Friday, February 25, 2011

Cherry Blossoms . . . Maybe


Tony and I have decided to try to see the Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC in early April.
At this point, we have no real plan other than already requesting our time off dates for April 1-5.
We are assuming that we will have a trailer to drag around and there are 
NO
NONE
NADA
ZIP
ZERO
truck stops in the the immediate Metro area.

Our plan at this point is to maybe float from Wal-Mart parking lot to Wal-Mart parking lot.
Or, we could find something farther out and ride the train in each day.  We are going to stay in the truck, so we will be saving $ there and probably spending it on transportation.

Oh, and we are going to do the Segway tour.
That is our other "for sure" thing.

If anyone has any experience with trucks in DC, we would love to hear from you.


2 comments:

all things bradbury said...

not sure about parking, etc....but looking forward to seeing your pics from the festival......

The Daily Rant said...

LOVE the cherry blossoms! I saw them when I lived in Alexandria, VA.

As for parking in that area, Ed and I were there last year and we parked at National Harbor in Maryland, across the Potomac River. Check out their site here: http://www.nationalharbor.com/intro.htm

We took the water taxi from National Harbor over to Old Town Alexandria. From there, we took the train into DC (got off at the stop right on the National Mall) and spent the entire day there.

There really isn't truck parking at National Harbor - Ed and I made our own spot and made it work - which is something we always do.

The first night we stayed at the George Washington Masonic Memorial (http://www.gwmemorial.org/index.php). I worked in Old Town when I lived in Alexandria, so I suggested it to Ed, knowing that they got tour busses in there. We scoped out the parking lot on Google earth and saw they had a big lot. The driveway is VERY snakey and I was nervous when Ed decided to forge on, but there was no stopping him once he decided to do it. Plus, it was at night.

We found a security guard on the premises who gave us permission to stay overnight (which we later found out, he wasn't supposed to do). I'm telling you this because it's what we did, but I wouldn't recommend it.

The only other place I would have gone, if that didn't work out, was the street that I lived on when I lived there - there were often trucks parked on our street, so I would have attempted it and then taken a cab into town to catch the train.

It's a very difficult place to get around in - even in a car. Parking sucks. The best thing is public transportation, but finding a place to park a rig AND find public transportation is really hard. In any case, I'd definitely look in VA or MD.

You will really enjoy the cherry blossoms, as they're beautiful, and if you've never been there, make sure to check out the Smithsonian Museums and Galleries - they are open every day of the year except Christmas Day and best of all, admission to ALL of them is FREE!!