Visit to DC (2 of 2)

So here are some notes on the last two days of our DC trip . . .

Saturday, August 16

Kerry and Luis had the idea of going on a tour of Virginia wineries - which was a good idea, a bit of a change of pace from the DC mainstream tourist adventures. Our group met Ricky and Natasha at the Rossello house, and started out on the "Grape Adventure" van.

I'm pretty sure that the drivers for these tours aren't supposed to be drinking, but we were wondering about that. About 20 minutes into our trip there was an unannounced u-turn; sure enough, about 20 minutes later we were driving past the street where we had started. At which point the tour folks 'fessed up to a "minor problem." Oh well, it was only 40 minutes or so out of our lives.

Anyway, we visited three wineries. Some of us were probably more interested in touring, others in tasting, still others in collecting souvenir wine glasses - but everyone had a fun time. The first winery (Pearmund Cellars, website here) featured a pretty knowledgeable taste-master (I think I made up that term); the setting was nice but not quite as nice as what was to come; our crew manages to make all sorts of funny comments throughout the tasting (at least we think they're funny).

The second winery (Three Fox Vineyards (website here) had a great setting; dicey taste-master; but a very fun place. This is where we had lunch. Our supposedly sober tour leaders had kept the food on ice; a good idea which would have been even better if they had kept the food separated from the melting ice. So the sandwiches, brownies, etc. were served in a kind of melted ice broth (or water), you might say. We were pretty hungry, but even so . . . at least we were distracted by entertainments such as Patrick and Ricky rolling down the hill.

Onto winery #3 (Barrel Oak Winery, website here). The taste-master here (photo below) may have had aspirations about running a classroom or boot camp or something, because he was firmly under the illusion that we were supposed to pay attention to his every word. Thankfully he couldn't enforce that standard, or we would have had several folks in permanent detention. Nice wines, nice outdoor seating area, nice views; a good way to finish the tour.

Then back to the Rossello's; picked up groceries and Patricia (with assist from Natasha) put together a v. good dinner for everyone. (And she thought she was on vacation.) A very fun evening.

After which - despite the lateness of the hour - Kerry and Luis were kind enough to take a group of us on the night walk of the monuments. We dropped off Patricia and Nicole and the rest of us drove down to the Capitol mall area (Chris, Kerry, Luis, Patrick, Paul Jr., Nedda, me). I haven't been around DC all that much, but this is my favorite thing. Here's what we saw:

1. Lincoln Memorial - this is not beatable. The setting on the end of the mall is superb. Whatever feeling the architect was trying to inspire as everyone walks toward the memorial and up all those stairs - it works. How awesome was Lincoln? And how about standing in there and reading the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address, chiseled into the walls? Also something to stand at top and look out over the Mall.

2. Korean War memorial - probably my favorite of all; there is something about these ghostly (at least for nighttime visitors) figures that appear to come up out of a small stand of trees, moving out on some thankless patrol in a forgotten war (or whatever they're doing). This can get your imagination going.

3. World War II memorial - first time I had seen this, and it is quite impressive. But I would like to go back and see it again, I didn't really connect with this as much the first time around. For one thing, it seems like they tried to cover all the bases (50 states, territories, women in service, theaters, all service branches, etc.) - which I suppose was necessary given the scope of the war, but the memorial seemed to lack some of the punch of the others.

4. Vietnam War memorial - did I mention there was a bright full moon? This made the memorial look quite a bit different to me than it looked at night in 2003. I hadn't noticed how it lines up with the Washington Monument. Whoever designed this was beyond successful.

This adventure took awhile, we got back by 1:30a or so. I was grateful folks were interested in going. The monuments are wonderful, as was the company.

Forgot to mention, the weather was ridiculously nice throughout our visit. I think of August in DC as difficult-to-bear heat and humidity, which I guess does happen quite often. But not to us.

Sunday, August 17

End o' trip, so we checked out of the hotel. Kerry took Patricia and me with Chris, Paul and Nedda on a tour of the West Wing of the White House. One of her former bosses was our tour guide. I had kind of low expectations for this as it had the feel of a stock DC experience, but that was wrong. I very much enjoyed it. The tour guide was knowledgeable and nice. Just getting through security was kind of entertaining. I liked gawking at the Oval Office, one of the large conference rooms (where supposedly they do important stuff), the Cabinet room, all the 18th and 19th century American artwork hanging around, and of course a bunch of Bush photos (including current stuff from Beijing Olympics). Took photos in the Rose Garden and the press area. Nice experience.

