East Coast Tour 2003

a trip back east to see family & attend a wedding.

flew to Pittsburgh (as it was conveniently located between major waypoints for our trip, and closer to the last one). arrived at 6:30 EDT (that’s 3:30am PDT) and proceeded to drive to Fredericksburg, VA for the next stop of the leg. thankfully, breakfast at Eat & Park got us fueled up for the day in style. (well, okay, not in style, but in… a timely fashion).

all GPS navigation as we made our way south, too bad Washington DC was such a mess; big construction happening on the 495 beltway around the city. we thought that squeaking thru in the mid-late afternoon would spare us from the major traffic woes, but alas, we were wrong. oh well.

the econo-lodge was somewhat dingey, but proved to be comfortable and the AC was working splendidly. the hotel was full of residents driving pickup trucks; fords & chevys as far as the eye could see — or as far as the parking lot extended, anyway.

come morning, not a pickup truck in sight. made me realize that we picked the motel that otherwise caters to enormous quantities of construction workers. early to bed, early to rise, makes a neighbor not make too much noise in the middle of the night.

next stop was Washington, D.C. where we went to the National Building Museum and the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum and ended the day with dinner at the Capital City Brew Pub location right next to Union Station.

next morning, on down the highway to picturesque Raleigh, NC where we attended a wedding and hung out with family, good time.

then, a one-day haul from Raleigh NC to Buffalo NY to visit my folks. apparently i missed a memo: the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is under construction. if you have to run the state from end to end (say, from the DC area to the Erie/Buffalo area) go thru Maryland & West Virginia & up rt. 79 in Pennsylvania, will save you a lot of time & construction congestion on the PA Turnpike.

after a few days in Buffalo, it was back to Pittsburgh for the flight home. sleeping in your own bed is a good thing.