We went to Washington D.C. with a budget and stuck to it!

We've been wanting to take the kids to D.C. for a while, Jacob even learned about D.C. in his home school (Kindergarten) class. So Friday, the 13th of July (please get all scary day jokes purged from your mind, then proceed!...), Laura mentioned, why don't we go? This happened to be a good time of the month for our bills and we hadn't spent anything on food yet. So, we looked up our routine KOA listings and found The Richmond North/Kings Dominion KOA was about 3.5 hours from Greensboro. D.C. was then only an hour up from there in the morning. So, for $111 I booked our two nights at the KOA and after work, we set off, but how much did it all cost??

Friday

We were running behind a little as Laura was still packing up our one car, so I decided to try and make it home on one of the lime bikes while carrying a full backpack of computers, on a super hot day.

Needless to say, I haven't ridden in a while, and like I said my stuff was upber-heavy (excuse the term, that service probably would have worked better), but I made it about 3/4s of the way, I think. Then I just sat down cuz I was burning up, but after that we got on the road. Our budget for food nd parking, $100.

KOA

We arrived at the KOA and it was bustling with people, remember 3.5 hour drive? Well, we left at 6:45 and it was 10:30 when we arrived, and people were every were. There were firepits going and music was blasting, everyone was everywhere. We had about 20 minutes to check in, setup a tent and inflate air mattresses, which didn't quite happen by the quiet hour (sorry everyone). Once we did get everything setup, we walked the kids around the KOA a little bit and let them play to get there energy out the best we could.

Saturday

We got up Saturday and got going as fast as we could, which ended up being a departure time of about 9:00am which was also, again, late, but probably a good thing as morning traffic in D.C. is not too great I hear. After resourcing some great YouTube videos and apps, we planned out trip and arrival location. The final results of our walking path were incredible and produced one tired family:

$50 for three adult passes to the Metro, we parked at Vienna station outside D.C. and took the 30 minute ride into town. Parking in the southern deck was only $2 for the whole day on Saturday.

We have tons of photos and videos, but for now I have a YouTube video to get you started:

On food, we ate lite most of the day, $8.50 for two bags of poporn and some nachos with chile and cheese, $10.50 for italian ice at the Jefferson memorial, and we carried water around the whole time. We saw 22 sites, including some museums that we didn't get to tour this time, but we did get two hours in the Air and Space Museum, which was great. Jacob and Ellie have never seen anything of that scale in their lives, Jacob loved the Lincoln Memorial. That night, on the way down to the metro, we finally found the Supreme Court building and kicked ourselves twice, one that both our phones had died, Second time, we met a couple there taking photos an asked if they would take our photo and text it to us, which they did! But...the text didn't come through, and kick #2, we didn't get there number. Really, really hated that. So down past the Library of Congress we went, passing another couple, we asked if there was a place to eat, we had just walked three blocks. They told us two walk three blocks back the same way and left a block, so we started but changed our minds halfway up the block. Then...a miracle, there was a Tex-Mex restaurant right on the curb from the Metro station, we would find out later that they were only 3.5 stars??? I don't get it, because the staff was very courteous, the food was delicious and very needed after a long 10 miles of walking. Check them out for yourself! This was our big expenditure of the trip, about $50 with tax and tip, but leftovers lasted us until Sunday's meal.

That night

So we finally got up from the restaurant, I ran a quick charge on my cell at a neighboring table and we packed up the kids finally on the metro by 10:15pm, then 40 minutes back to our van, and an 1.5 hour drive later we got back to our ten site around 12:30am. Exhausted. We also had to get up early in the morning as we wanted to see Laura's mom sign in church. So...

Sunday morning

We got up around 5:15am, started packing up hoping to be on the road by 6am, and got going at about 6:15am, which wasn't terrible. Then after 30 minutes of driving we were feeling the slow down, so we took a quick detour to power threw a McDonalds. The lady by the way tried to hand be 13 creamers when we ordered three, I was like, "this may be too many.," and then she handed me someone elses hash brown and I knew I was getting punked, but couldn't find any cameras. Then back on the road and arrived at Laura's family church right as the service started. What a wild weekend, I know the kids will never forget it.