Monday Sept 5: The Saga Continues!

This is a catchup blog so I'll go back to Thursday night. We had another wonderful sunset - this time at the marina in Baltimore at which we will spend the next month. Steve was still having difficulties finding a comfortable sleeping position so we thought we would take our friend Nurse Sue's advice and try making a "recliner" in the boat. A pillow was duct taped to the back wall, the yellow chair (in which you can lean back) and a plastic deck chair with a pillow became the recliner. While it may look fairly comfortable, it wasn't! So back to sleeping in fits and starts for Steve. Friday morning at 7 am, we picked up Rebecca from the airport (a convenient 20 minutes from our marina).

After a morning of doctor's visits for Steve (during which Rebecca and I stayed on the boat) and a lunch at Fell's Landing Bertha's Mussels, we put her to work handling the ropes as we needed to move to the pumpout dock to empty our holding tank. It was a reminder of what boating is! We also had to move back to our dock against a fair current and get the electric lines hooked back up (it's not as easy as it seems it should be).

After much discussion Friday afternoon, it was a group decision that Rebecca and I would head to Washington, DC, for a couple of days. This would give Steve time to be on the boat himself so he wouldn't feel a need to try to be quiet as he moved from one sleeping spot to the next on the boat. So Becky and I headed out, hotwired a room and spent a nice night at a Sheraton. We drove the next day the remaining 30 minutes to DC with the first stop being the Ford Theatre. We've been in DC many times but somehow never made it to the theatre. They had a great audio tour so we spent an hour and a half touring both the museum part and the actual theatre (which isn't always open).

Next on the agenda was the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. We were driving and without exception managed to find a great parking space to each of our destinations - it was truly amazing (Owen would agree, I'm sure :-)). Rebecca had a very nice tapas restaurant in mind for lunch. New experience for me and it was very good! Next was a trip to Arlington aboard the tour bus (it was getting too warm for me to even consider walking) Tour busses are also high on my list of fun things to do in a new city. Almost as good as movies at a museum :-)

We wanted to visit the Bureau of Engraving but it wasn't open on Saturdays. Bummer. So we found a great Chinese place for dinner and called it a day. Rebecca took a run Sunday morning around DC spotting the White House, the Reflecting Pond (which as you can see is being renovated) and the WWII memorial - among many other of the sites along the mall. Someone of course had to stay in the hotel room to guard our valuables so I volunteered :-)

When Rebecca and I arrived back at the marina, we found that Steve had managed (with the help of Mike from MI-T-MO) to move to a new slip which was much less rocky than our previous so that was great. Off we went for a water visit to Baltimore. We unplugged and headed out of our new slip. The Inner Harbor was fun - busy with lots of boat traffic in and out of the harbor. We stopped at Fell's Landing for a gelato and then headed back to Tidewater (our marina).

On the way back, we passed Ft. McHenry again but were a bit closer than when we first entered the harbor. The cannons were very visible as was the original flag of the 13 colonies that flew over the fort during the war for independence (this is the Francis Scott Key song that became our national anthem - about the being able to see the flag flying over the fort in the dawn's light). Note the 13 stars - what a change from our current 50 star flag!!

More tomorrow about our last day with Rebecca. Steve's surgery (after 2 consultations) is scheduled for Thursday (not sure what time) so we're both happy this arm issue will be improving.