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Great! If the others like the idea, we will go ahead and reserve some space at the restaurant and on the tour... bp

Hey gang, lookie what we found..........a site with 100 free or almost free things to see /do.these may be good for folks tue & wed that are touring on their own.

http://washington.org/article/100-free- ... y-friendly

Also I been thinking, (look out now ) we seem to be putting a lot of time & effort into trying to pick a resturant for Thur. dinner. The larger the group,
the harder it's getting to find a place to hold us all, and to please everyone.The main thing is, that we ALL do a meal together.

This trip that will be takin care of on Fri. at the Pratt backyard BBQ. So really Thur. dinner doesn't mater that much. (Just a different way to look at it.)

Thanks for the link, Zappy. That's a good way to look at it! It's going to be hard to "herd all the cats" with this many people... We always will have the hotel (and our house will be open the entire time). I'm also concerned about the dollar situation... this is not an inexpensive area. You folks are already spending a ton of money on air fare, gas, and hotel, etc. We would be happy to do pot luck every night if that worked! We will definitely all be together on Friday night and all day at the track on Saturday (and Sunday breakfast). I'm off on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so I will be available for tour guide duties as much as possible those days. Some of this is gonna be... get here and we'll figure it out! bp

BP, what is the best way ( least amount of traffic) around DC from Ohio to Waldorf?? Or would be best to drop down to Fredericksburg take Rt218 and then north on Rt301 to Wladorf? I'm a country boy and heavy traffic can be intimidating!! LOL!!

Ok gang, I'm on the site ready to buy our trolley tickets for Thursday...just want to make sure that we ARE going to do the nighttime tour on Thursday also before I buy them.

I still have to buy ours too, so i'm all eyes.

I was trying to see if they had a day & night combo ticket and I see that they do, but the hop on/hop off pass only has 13 stops and 2 loops on it, I think the other one that Gorilli bought has 20 stops and 3 loops. I don't see the one with 20 stops offered in the combo ticket.

So.......I'm putting various addresses in the Garmin for our trek. I type in Gettysburg Address & some guy tells me about four score & seven years ago somethin' or other. What up wit. dat?

Hi folks. Yes, we are all in on the Thursday night moonlight tour. While I am up for doing that on Wednesday night, too (driving myself), there really was no good way for me to accommodate the number of folks on Thursday. And this way, we can all have fun and be together (those who want to come). I am not sure on my timing of getting from the Baltimore Airport to home in time to turn around and head back downtown in time for dinner... Do we want to do the dinner? Or just the tour? We can do something at our house that night, too... (but would have to eat and scoot as we would want to allow a good hour and a half to get downtown just to be sure we were there on time).

Heading to Fredericksburg and up 301 to our house is definitely doable but is CRAZY out of the way. However, I will be brutally frank on DC Beltway traffic. You have never in your life seen the likes. It's very much 'reality NASCAR' and the speed and closeness of the cars will freak you out if you truly are unfamiliar with that level of aggressive driving. The eastern side of the beltway is the way to go, although it's largely the same distance to our exit (7A) as the Western side through Virginia. By the way, the exit numbers on the Maryland side are not strictly numerically consecutive (1, 2, 3, etc). They are shown as 'distance to the Potomac River bridge.' So our exit is 7 miles away from the Potomac. You will drive down MD 270 and get onto the Washington Beltway heading east. Be careful of that transition to the beltway, especially if you are anywhere near rush hour on a weekday. It's insane. bp

Okay, we are coming in on 70 and had planned to pickup 270 to 495 then you say to do
95/495 on the Eastern side down to 5. Or should we take 270 to 395 east which turns into
200 then over to 95 drop down 95/495 on the eastern side and head south to avoid the nightmare traffic?
We are not talking about driving down 77 in Ohio and making good time here are we? I've driven on
I-5 in LA but this seems to be worse than that from what you are telling us so our 6 hour drive will turn
into two more hours at DC?

I know for myself that all day Thursday walking is going to kill me so mid
afternoon the old guy is going to have to return to the motel to recharge. We talked about leaving mid
afternoon for the recharge then meeting back up with the group for dinner but from what you are saying
it is an hour and a half just one way for travel time from Union Station to the motel. So that would mean a
three hour round trip which is out of the question. I would like to do dinner together and the 2 1/2 hour evening tour
but I think we won't be able to do it with a full day on the Smithsonian grounds plus Arlington.
As for me I will have to pass on the evening dinner and tour. I'll just tell Sharon to put her hand over her eyes
while looking at the sights and to spread her fingers just a little bit and tell her to imagine the colored lights!!!!!!!!