Lucy and Ethel's D.C. Adventure...Day 1

Well let me preface this story by telling you why I call ourselves Lucy and Ethel. Of course you all have seen episodes of I Love Lucy...well me and my mom are a lot like Lucy and Ethel. Mom is the red head aka "Lucy" and I'm the more sensible blonde aka "Ethel." Together we come up with ideas that never quite go as planned.

So this year we decided we were going to take a trip to Washington DC with my 4 year old daughter. My husband suggested I leave Alexis home with him...but I said "Honey...this is a historical time in history and Alexis is going to be a part of it!" And that was that.

Mom and I were planning this trip on a very tight budget so we opted to drive the 700 miles from Indiana to DC rather than use other modes of transportation. Of course Lucy decides she wants to take the scenic route to get there. Me..I don't even like to drive...but I'm thinking ok, Mom will probably do most of the driving any way...No big deal right!

According to our plan and mapquest it would only take us about 12 hours to get there. So October 22, we left early...sometime around 4 AM. We wanted to get to DC while it was still daylight and have time to learn how to navigate the DC Metro system...there is no way either of us were going to drive in the middle of DC! So the plan was to arrive no later than 6 PM.

Off we go....everything was going great....we did have to stop several times for Alexis to go potty...and Me and Mom were doing good taking our turns driving. Then we arrived in West Virginia and we were finally in the mountains (the scenic view). The farther east we went the heavier the traffic became. It was Mom's turn to drive and she decides to have an anxiety attack. So we pull over in Maryland and and I have to drive from here on out...by this time it was already about 6:00 pm ...the sun was setting and it was starting to get dark. Well,I don't drive in the dark! I don't see very well to drive at night...so now we have a bad situation and we are still a few hours to get there and we should have already been there!



We keep heading east and I'm driving...still the farther east we go the more traffic we see...I'm going up and down and up and down big hilly terrain...through the mountains...because someone wanted the scenic route. It is so dark now you can't even see the scenery. We drove through the Cumberland Gap and I didn't even get to see it
because it was so dark.

We get near the edge of DC and I'm trying to get my GPS to avoid the Capitol Beltway I-495. I'm not in the mood to deal with that kind of traffic! The GPS doesn't like the route I want to take and is yelling at me to make a U turn...I'm getting really agitated now. Mom is in the passenger seat trying to help me navigate...but she is not helping me as fast I think she should...So I'm yelling at her ..."Do you think that you could at least read the signs because I can't see them!" She replies..."Well I can't see them very well either!" Uggghhhh!

I was getting very frustrated but we finally made it to our hotel at about 10:30 pm...Almost 18 hours from the time we left Indiana. And that was Day One of Lucy and Ethel's DC Adventure!...To be continued.