before it became cost-prohibitive, but next time I’m thinking we’ll just find one place and do that properly rather than flit around so much. This is why we’ll never be cruise people, I suspect.
Now what to do next spring…?
