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Wednesday, September 24, 2008, Mona and Fuad and family's house (Ziad's parents), Washington D.C.
We woke up pretty early and went walking in the beautiful forest surrounding our camp. We saw red mushrooms and an outdoor movie theatre, showing movies on Fridays. We finally left the camp pretty late and went to the National Museum of the Marine Corps., very interesting and motivating to make you want to be a marine. We took lots of action shots of the kids in staged battle scenes. Once on the road, we pedaled toward Dale City, where I had to pick up my last set of Adventure Cycling maps. It took forever to find the right post office, delaying us for an hour. The wind and the traffic lights slowed us up too, so we ended up in a race with the sun to make it to Washington D.C. before dark. The maps put us on a scenic route, the Mount Vernon Trail, which was beautiful. We finally made it to the D.C. area and what a thrill to see the Washington Monument. It was big, tall, and majestic, lit up and towering into the fading sunlight. Our biker friend, Ziad, who we met in Kansas, had told us to give his mother a call when we got to the D.C. area and we had called her yesterday, but didn't make final arrangements until tonight. After crossing the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the D.C. Mall, we got directions to her house, 6 miles away through busy night time city traffic - thrilling. I enjoyed it. Finally we arrived at her house around 9:00 pm. They had a delicious dinner awaiting us. We went to bed content and thankful for God's provision. 41 miles.