Our last day in D.C.

Thursday, September 12th.

Thursday morning we got up early in order to get a sofa-picture together with Sandy. She had to leave for work at 7 o'clock. We, on the other hand had the good fortune of being able to go back to sleep! :) We said goodbye and thanked her and she let us go back to sleep and then just leave from the apartment later in the day.

So after sleeping a few more hours we got up and went to work updating the webpage since it was lacking behind a few days. And we decided to finally take the time to get some pictures up as well! While Dan worked out the technicalities behind that, Jens went on an excursion to a nearby Goodwill store. Working out the picture pages and getting all the photos uploaded turned out to be more time consuming than expected. So we didn't get going in the early afternoon as originally planned. In fact, we got to say goodbye to Sandy again. She arrived home from work at 6pm, just as we were about to leave. So we said goodbye again, and drove off towards Baltimore.

Well, there was one stop on the way first. We'd found out that the son of Bamnet's CEO is studying at George Washington University in D.C. so we got a hold of him and agreed to meet up downtown for a couch picture! So we drove the van downtown and unloaded the sofa in front of the Washington Monument. And being as though we were the only people there wheeling around a big green couch, David and his friend Shari quickly spotted us :) So we introduced ourselves to each other and took a picture of all four of us on the couch with the Washington Monument in the background, just as the sun began to set over D.C.

Just as we were about to leave a cop came walking over towards us, looking very much like he wanted an explanation of what we thought we were doing there. So we launched right into the absurd explanation of how and why we are travelling across the country with a couch. He didn't seem to get it and simply replied; "so are you done now?".
"Yes sir," we said, and made it clear that we were on our way back to the van. "Yeah," he said, " 'cause you can't just put a couch out here and take pictures. You need a permit to take furniture onto federal property, y'know."
We tried hard not to laugh, and instead politely pretended that what he was saying made sense, and rolled our way out of there. Once he'd left we had a good laugh at that explanation. Especially at the thought of what would actually happen if we were to show up somewhere requesting a permit that would allow us to "bring furniture onto federal property"... :)

After loading the couch back in the van we cruised around for a while looking for another good backdrop for a couch picture. We pulled over and parked across the street from the Watergate building and took a picture there. We'd parked right in front of a college dorm, so we got some more odd looks and smiles from people walking by.
As it was getting too dark for more pictures we said goodbye to David and Shari and headed out of town for Baltimore. It was fun to randomly meet up with someone we didn't know at all and cruise around D.C. taking pictures on a sofa :) And they both turned out to be really nice.

We were headed for another National Park campground just southwest of Baltimore. We got up there around 10pm and once we located the road down to the campground we drove back to the town of Catonville to have a late dinner. And "Friendly's" turned out to be just the place. As the name would imply we were served by a friendly and charming waitress, and both had a great big burger for dinner. The only bad thing about it was that we were too full to launch into their delicious dessert menu! :)

Full and tired, we headed towards the campground and towards a good nights sleep. We thought. But alas, the campground had closed its gates at 10pm, and there was absolutely no check in after that.
We drove on north for a while to another campground in the same park, but as expected it had also closed its gates at 10pm. It looked like we were out of luck.

Our map showed no other campgrounds in the area. So instead we ended up pulling into the parking lot of a 24-hour Giant supermarket, planning to make that our home for the night. There was a big sign saying that overnight parking wasn't allowed, but we figured we'd chance it...