It was a last-minute off-the-wall kind of thing, but we realized seeing Theodore Roosevelt Island would be just what the doctor ordered. We had to get SarahP and Jim to Dulles in the middle of the afternoon, and SarahE and I hoped to get as far North as possible after that, perhaps all the way home to Massachusetts. We'd considered going back to the Mall and trying to find a parking space downtown, or leaving the car in its hotel parking lot and taking the Metro somewhere, then coming back to the hotel and getting the car in early afternoon. But both seemed ambitious and possibly anxiety-inducing, which we did not want on our last day. When we looked at the map we realized the island was right there, and it made a lot of sense to just have a mellow urban-park experience and have plenty of time to get out to Dulles without rushing.
I'd never been to Theodore Roosevelt Island, but had seen it many times, driving over the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge and from the Georgetown side. Supposedly there was a family expedition there once, but I must have been out of town. The first challenge though, was how to get there!?! On Saturday Google Maps had told me to do some fancy footwork on Arlington parkways and I could approach the parking lot that way, but on Sunday morning it told me that because of street closings (more work on the Arlington Memorial Bridge) and the Army 10 Miler, I should go over the Roosevelt Bridge into Foggy Bottom, pull a U-turn at 20th St, and go back over the Bridge to the G.W. Parkway North.
Breakfast first. All four of us went over to Ledo's Pizza and had the standard diner breakfast, that we had to wait a long, long time for. There was only one staff person there and she had to take orders, cook, do dishes, and collect money at the same time, which was taking her forever because the place was suddenly very popular that morning. Fortunately, she didn't yell at us and we decided that if we were going to have a mellow day, maybe a strung-out breakfast was part of the deal. Anyway, Jim and I exited early and had the packing just about done by the time Sarah and Sarah returned.
Bumped the heavy suitcases downstairs and loaded up the car for the last time on this trip, and slowly pulled out of our coveted spot at the hotel. Just as with The George Washington Grand, this hotel had advertised free on-site parking for guests but in reality had a parking lot that was nowhere near big enough to host all the guest cars. We had barely snagged a spot when we pulled in on Friday and were loath to leave it. But farewell to the Red Lion, farewell to Dark Star Park soon after that, and then we miraculously followed the convoluted path Google Maps had told me about, dashing into DC and back out, and then a few minutes later grabbing a spot at the busy public parking lot serving the Island and other recreational sites along the Potomac's Western side.
Roosevelt Island is in the middle of the Potomac, not very far at all from the center of the city. It has a good number of trails, and most of them radiate from the Roosevelt Memorial itself, which we weren't interested in. Instead we decided quickly to go counter-clockwise, as far from the vortex at the center of the Island as we could. At first, this was a little crowded and there were signs telling us that we did *not* want to go on the Swamp Trail as it was a mass of mud from recent floods. But after we looped under the Bridge we decided to risk it and took that right turn, towards the Swamp Trail, and we had a delightful, pretty isolated walk for the next couple of hours.
This ecosystem was perhaps more different from what a fresh-water estuary in New England would be (the Potomac in Washington fluctuates with the tides, but is entirely fresh water) than the Shenandoah Ridge had been from highlands in New England. The reeds seemed similar but the edges of the island were populated with thick stands of swamp oaks, some growing to incredible thicknesses, though most of them were topped off by storms. And the most distinctive thing was the pines, which were a variety we'd never seen before.
Birds rustled through the underbrush and sometimes flew out into the open. At one observation deck in the middle of the swamp in the island's nether-land we saw a Blue Heron, an egret, and a large fresh-water snail. At the North end of the island we made our way through the oak forest out to the muddy edge, right across the river from what used to be the Port of Georgetown. It now featured college boathouses, sheltering under the Francis Scott Key Bridge, probably for Georgetown University and GWU. The river was full of kayaks.
Coming around the head of the island we saw some great, worn river rocks, and then suddenly a family of four white-tailed deer. The last quarter of the trail was actually very, very muddy but we made it, and we all scraped off our boots before tramping back over the pedestrian bridge to the parking lot.
A great last hike, a natural experience though we were in the middle of the city! Our timing was perfect and we were right where we expected to be when we expected to be. Scraped off some last mud, loaded ourselves up, and then headed out to Reston Virginia. The traffic had already gotten intense and though we could have taken the George Washington Parkway all the way up the river to the Beltway and gotten out to the Dulles Access Road that way, Google Maps had a better idea and had us go cross-country through Arlington. I'm sure it knew what it was doing because the Washington Beltway never seems to not be in a state of gridlock.
