In a break from art museums, Allan and I visited the National Botanic Garden which is about 90% inside a conservatory, a very large conservatory. There were main jungle rooms, and orchid rooms, a desert room, and a Hawaii room, and touch/sniff rooms.... a second story in some of the rooms, in other words, a very large conservatory. Which I guess it has to be if it is the nation's repository of rare or endemic plants. It was located across the street from the Capitol, but you had to have a ticket from your senator to get in there, and somehow I didn't think John McCain would be likely to spring for a couple of old liberals like us, so we checked out the flowers instead. For lunch we headed back down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Grill where we treated ourselves to Dry Aged Steak
s at the bar. Neither of us had ever had a steak that was dry aged (or that expensive) but there is a first for everything. It was probably one of the best steaks we had ever had. I asked what came with it and the waitress said "nothing, it is ala carte". So Allan ordered the cream corn side which she highly recommended and it was worth every penny as far as Allan was concerned, and he is a cream corn fancier from away back. I ordered my steak as a salad and I got an 8 0z steak without a stitch of fat on it, settled next to a fabulous salad with grilled asparagus in it. On Saturday we headed up above Capitol Hill to the Eastern Market which is partly farmers market with produce outside and a building with meats and cheeses inside, plus vendors with hand crafted items. Although it had been raining off and on for the last couple of days, it was a beautiful morning for just wandering around and looking in all the shop windows as we made our way back to the metro stop. On Sunday it was a day of rest for both of us, getting laundry done and taking naps in preparation for the long drive to Newburgh, New York the following day. This morning we woke at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of steady rain. We ate quickly and packed up the rig, got hitched, took off and found out that we again had no rv brakes and the new controller was indicating a short in the system. Too late to trouble shoot, by this time we were in rush hour traffic, on the interstate, in the pouring rain. Allan just tried to go as slow as he could and stay well behind the traffic flow when we were signalled over by a truck. What now? One of the side panel doors was flapping open. There was nowhere to stop but by the side of the highway in the traffic, but with that taken care of, we settled in to our routine of me scoping out any upcoming lane changes on the droid maps so that Allan could get over far enough in advance so that he would not have to use the turn signals as the right hand signal still seemed to cause the rv brakes to come on. When we finally pulled into the KOA in Plattekill, NY we thought our troubles were over for the day but after we registered, we came back out to a truck that would not start. So we made a call to AAA and they were out in a flash to find out it was not the battery, we had plenty of juice, it had to be something else. So they towed the truck with the rig to the site, thank heavens I reserved a pull-thru. We have a diesel truck/rv mobile repair guy coming out at 9:00 tomorrow morning, so we will see if he can find the trouble. Just another adventure on the road.
In a break from art museums, Allan and I visited the National Botanic Garden which is about 90% inside a conservatory, a very large conservatory. There were main jungle rooms, and orchid rooms, a desert room, and a Hawaii room, and touch/sniff rooms.... a second story in some of the rooms, in other words, a very large conservatory. Which I guess it has to be if it is the nation's repository of rare or endemic plants. It was located across the street from the Capitol, but you had to have a ticket from your senator to get in there, and somehow I didn't think John McCain would be likely to spring for a couple of old liberals like us, so we checked out the flowers instead. For lunch we headed back down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Grill where we treated ourselves to Dry Aged Steak
s at the bar. Neither of us had ever had a steak that was dry aged (or that expensive) but there is a first for everything. It was probably one of the best steaks we had ever had. I asked what came with it and the waitress said "nothing, it is ala carte". So Allan ordered the cream corn side which she highly recommended and it was worth every penny as far as Allan was concerned, and he is a cream corn fancier from away back. I ordered my steak as a salad and I got an 8 0z steak without a stitch of fat on it, settled next to a fabulous salad with grilled asparagus in it. On Saturday we headed up above Capitol Hill to the Eastern Market which is partly farmers market with produce outside and a building with meats and cheeses inside, plus vendors with hand crafted items. Although it had been raining off and on for the last couple of days, it was a beautiful morning for just wandering around and looking in all the shop windows as we made our way back to the metro stop. On Sunday it was a day of rest for both of us, getting laundry done and taking naps in preparation for the long drive to Newburgh, New York the following day. This morning we woke at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of steady rain. We ate quickly and packed up the rig, got hitched, took off and found out that we again had no rv brakes and the new controller was indicating a short in the system. Too late to trouble shoot, by this time we were in rush hour traffic, on the interstate, in the pouring rain. Allan just tried to go as slow as he could and stay well behind the traffic flow when we were signalled over by a truck. What now? One of the side panel doors was flapping open. There was nowhere to stop but by the side of the highway in the traffic, but with that taken care of, we settled in to our routine of me scoping out any upcoming lane changes on the droid maps so that Allan could get over far enough in advance so that he would not have to use the turn signals as the right hand signal still seemed to cause the rv brakes to come on. When we finally pulled into the KOA in Plattekill, NY we thought our troubles were over for the day but after we registered, we came back out to a truck that would not start. So we made a call to AAA and they were out in a flash to find out it was not the battery, we had plenty of juice, it had to be something else. So they towed the truck with the rig to the site, thank heavens I reserved a pull-thru. We have a diesel truck/rv mobile repair guy coming out at 9:00 tomorrow morning, so we will see if he can find the trouble. Just another adventure on the road.
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