Today is a quick trip to Ocean Isle Beach to retrieve Katie and Alex who start their new school year at Enloe High School tomorrow morning. It was certainly a stormy day from the end of I-140 near Winnabow and a couple of downpours in Shallotte and on Ocean Isle Beach itself. At least returning home was relatively calm in VFR conditions! :)
The final day of going Walkabout was yet another beautiful day in a string of them. Honestly, the only day the weather was lousy was the trip to Chattanooga and even then the worst of it was one downpour that happened to catch me handing over some tax papers to my client! All in all, no complaints at all! The final visit was the one I don't think anyone had any doubt would happen when…
On the way to Metro Center station, I spied some lovely carving tucked into the wall of the National Press Building that I just had to capture. Once at the station, the Smartrip card on the phone where the three-day pass was clearly visible still stubbornly refused to open the turnstile gates after being tapped. Yet another station manager (at least much nicer this time) spent a couple of minutes trying to diagnose the problem…
After a gourmet lunch of a polish sausage and some pop in front of the Federal Reserve building, I continued on my somewhat diagonal journey that would lead me eventually to the Metro Center station. The Ellipse is directly south of the White House and stands between it and the Washington Monument. A fair heap of it has been turned into an overflow car park for workers at the White House and Executive Office Building…
Not too far east of the Lincoln Memorial is a monument that I have never visited in all of the times I've gone wandering round the District. It wasn't so much lack of desire to do so but rather a feeling that whilst it was certainly an exceptionally important one and worthy of spending some time to visit, there seemed to be a crucial element missing for me. This is of course the Vietnam Veterans…
The last time I was in DC, I didn't have enough time to spend some quality time at arguably one of my favourite memorials in the city...the Lincoln Memorial at the Potomac side of the National Mall. Getting to the memorial proved to be one hell of an adventure, though...and it had nothing to do with making several laps around it which is what I did a couple of times when Alex was in hospital…
After a lovely visit atop Mt Washington, it was time to head out for the next leg of the journey to Springfield VA just outside of Washington DC. When staying in the DC area, Springfield tends to be my favourite thanks to the Franconia-Springfield Metro station that is close by. I hadn't been on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in ages but it's nice to see they've embraced the all-electronic toll collection revolution which is why I…
This hotel had introduced the third different variation on breakfast...grab and go bags full of nothing of interest and I was still rather full from the Cracker Barrel the night before so it didn't take long to get the cargo loaded and be off on my way. Thanks to a wonderful idea from Suzette to check out one of the most scenic locations in her hometown, I found myself making my way from the airport…
After lunch, it was time to head out again on the journey but the first stop was to visit a camera store in the western end of downtown Columbus. He had a lovely Nikon F4 available but sadly would not budge on the price which was a bit more than I wished to spend and so that was pretty much that for shooting film on this trip which was one of the things I was…
Having blown off the breakfast bingo worksheet at the hotel, I was more than ready to enjoy some fine Polish fare at Pierogi Mountain in downtown Columbus with the entire crew from Galena. Of course, I had to get a few dash cam shots of the downtown area where the skyline is dominated by one of the area's biggest employers who not so coincidentally sponsored the name of the nearby hockey arena that is home…
