Saturday, September 7, 2013, Stafford, VA

A couple of the tourists

Our day started as usual with coffee and computer.  The day was sunny and clear.

After taking care of business we headed into Washington, DC.  My only goal was to find a cache and add the city to places I had cached.

The North Portico of the White House

A view of the US Capitol Building

We found a parking place on the street a couple of blocks from the north entrance to the White House  All the streets around the White house are closed to vehicles. We saw scattered protesters with various causes, but nothing of any size.  There were a lot of people on the street taking pictures with the North Portico in the background.  It was interesting that so few of the tourists were speaking English.  I can only speculate why.  Curiosity, or is there still some admiration out there for this county and it's form of government?   Maybe they are there to see it before we throw it away.  In any event they are there by the droves.
We walked around for awhile and visited the Ronald Reagan Building.  I then got serious about finding a cache.  Most of the caches in the area are virtual caches versus traditional caches.  By that I mean there is nothing really hidden there.  The coordinates lead you to the location where there is some sort of interesting or significant item or structure.  You then have to send the person who established the cache some information they require to prove you were there.  I found two, one at Freedom Plaza and the other across the street, a statue of General Pershing.  Now the only state I have to find a cache in is Alaska and I hope to get that one next year.  I may never get to all the territories, possessions or outlying major and minor islands claimed by the US.  I have cached in the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and American Samoa.

Gerri, the White House in the background

After satisfying my geocaching goal we went on a bus tour of the downtown are.  The bus was double decked with an open upper deck.  The tour had numerous stops and you were free to get off and back on another bus.  We stayed on the bus, although we had to change buses once at Union Station.   The first bus had a recorded narration of the sites we passed, the second had a live narrator which made it more informative and entertaining.

The Washington Monument

We had bought tickets that allowed us to ride any bus on the red and blue line within a 24 hour period.  We stayed on the red line bus which toured the main downtown area and around the Federal Mall.  We saw a lot of monuments, many of which weren't there when we visited in 1977.  It was difficult to take good pictures from the bus.  Many of the monuments and memorials faced away from the bus were obscured by trees.  The narrator said that there are over 10,000 varieties of tree planted in Washington, DC.  Many of them gifts from other countries.  A clear view of the Washington Monument is obstructed by the scaffolding placed there for repair of the damage done in the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in August of 2011.  Other buildings still show the signs of ongoing repairs, Union Station and the National Cathedral.  Many other buildings are either under construction or being renovated.  In spite of the shortcomings of the current administration, downtown Washington, DC seems to be a vibrant, exciting place to be.

After the bus tour we made our way back to the Jeep.  I had marked a waypoint on my GPS where it was parked so we had no problem finding it.  

St. John's Luthern Church

The Jeep was parked near St. John's Lutheren church and there was at least one or maybe two large wedding parties there.  We also had passed several wedding parties taking pictures with the Capitol Building in the background.

We left the city at about 5:30 and headed back toward Stafford and the RV Park.  Gerri had read some information online about a highly rated seafood restaurant in Fredericksburg but couldn't find it again.  We stopped at the coach and she located an interesting sounding seafood restaurant in Dumfries, Tim's Rivershore Restaurant, about 14 miles away.  http://timsrivershore.com/  It had some interesting reviews and comments about the road leading to the restaurant.  Even though it sounded like we might have a wait before dinner we headed there.  The drive to Dumfries  was on I-95 and the the road changed to broad city streets for awhile.  Once we got on Cherry Hill Road, the road the restaurant is on, the road became more of a dark winding tree tunnel even tough it was still daylight.  We remarked that there wasn't much traffic for what we thought was described as a busy place.  We only passed five cars going the other way. It was dusk as we got close to the restaurant and we noticed cars parked along the road quite a distance before spotting the building.  We drove along a dirt road beside a railroad track for some distance with cars parked along side.  The road ended at the restaurant and we were lucky to find a place near the entrance.  

Tim's Rivershore Restaurant and Crabhouse

It was getting dark so we didn't get a full picture of the setting.  There was a lot of outside seating and it seemed very crowded.  We opted to take a table inside, there was no wait.  A good choice since it got cool later.  Even with the fading light  there was a panoramic view of the water and some nearby docks or small marinas.  There was a great expanse of water, the Potomac river is very large at this point as it approaches Chesapeake Bay.

The atmosphere of Tim's was rustic at best, one review on the internet described it as divey casual.  Besides locals Tim's is frequented by a lot of Marines from nearby Quantico and the place is very lively.

Tim's menu cover

Our waiter, Joshua, was very attentive.  We had a crab dip as an appetizer it was hot and very tasty.  Gerri ordered a fried crab cake dinner and I ordered the broiled seafood combo. Both were served with a choice of sides including hushpuppies.  My dinner had fish, shrimp, oysters, scallops and a crab cake.  Gerri's was two crab cakes.  The crab cakes were good with only a little filler to hold them together, but Gerri said she prefers crab cakes with lumps of crab.

Entrance to Tim's

The drive back to civilization was of course along the same road we came in on.  I went slowly and carefully in case of deer, we saw none.  We stopped at the Walmart in Dumfries to pick up a few items and then returned to the RV Park.

It was a long day with a lot of walking but we watched some TV before turning in.  I also downloaded pictures from the camera and iPad and captioned them.