Then we met the rest of the group down on the Potomac waterfront for lunch; the place was named Sequoia. It ended up being kind of comical. It was a large factory-type restaurant with a view, so expectations as to food were very low to start with. But still not met. All of the salads featured bugs. The manager's solution - in a situation where our diners pretty clearly were so done with eating salad - was to assure us that the lettuce was being washed twice, and replacement salads would be right out. That led to a short discussion, and the salads were swapped for mega-sodium soup of some kind. After that came steaks (ordered medium rare but served well done) with a side of potato buds (but those didn't have a chance against the garlic flavoring). After that, a dessert that Sara Lee would be ashamed to sell (or maybe does).

Anyway, it was nice to see the area and it was a good idea to go there given the limited amount of time remaining before our flight. And the experience actually underscored how great all the arrangements had been every step of the way on this trip.

Thereafter got organized, made our way to Baltimore airport, enjoyed smooth flight back to Phoenix.

Everyone was convinced that they had a great time throughout the trip. I certainly did. And I'm increasingly confident that Kerry does have a real job out there.

One more storm photo . . .

. . . this shot (taken the morning after the storm discussed here, or Aug 29 (happy birthday to Charlie and to Michael Jackson)) is three blocks west of our house.

The view is south along 40th street (in the background you can see the trail we take straight south up into the mountains from the aptly named 40th street trail head). This row of felled power poles is maybe 200 feet from MB's front door?

I read they had power outages in this area. And that there were 100 mph gusts, very odd for this area.

Visit to DC (1 of 2)

All seven of us had a delightful visit to the DC area a couple weeks ago (Wednesday August 13 through Sunday August 17). The trip actually was dreamed up among the five kids, who wanted to celebrate Paul Jr. hitting #21 in an interesting way; unlike the others, he hadn't had a chance to get to DC yet. So that became the destination. Patricia and I decided to tag along, partly because we were very long overdue to visit Kerry. Plus it sounded like fun.

So anyway . . . we (meaning Patricia, me, our three sons, Nedda) had a smooth flight into the Baltimore airport, departing very early on Wednesday. (Nicole arrived later into Dulles.) Made our way to our rental minivan, which was quite the utilitarian vehicle, very blue. Checked into our Embassy Suites in Chevy Chase. But this was just for Patricia and me . . . the rest of the group enjoyed the fine hospitality of one Luis Rosello, just a few minutes walk away. Other than getting a quick bite and saying hello to KHG, we mostly got organized to drive out to dinner at the home of Luis's parents (Pedro and Maga Rosello).

Maybe a half hour drive, it was somewhere in the Virginia portion of the DC area. Also got to meet Ricky and Natasha there. These folks were extremely easy to get to know (maybe in part because we had heard so much from Kerry) and we had a most pleasant evening. It was fun to talk through some of the Puerto Rico info, chit-chat about political and other stuff; wonderful appetizers and dinner, even a birthday cake for Paul Jr. Couldn't have been nicer, very thoughtful. (But I'm still trying to figure out what Kerry is up to in the top photo; thinking about trying out for the Spanish Olympic team?)

Thursday, August 14

Back on the evening of our first visit to DC (N,C,K and me in 2003, per old photo), our hotel was very close to "Old Ebbitt's Grill" - which is a pretty well-known local restaurant near the Mall (we're told patronized by locals and tourists alike). Anyway, we enjoyed it a bunch. So Kerry had made lunch reservations. It was fun to be back there. And they bought Paul Jr. a birthday cake (#2 for the trip, though we had been in town only about 20 hours at this point.)

Patricia had expressed interest in the Holocaust Museum, and Kerry had tickets for us (you'll notice a theme: being well taken care of by KHG). Got our first looks at Capital Mall stuff on the walk over. The museum is really well done, and I liked it. Naturally enough the subject matter is pretty heavy, and perhaps just a bit out of synch with the rest of the Mall. But very much worth the visit. I especially liked an area where they displayed a bunch of pre-war photos of folks later taken up with the camps.

We then wandered the Mall for a minute or three before going back, killing some time, changing clothes, then heading back into town (courtesy of a cab driver who definitely preferred the scenic route) to a restaurant named "Zenga" (I think). This was a place that Kerry and Luis thought would work well for the group, and they were right. I'm pretty sure I ordered the best meal of the group, but it was all good. We then stepped across the street to some Spanish(?) themed place to try their Sangria. I didn't expect to care for the taste, but that stuff actually was tasty. Foolishness and photos ensued. Patricia, Nedda and I left the rest of the group to their devices (which included foolishness and dancing, I believe) and came back to hotel. Turns out the finals of the all around competition for the women's gymnastics were on "live from Beijing". So it was kind of fun to keep an eye on that.

