Our original east coast itinerary started in Washington D.C., with 2 or 3 nights allocated to explore the city and tentative plans to reunite with our college friend Robert. I’d visited Robert a few years back as part of a Meredith-sponsored trip to an online news conference, but Amanda hadn’t seen him in more than a decade and he’d never met our kids in person. We ultimately reversed the order of the trip, starting further north and working our way south, in hopes of taking advantage of the best weather in each destination.
Our plan worked pretty well, but after nearly three weeks on the road, we were ready to return to Iowa and shortened our stay in Washington D.C. to a single night. Robert still met us and we spent the bulk of our day walking around, taking in some of the most famous sites, from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. We took an Uber to see the Jefferson Memorial and again for lunch across the river in Virginia.
Eilidh enjoyed the mint iced tea from Compass Coffee.
The water features of the FDR Memorial captivated the girls.
We finished our day with afternoon gelato from Dolcezza, which was located just above the garage where we’d parked our van. We said goodbye to Robert and were on the road by 4:00 and drove as efficiently as possible all the way back to Elkhart, Indiana, for the final hotel stay of our trip.
Day 20: Even though our drive to Ankeny featured a stop at Portillo’s Hot Dogs in Davenport, we apparently didn’t take a single photo of the journey. After a very long day of driving on Saturday, the final leg felt like a breeze.