Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 Cherry Hill Campground, College Park, Maryland

We left the Shenandoah Valley around 8:30 headed for our next campground outside Washington DC. The highway took us up thru the valley between mountain ranges, so we traveled north, then east to College Park, MD. It was a lovely drive of rolling hills and the tree covered mountains in the background. As we neared Washington, the traffic increased dramatically. Larry did great, maneuvering this big truck and trailer thru 4 and 5 lanes of traffic that was moving at about 60 mph and pretty heavy, even at noon. Believe it or not, those little cars gave way when he started nosing over into their lane!

Our site at this campground is almost as far into the park as you can go, probably ¼ mile or more. Larry had asked for a quiet area, since we seem to usually get a spot that is right where everyone has to go by to get anywhere. There won’t be a lot of campers going by here - but - the campground backs up to a very busy highway. There is a LOT of road noise. After setting up the trailer we had a few hours to relax before our tour of Washington which we had scheduled at the campground office. Since I hadn’t had much sleep the night before, I laid down to relax for a little while. That road noise didn’t bother me at all, I fell right to sleep and had a good nap.

We took a tour with Grayline called “DC after Dark”. They picked us (about a dozen from the campground) up by the entrance to the RV park and then went to Union Station where they picked up additional people. We went to the Washington Mall and made stops at the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials, the Lincoln Memorial,

Jefferson Memorial,

and FDR Memorial. The driver added the Marine’s Monument of raising the flag at Iwo Jima as our first stop.

They were all very impressive with the darkness surrounding the memorials and the lights illuminating them. We saw the Capital, White House, museums, and other buildings from the coach. We do plan to go back to some of them in the daylight, but we enjoyed seeing all the lights of the city and the reflections on the pools separating them.