Presidential near misses and soft southern countrysides

Driving on the interstate from Dulles airport to a campsite north of Washington DC to spend a day in the US capital. Dad in the Jamboree with me. 10 lanes of traffic, we in the middle express lanes, not much company. A glance in the rearview mirror at the flashing blue and red lights from the official motorcycle coming up behind me. Surely I'm not speeding, in the Jamboree? No. He whizzes past, to our left, ignoring us. We wonder what or who he's chasing; there's no one ahead of us. Then a second set of lights comes up from behind, identical to the first, but this one pulls slightly ahead of us, in the left passing lane, and indicates with his arm for me to pull over, move over and make room, get the Jamboree into the shoulder. I do. The next glance in the rearview reveals an official train of cars zooming along, closing in on us, flying past, all manner of lights flashing, police escorting, somberly official and expensive looking, American-flag flapping. As they whiz past us, dad says “I heard on the news that President Obama landed this morning”.

I wave excitedly at them, just in case.

I'm sticking to my story. President Obama drove past the Jamboree. How can I not like DC now, after this?

A day in DC. Walking up Pennsylvania Avenue. Posing for pictures in front of the fence on the opposite end of the lawn in front of the White House. If you squint you can see it. So much security. A visit to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. To escape the rain; to see Dorothy's red shoes and Kermit and C3PO; to walk through the story of the United States.

Interesting story.

Dinner. Too much wine.

Two more days of driving, now continuing south on the I95. New GPS system on hand to guide us through Viriginia, North Carolina, South Carolina.

Glimpses of cottonfields, me unable to stop singing that song “in them olllddd cottonfields back home... it was down in Louisiana, just about a mile from TexArcana...”. Even though we aren't there, we are in the Carolinas. Visits to civil war battlefields turned into outdoor museums. A lot of history in these parts.

A bit of a wayward route, Garmin the GPS takes us off the I95 too early, we traverse fields and small towns and see the southern houses of my imagination; rocking chairs on every veranda, big verandas on every house. I like the drive off the beaten path but it takes a long time, and I think I could have found a better route the old-fashioned way, with my maps.

Washington DC