Reston is now a pretty big town, but was just a small planned community back in the 70s, leading to Dulles and the mysterious CIA enclaves out in the horse farms of Northern Virginia. Everything there is built up at this point and well signed, and they're building the Metro out to Dulles. SarahE had found a promising-looking restaurant on a lake out that way ... we wanted a nice place on the way to the airport.
We pulled into a mall parking lot and spied the Cafesano we were looking for, a relatively small spot in the sprawling mall. The day had turned as hot as any day we'd experienced on our trip, and the sun was bright in a cloudless sky. We went in and ordered at the counter, but quickly decided not to eat on their patio since the sun was burning down and the only spots in the shade were taken. But we had a fine meal inside, and treasured the moment of a last lunch. I had a chicken pesto panini, which was excellent, and SarahE had a chicken kabob. We toured the "lake" for a bit afterwards, but it was kind of a joke.
We still had plenty of time, but had a longer road than expected to go out to Dulles. The Dulles Access Road (a.k.a. Route 267) is a very strange superhighway. It's got an inner section that apparently only let you enter or exit in Washington and in Dulles back when it was mainly a CIA conduit. That center of the highway is now what you're directed to if you're not going locally. It's paralleled on both sides by another part of the road, which allows local access and charges tolls, though the center doesn't.
Anyway, saw some of those distinctive airport buildings after a bit and the typical road in, with long lists of airlines, confusing departure and arrivals signs, and cars rushing by. The curb at the terminal that hosted British Airways was a chaos of cars pulling up in the middle of nowhere, busses and limos, and cops whistling at everybody and threatening tickets if you stopped for longer than 10 seconds. Just like an airport!
We were able to get close to the curb and get out Sarah and Jim's suitcases. Very sad to hug goodbye after such a wonderful trip. We'd traveled together before and been delighted at how compatible we were. I was afraid that as we'd gotten older we might have drifted away from this a bit, but it turned out that we'd possibly gotten more compatible as traveling companions. Or at least we were able to communicate well, to sense each other's moods and inclinations, and be willing to adapt to each other. It may have helped not having young children along, not that our children are not delightful ... we would have loved to have them along, but the group of just us four was perfect for the kinds of decisions you need to make when traveling.
Waved goodbye and promised to be in touch, and then Sarah and I got on the long road. It was 2:45 when we pulled away, and we had six more states to get to that day. We'd already been to the half (the District of Columbia) and Virginia. Next up was Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Google told us cheerfully that we'd make it back in 7:44, but we knew that was a too-rosy picture and that this figure would increase very soon. And it did, Google freaking out at traffic on the Beltway and then leading us around through Northern Fairfax County before we got on and crawled up into Maryland. Traffic was thick but moving, we were going as fast as we could in the left lane, and we were determined to make it back ... no more cheap hotels for us!
I'll spare the details of that long trip, except for a few highlights. At one point in Northern Maryland, approaching the bridge over the Susquehanna, traffic went from 80 to 0 in a few short yards. We lost some tread on the tires there (the ABS worked fine) and I was hugging the center divider so the car behind us didn't crash into us ... he had to weave into the other lane. In Delaware we stopped for gas and to get sandwiches that we'd eat for dinner somewhere. In Northern New Jersey they announced that there were suddenly eight crashes in the George Washington Bridge area. The option is to go over to the Garden State Parkway but there were crashes on the Southern bit of that too, so Google led us through some side roads (Route 3 in Rutherford and up Route 17), but when we got to the Garden State they had had more crashes and we crawled for the next hour up out of NJ and over the Tappan Zee. At least we could eat our sandwiches while we crawled! We had another almost-accident on the Saw Mill Parkway in New York, I still can't believe that these cars cut us off at 80 on a twisting Parkway and we didn't hit them. And then there were three separate lane drops for (needed) construction in Western Connecticut that led to long delays.
Somehow we got back to Massachusetts and the Pike and though I was definitely tired I felt at that point that I could make it home. I drove all vacation. We finally got back to 495, back to 128, back to Winn Street, and back home, pulling into the driveway at a little before midnight. In all, the trip from Dulles took just over nine hours, though (as Sarah said) 24 of them were spent in New Jersey. Didn't unpack the car that night, but read a bit and had a snack so we could calm down from the drive, then had a long sleep in my own bed.
This was a distinctive vacation. I'd wanted to take a trip to see Shenandoah, perhaps other parts of Virginia and Maryland, and DC for a long time, and was excited that it finally came to pass. Our trip was shaded by many spectres, political, cultural, and medical, and was very strange because of that. This was not a care-free week in the woods. But we had some of the best times in recent memory in the woods and in the city and even on the highway, and it was wonderful to share these experiences with Sally and Jim!
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