A day of rest

Sunday, September 8th.

On Sunday morning we woke up and, upon opening the door of the van, announced our presence once more to the entire campsite. Hmm. It seemed that our nightly prayers had not fixed the faulty alarm system :)

We had another tasty breakfast of Cheddar cheese on Wonder Bread. And after taking advantage of the bathroom facilities and internet hookup we headed out of the campground. After putting a fair distance between ourselves and the campground (and everything else) we pulled over to have a look at the alarm problem. We opened and shut all the doors -- and nothing happened. We did it again a couple of times but couldn't seem to make the alarm go off. So we wrote it off as inexplicably odd behaviour on the part of the van and decided to forget about it.

Instead we got on the Beltway and headed south toward Greenbelt park, about 12 miles north of the city. Arriving there we found a very nice secluded park, a true "wild refuge" in the midst of otherwise sprawling suburbs and strip malls. We wound our way through the park and checked in for a campsite at the ranger's office. For under half of what the KOA charged we got a much nicer and more private campsite that was even closer to the city. Granted, we had to sacrifice showers, phone lines and fresh flowers in the bathroom. But it seemed worth it.

And being as though it was Sunday we found it as good an occasion as any to take the day off. So out came the couch into the beautiful sunny afternoon. So we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the sun and playing catch with our newly acquired baseball.

Later on we decided to run a few errands at the nearby mall. However, once we got in the van we decided to try to "swing by" downtown DC (which is not as easy to do as it sounds) just to see how bad traffic really was. We figured it couldn't be too bad on a Sunday afternoon. Well, as luck would have it we hit the road just as the entire DC population started to head home from a Redskins game! So traffic was fairly hectic after all. But we got all the way downtown and made some circles and saw several of the monuments from the van. There was nowhere to park so we did a driving tour and headed back out of town.

After a shopping spree at the mall foodstore we dined across the street at good ol' Colonel Sander's fine establishment. Full to the brim with fried chicken and chicken pot pie we finished off our "day off" with a movie night in the van! We made ourselves comfortable on the couch, propped up the iBook on a cardboard box and christened the dvd-player with a showing of "Kung Pow," a very amusing karate-flick spoof, courtesy of the local Blockbuster.