Friday, August 22 continued… Since it was rush hour, we decided to avoid highway traffic and take the scenic route back to Baltimore. The areas we drove through were high-end and beautiful. When we mentioned stopping for dinner, we were not far from downtown Bethesda, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, DC), so we decided to go there for dinner. It seemed like a good idea because the map showed a large concentration of restaurants. But when we arrived, we realized it was “the” place to be on a Friday night and was packed.

We did a lot of driving around before we found a parking spot. We didn’t write down how much the parking was, but if we recall correctly, it was about $2.50 an hour and was limited to one hour. Given the time constraints, we started jogging up and down the streets to find a place where we could get a fast meal that wasn’t fast food. We did see a parking garage and considered moving the car so we had more time for dinner, but we decided that, since it was getting late, it was probably best to just get a quick meal.

We settled on a place called Luke’s Lobster that was inside an interesting mixed use complex. We suspected that they took two blocks of old buildings, joined them, and turned what used to be the street between them into a pedestrian mall.

Luke’s served lobster rolls, crab rolls and shrimp rolls. The food was high quality and good, but the portions were small. We made it back to the car just as the time was expiring on the meter. After dinner, we went straight back to Kosmos.

Dawn on Saturday.

It was another gorgeous day with perfect weather. However, we stayed shut up in the boat most of the day because it was stinky outside. While we weren’t seeing any more dead fish floating out in the open areas, lots of little dead fish had collected in the spaces around the boats and in the corners of the docks.

Our big outing was to the pool. The fish collection near the marina gate was big and extra stinky.

While the pool was really nice, we only stayed for a relatively short time. First of all, we could smell the fish stink. Secondly, and more importantly, the pool had a bar with a DJ, and with the loud, repetitive dance music, it felt more like a nightclub than a family pool. Even if we had liked the music selection, we probably wouldn’t have stayed long because it was so loud.

On Sunday morning, most of the fish were gone from around the boats and there were noticeably less in the areas where the build up had been bad yesterday. But, the fish that were left stank worse than ever. We didn’t smell it much onboard since the breeze was blowing the odor onto the shore, but Eric and Keith went for a walk in the morning and the stink was ungodly onshore. 

We’d made reservations in a marina in Washington DC. Eric was anxious about taking Kosmos up the Potomac, so he wanted to drive to DC to scope it out. The drive took a little over an hour. Once in the heart of DC, we tried to find parking.

We saw a lot of small clusters of National Guard troops strolling around. There seemed to be at least one cluster on every block.

We drove around in circles with no luck. Each time we passed within view of the riverfront, we could see there were a lot of spots open along the shore, but since the DC road system made no sense, we had a very hard time getting there. But we did eventually. Parking was metered at $3.30 per hour, with a maximum of 3 hours. Our parking spot was across the Tidal Basin from the Jefferson Memorial.

None of us had walked the loop around the Tidal Basin before, so we decided to visit the memorials on the loop. We headed southwest through West Potomac Park towards the Jefferson Memorial. This was the view from the Jefferson Memorial of the area where we’d parked.

The memorial was completed in 1943 to honor Thomas Jefferson, an elected representative from Virginia who became one of the leaders in the Revolutionary War. Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and was eventually elected as the nation’s third president. The building reminded Christi of the Pantheon in Rome.

The statute of Jefferson was huge.

Each of the walls had inscriptions from various documents he wrote, including a quote from the Declaration of Independence.

Next on the loop was the George Mason Memorial. The contrast between the Jefferson and Mason memorials was stark. Rather than a temple-like setting with a god-like statue, this memorial was a garden with a pond. It was relatively new, completed in 2002.

Like Thomas Jefferson, George Mason was an elected representative from Virginia who became one of the leaders in the Revolutionary War. George Mason authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, which was the first document to protect individual rights, including freedom of religion and freedom of the press. Mason’s Declaration was one of Jefferson’s inspirations when writing the US Declaration of Independence. Mason actually refused to sign the US Declaration of Independence because it didn’t protect personal rights. Two years later, George Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, which borrowed heavily from Mason’s ideas. A life sized George sat on a bench under a trellis.

George was leisurely reading a book, almost inviting us to sit down so he could read to us. The bench and half walls on each side of the bench had inscriptions from various documents he wrote.

Next was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Memorial… to be continued...