Year 10 Day 4

Greetings from Virginia. Today we left Phily and headed south. We swung over into New Jersey mostly just to check it off the list. We stopped, got gas and admired the trees on the freeway. Its another one of those states that I literally could not find anything to do in. Yes I know Atlantic City and such, but we really were not interested in that. So we sliced the slide and went into Delaware. Lots of green and more farms than we have seen so far, but nothing to really knock your socks off. We spent 30 minutes in a Taco Bell waiting for our food and then headed to the "first town in the first state", Lewes Delaware. Went to the dunes, climbed a concrete tower, looked at the ocean and headed west to Maryland.
I think the thing that is keeping us from enjoying, like really enjoying these states is the traffic. I am flabbergasted at the amount of traffic everywhere, literally everywhere you go. You think you are headed to a small town and there are 350,000 other people on the same road with you going to the same place. Everyone is honking and impatient and everywhere is crowded. Its strange. Is there really just that many more people on the east coast? Maryland is a small state, like really small and it felt like we spent all day today just trying to get over 2 or 3 bridges. We will see some more of Maryland and DC tomorrow, but we drove through today in order to get to Mount Vernon and George Washington's estate before it closed.
The estate sits right on the Potamac river nestled into a lush green landscape. The tour was for the mansion, and the gardens and grounds. Only the mansion was "guided" but I think because we caught the end of the day all the cough cough older historians didnt really want to tell us anything about the house. Its also under construction and there was a festival wrapping up. Coolest part was that they were shooting off a cannon. George Washington had 317 enslaved men women and children who had no choice to work on his estate. When he died he only granted freedom to about 125. I had better expectations I guess. We saw his tomb and the little girl next to us wanted to know why he had to have two tombs; the historian couldnt say really except "he asked for a bigger one in his will." The gardens were beautiful and Id like to have 40 acres to have a garden like that but we would need more rain to keep it green. They closed at 5 so we headed north to Tysons Corner where we will be for the night.
We caught up with my cousin Brian and his family for dinner at a fancy pancy Brazilian steak house. So good to see Brian, Judy and the boys after such a long long time. Lots of laughs, good conversations and too much food.
Tomorrow we do DC, then we finally get to head into the woods! We are all ready.

Not much for pictures. Ill be better tomorrow: