Three Hour Radius

There are close to 5 million things to do within a three-hour radius of DC.  In the past month, we've started to explore a few of the gems outside of DC.

Manassas

Manassas National Battlefield Park is the site of two civil war battles, most notably the first battle of the entire war.  It is located just 25 miles from DC, which is truly interesting when you think about how close that really was to our nation's capital.  It's neat to learn about the battles via a short walk down to a stone house that stood long before the war arrived at its doorstep and via a driving tour with stops at important battle points.  It's hard to imagine troops moving through this hilly, forested area without cell phones to communicate with commanders.  At one point the troops only realized that fighting was about to begin when they noticed the sun glistening off the bayonets of an approaching mass of enemy soldiers coming up a hill very close to where they stood.

 3-12-11 - Stone House @ Manassas

I would recommend a visit and while you're there, stop for breakfast at Yorkshire Restaurant in the town of Manassas. Yuuuummy!

Chimborazo Hospital

In Richmond, they've preserved the largest confederate general hospital from the civil war: Chimborazo.  It's interesting to learn about the fact that women, slave and free blacks, all worked together with men to save lives.  There's a museum and movie in the Visitor Center, but the best part about this site is the park.  It's on a hill overlooking parts of Richmond.  Great place to bring your lunch and enjoy the view!

3-26-11 - Chimborazo Visitor Center

Maggie L. Walker (Richmond)

Maggie L. Walker was one of the earliest and most successful black, female entrepreneurs in our nation.  She built a local banking empire, taking its parent organization from an impoverished community with $400 in debt to a thriving one worth over $400,000.  Her house is preserved with 95% of the furnishings she owned still intact.  The staff at this site are amazing and will take you on an excellent tour of the house and a museum in her honor.

3-26-11 - Maggie L Walker's House

Fort Ward

Of course, we've been exploring close to home as well.  My favorite place to stroll with Allie in Alexandria is Fort Ward, which used to be one of the Forts protecting DC during the civil war era.  They still have part of the earthen fort set-up as it once was and a museum that you can walk through for free.  The best part is the walking path around the park and the fact that they have an amphitheater for concerts in the summer.

3-18-11 - Fort Ward Gate

Sakura

We've all heard of it and now Nathan actually works at it, but could the Cherry Blossoms in DC really be that great?  Yes, yes they can.  I went to view the trees on March 25th, a day before the actual festival began.  It's really nice to have someone with the inside scoop because, although it wasn't a sunny day, I got to see the trees at near peak bloom with a fraction of the people there that usually come for the festival.  I guess I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

 Almost makes you forget you're in a city.

Human progress meets nature.

The Forest

Just the two of us!

Washington Monument

DC: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

We are finally in our new location: Alexandria, VA!!  We have been here for just over two weeks, but a first impression is a lasting impression, so here's what I think.


The Good

Let me paint a picture of why this place is amazing.

I got into my car last Saturday at 11:15am and the local NPR station was playing my favorite show: Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me.  I drove five minutes to pick-up my very first Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) box which included all kinds of yummy, organic produce from local farms.  Outside the restaurant that organizes the CSA (called Food Matters - I have yet to try it out, but it looks great), a troop of girl scouts sold me my first six boxes of cookies for the year.  Later that day, we all got in the car, picked up Nathan's brother, Justin, and visited the National Zoo - for free.

My first CSA bag - complete with wildflower honey!

Flamingos at the National Zoo

There are literally one thousand adventures to be had waiting for me at my doorstep every day.  I don't need to go very far - heck, I don't even have to drive to get anywhere if I don't want to.  The possibilities are endless.  I feel like I could go anywhere and do anything here, using DC as my launching pad. 

 View of the National Mall from the Mt. Vernon Trail

In Rochester, I had to join a special group to practice speaking Spanish.  Here, I've had to use my Spanish just to get around and talk to my neighbors.

In Kansas, we lived in a construction zone and I feared that Alison might kill herself if she started moving on her own through that house.  Now, there is crown molding in our apartment and everything was updated as of a couple years ago.

People are very open-minded here because they come from all corners of the country.  The DC Badgers alumni group sends me almost daily event emails, whereas in Kansas, the only other Badger in the area had an asterisk by his name claiming he had died in 1994.

The Bad

Could there BE any more people here?  Every single nook and cranny of this area is overflowing with people.  People on the roads, people in the stores, people in the restaurants.  Big people, small people, people of every background.  If there were a nuclear holocaust and we were all forced to find our own food, there would be around a 1000 to 1 human-to-squirrel ratio and we would surely all die of starvation.

I miss my view of the bluffs from my front door in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Yes, we have an amazing top floor view from our new place, but nature trumps urbania.  That is just a fact of life.

Stainless Steel Tree in the National Sculpture Garden

Please don't let this be the future of our natural world! (Although it IS really neat!)

The Ugly

Picture the largest freeway you've ever seen.  Then picture it full of cars during rush hour.  Now double the amount of cars on the road.  Add people who learned how to drive in places like Rochester, MN where they do not know how to drive. Then add a few tourists.  Now have someone tell you the traffic is only really bad during rush hour. Now picture yourself maming that person because they are completely, horribly wrong.

Traffic is awful here.  The infrastructure just can't handle the people and drivers have to pull crazy stuff just to get where they need to be.  Stop lights last for days.  It's best to just stay out of your car.  Period.

On The Road Again

For as much grief as I've given Kansas, arriving back to it, with all of its familiar sites, was nice.  I guess a small piece of me was fond of it afterall, or maybe the spring weather just brings you a sense of endless possibilities, no matter where you are.  However, we had a job to do there and here's what we were up against:

Our storage unit - 1/4th excavated

Mom and Dad came down and helped us sift through this junk and get it moved onto a U-Haul.  We will forever be grateful for their help with this move as we have no idea what we would have done without them!  Spending a week in the car and trying to sleep in the same room as a six-month-old is not considered traveling in the lap of luxury.

2-19-11 - Early-morning wake-up call for Grandpa

Kevin and George, coworkers from Fort Larned, also win the  "best surprise help" award as they helped us haul off a bunch of the things we couldn't take and made sure everything was packed into the truck a day early.  Wow!

On Saturday, we drove to Independence, MO, home of the Harry S Truman National Historic Site.  Nathan and I were almost late for the 9am Sunday tour of Truman's Mother-In-Law's house (coincidentally, he lived much of his life there and never purchased his own home), but Nathan mentioned where he worked and they made sure we got a spot on the tour!  Ah, the benefits of knowing a Park Ranger.

President Truman's House

Later Sunday, we also stopped in St. Louis and I made everyone tour the Old Courthouse and see the Arch (a.k.a. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial).  We didn't go up to the top, but I was OK with that when I heard that it sways in the slightest of breezes!

The Arch

On our third day we ended up driving just below a giant snow and ice storm, escaping horrible weather, but getting drenched the entire drive.  The fourth day, we made it to my sister, Samantha's, new house and got to meet her boa constrictor and street cats.  We did eventually make it down to our new place in Alexandria, VA.  I haven't seen any snow since because the weather has been in the 50's (at least) and the streets are made of cheese.  Just kidding, I will have the full report on our first impressions (good and bad) soon.

Farewell Dakotas

The epic journey has begun and instead of starting with a single step, we decided to start with an 8.5-hour drive from Medora, ND to North Platte, NE.  This was the single longest drive of the entire trip and it took Alison and I a mere 12.5 hours to complete.  Did we bite off more than we could chew?  Of course!  Will we make that mistake again?  Nope...not with a 5.5-month-old, anyway.

On Tuesday, the weather in North Dakota had warmed to 50 degrees as if to convince us that Medora was not as inhospitable as we might believe and that maybe we should stay a while longer.  We can't, but we did enter the park to say good-bye and were met with a plethora of bison and gorgeous sun-drenched bluffs.

 2-15-11 - I'm not as quick to shed my jacket in this gorgeous spring weather as Alison was

2-15-11 - Bison: Best viewed from the car

Keeping a baby sane for 12.5 hours is not easy.  Luckily, we took a route through Rapid City, which allowed me to show Alison the ultimate tourist trap: Wall Drug.

 2-16-11 - Wall Drug!

We made it to North Platte safe and sound, despite driving several hours through the dark Nebraska wilderness in what can only be described as prime alien abduction country.  We'll miss the Dakotas dearly, our home for the past four winters, but are very excited to see what lies ahead in this strange, new Eastern land.

Mission Accomplished!

In spite of our impossibly tight schedule of seeing 11 apartments in 1.5 days both in Virginia and Maryland, we were able to find a great place for a great price (relatively speaking) in Alexandria, VA.  We were all exhausted by the end of the trip, but knowing we'll be in an interesting location made me want to hang the same ' Mission Accomplished' banner on our plane that George W did from the aircraft carrier and collapse into three days worth of sleep.

 Lincoln Memorial from the base of the Washington Monument

After doing most of the research for this trip, I wasn't sure we would find anything for a suitable price that would be safe for a five-month-old and a couple of adults fresh out of North Dakota.  Let's talk about prices.  You can get a two-bedroom apartment for as low as $1200 in the suburbs of DC, however, according to apartmentratings.com these come complete with roaches, pimps, and crack dealers.  When you start talking about places you actually want to live, you've gone into the $1350 and higher range.  Forget paying less than that unless you want to have 8 roommates.

We saw a variety of places, from townhomes to highrises and ended up with a condo-style apartment on the second floor with a balcony view of Old Town Alexandria and some trees in the distance (yes, there is nature there)!  The apartment size is fairly small, but will help us with our purging and includes a nice fitness center and washer and dryer so I can continue to easily outfit Alison with cloth diapers.  There's a grocery store, Red Lobster, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Afghan, and Salvadorean restaurants just around the corner.  There is also a Whole Foods a short drive away.

Our new building!

Now, let's talk about traffic.  Did we rent a GPS for $10.99/day?  Yes.  Was it the best $33 I've ever spent?  YES!  Everything you've heard about DC traffic is true.  We made two wrong turns.  One resulted in it taking an extra 45 minutes to go about a mile and the other resulted in us getting routed down the entire length of Connecticut Ave during morning rush hour.  Nathan did an excellent job of navigating the three-lane roundabouts.  Paris driving, here we come!

 View of the White House and DC from the Washington Monument

I can't tell you how much I love being in DC.  The wrong turn we took on our way to Maryland made us drive past the National Mall and Lincoln Memorial.  Oh darn.  We also visited Nathan's new office and got an unexpected behind-the-scenes tour of the Washington Monument for free.

 Family Photo in front of the Washington Monument

We arrive near the end of February.  I'm excited to have all of my stuff in one place and excited to start a new life here.  I feel like a pilgrim embarking on a journey to the Land of Opportunity.  Luckily the only Indian we need to worry about is the digestive stress caused by the restaurant down the street.  Watch out world, the Kings are coming to Washington. 

We're Moving to DC

For the entire time that I've had this blog, there's always uncertainty in our lives surrounding where Nathan and I will be in the next few months.  My Myers-Briggs score is certain of only one thing and that's that I'm a J - a major planner, but Nathan's willy-nilly schedule as a Park Ranger has forced me to relax and go with the flow.  I've gotten quite good at adjusting to whatever comes our way and have loved almost every place we've been - Glacier, Theodore Roosevelt, Pipestone, Tanzania - all very good.  Then Alison arrived and suddenly a little more structure in our lives seemed welcome.

Well, we're getting it!  Nathan has been offered a full-time, year-round GS 5-7-9 position on the National Mall in Washington DC.  If you told me a few years ago that I'd be moving to DC, I might have gotten really angry.  However, our trip to visit Nathan's brother, Justin, proved my horribly-crime-ridden-and-a-slippery-politician-on-every-corner impression wrong and I had declared in a previous blog, "I think I could live here"!

October 2009 - Yes, we're not wearing jackets in October!

 There are a lot of reasons I'm excited to be in DC: closer to family, farmer's markets galore, cheaper travel, and people that think like they're from Madison.  The best part is all of the interesting people and organizations working their butts off to make this world a better place.  Now, more often than not when I hear about the latest renewable energy conference or Sierra Club event, guess where it is?  My new backyard.

We're flying out next week to find an apartment and will be there permanently by February 28th.  I'll miss the wide open spaces of North Dakota, but am excited to explore the East Coast!