Friday, August 15

More good stuff lined up! Started the day with a tour of Kerry's workplace; this included Patricia, Nicole, Paul Jr. and me. You might imagine this is an interesting tour. Hurried from there to the Washington Monument - this is one that Nicole has been adamant about taking the trip up to the top. So Kerry arranged tix for all of us. The park service guy seemed a little (I mean a lot) hyper but that was kind of fun. The views from the top are interesting, but almost moreso looking up inside the structure even than looking out over the city. Being up to the top makes the monument look more interesting from the outside.

Then got some coffee for folks in our group who were sagging a bit for whatever reason. Walked the mall just a bit; then Patricia, Nicole, Kerry headed back to Luis's place to buy food and make dinner. The rest of us went through the Museum of Natural History. Yes, I really like all the museum stuff. I might have been in the Field Museum in Chicago at some point, but all this seemed new to me. Got a big kick out of the dinosaur bones - as overdone as that topic is, it still amazes to stand beside these things. The pterodactyl was like an image of the devil. Patrick saw a "dingo." There were lots of skeletons, and lots of other stuff. Even bugs.

Good museums are an excellent thing, and this was a good group to tour with. We walked the Mall a bit, then took the Metro back. Luis was a patient guide for this group of tourists. Especially on the Metro, where even things like buying tickets became mildly adventurous, and it always seemed like we were on the brink of some kind of incident.

Anyway, kudos to Patricia and her staff of cooks, who put together a really fine meal at Luis's apartment. It made for a really nice evening.

As fun as this all was, I was getting a little nervous; the days were slipping by and the one thing I really wanted to do - walk my favorite monuments at night - was looking unlikely.

More to come in a separate post . . .

Storm photos

We seem to have a genuine monsoon season underway here. For what seems like the first time in years. Conditions were ripe yesterday. Coming down Squaw (I mean Piestewa) Peak around 7:15, it was unusually muggy, with constant lightning off to the southeast. By 11:30, there was a combination of wind, rain, hail like we haven't seen. It was being driven into the patio doors, hard, which also hasn't happened like that (given the 10' plus overhang). Microburst (or whatever the weather yakkers call it)?

Amazingly, we didn't lose power overnight - as did various in the area including MB Stern. One small-ish tree toppled over right outside the dining room, but roots appear intact. So the Blaha bros can fix that one, we think.

Trees down all around the neighborhood, along Cholla, etc. Much of the valley was hit but there have been enough of those news choppers floating around that the visuals here must be pretty good.

BTW, there must have been concentrated activity down by the basketball court, various photos below.

Back from DC . . .

We had a very fine trip indeed. But my trip notes will wait until I can get caught up at work. In the meantime here are some photos I took (courtesy of a new service I'm testing at this link, it automatically generates slideshows, and does other fun stuff).

Thanks to Kerry and Luis for A+ hosting.

Time to head down the mountain

It was a remarkably pretty evening on Piestewa (f/ka/ Squaw) Peak. I had checked a local radar picture before going to the trailhead, and things in the area looked clear. But the monsoon has been pretty active this year, and things kicked up just a bit later.

The photo (with apologies for low-quality Blackberry photo) looks north from atop Piestewa Peak. The closest activity in view looked to be moving pretty much straight east and, fortunately, it continued on that path. But there were great views in all directions, including a cloud bank to the west illuminated by the setting sun. This type of thing is a v. nice feature for Phoenix.

I did drive into the pictured storm on the way home, and it's still raining now (several hours later). The temperature dropped from 107 when I arrived at the trailhead at 6:30p, to 86 driving home in the rain at 7:45p. Nice all around.

Orchid tree: good bye

Finally got around to removing what had been a large and beautiful tree in the front of the house. The frost during January 2007 did enough damage that the tree didn't survive.

Removal courtesy of DaVinci Landscaping.

Next question: replace with a Chilean mesquite, or a museum palo verde?

Time flies . . . EPG visits . . .

For whatever reason things stay really hectic here. Combination of the house project (which takes time even if it's stalled somewhat), work, stuff etc. And now it's August, with our DC trip coming v. soon (yay).

Anyway, we ended up having a nice weekend. Patrick came up from Tucson on Friday afternoon (with Scholl in tow), and eventually we had a big group of folks in the house that evening for his birthday dinner. Patricia put together cheesecake, pound cake, shells; Mary Beth brought the right salad. A moment of consternation when the cookbook with the traditional cheesecake recipe went missing (a victim, hopefully temporarily, of the construction process). But I hear the reviews on the alternate recipe were excellent anyway. It was the very first time she fired up the new stoves. We even moved all the kitchen chairs into the eating area. Sometimes this feels like we're moved back in.

So it was fun to have EPG around, even if it was only about 24 hours. They went bowling after the birthday dinner, then Chris and Jon came by in the afternoon.

Later in the evening some of us went to a concert by James Taylor, you can read about it on the other site by clicking here.