We checked out of our timeshare the next morning. We headed west, into the Virginia foothills, and drove north in Shenandoah National Park on a 105-mile stretch of the Skyline Drive. The Blue Ridge Mountains are a much older chain than those in the West; the elevation is not much more than 5,000 feet on the highest peaks, I believe. It’s a very scenic area and is particularly popular in the fall, when the foliage is especially beautiful. On this day in early October, the colors had begun to change. The road was uncrowded and we enjoyed a leisurely four-hour drive, stopping at one point to take an easy two-mile hike. Sometime I’d like to come back to this area and rent a condo for a week or so to do some serious exploration.
From the end of the Skyline Drive to the DC traffic is about 45 miles, and we hit the tail end of the going-home commute. I noted that it was no worse than Seattle traffic in the evening.
We had two days left to explore the DC area before our flight home on Sunday. I wanted to drive to Springfield and find the house my family lived in when I was in elementary school. And we wanted to do one more volkssmarch, to the National Zoo and the National Cathedral.
The next day we went to Springfield first. I’d seen the turnoff earlier in the week when we’d been on our way to Williamsburg. The freeway is much busier, and more built up, than when I lived there in 1959. I followed freeway signs to the Springfield offramp. The commercial area of the city is much bigger than it used to be. I didn’t recognize a thing.
Then I saw one street name that looked familiar, so I turned there. After a mile or so I came to a 7-Eleven that I remembered from when I was eleven years old. At that point I knew exactly where I was. I turned right. Before long I said to Art, “That school on the left is where I went to fifth and sixth grade.” I made two more turns. The houses were smaller than I remembered, and the trees had grown large. I said, “That’s the park I walked through on my way to and from school every day. It’s a shortcut.” Three more turns, and then we rounded a curve. Ahead of me was the street where I used to go sledding in the winter. I knew the address where I’d lived – 6005 Atteentee Road, so named because the street paralleled the power lines. But the numbers on the houses had changed and the houses had been painted. It was not easy to figure out which house I’d lived in. I had to gauge it by my memory of where on the hill the house had been. Then I remembered I’d lived in the third house on the right hand side. I counted. The third house was white-painted brick, with bags of fertilizer in the driveway. The screened porch my father had built in the back was gone, and so were the roses my mother had planted on the side of the house, where I’d picked off June bugs for a penny apiece. I knew this was the house. But it was different from the one in my memory.
We took two pictures. Then we turned around, made our way back to the freeway, and headed back to Rockville. Seeing my Springfield house had been one of my “must do” things for this trip. I was glad I had done it. Like there was some kind of closure on that part of my life, to see one of the 49 houses I’ve lived in. Art was a cooperative companion, but he had no parallel experience of his own to relate to. He’s lived in the Seattle area nearly his whole life, after all, and houses are just houses to him.
From Rockville we took the Metro into DC and got off at the stop for the National Zoo. The start of the volkssmarch was the same deli we’d been at the previous week for our Georgetown walk. It was about 3 pm by the time we got to the deli, and I was concerned about walking after dark. I didn’t know whether the neighborhoods were safe at night. So we decided to do the route backwards, going first to the zoo. If we ran out of time we could come back the next day and finish it.
We spent nearly three hours at the zoo. It was an unexpected pleasure. Usually when I go to a zoo I have children with me, and the pace and destinations are based what they want. This time it was just Art and me. We stopped at nearly every cage and read just about every sign. We walked through indoor tropical rain forests and searched for the tiny lizards hiding in the foliage. Art took pictures of birds and crocodiles and giraffes. We pushed exhibit buttons and learned about endangered species on the prairies and about the unique anatomical characteristics of cheetahs.
It was nearly time for the zoo to close as we approached the panda exhibit, which has an outdoor and an indoor section. Usually there are long lines of visitors waiting to take their turn for a brief view of the pandas. The pair of pandas, recently arrived from China, is on loan to the National Zoo for ten years. They were still outside.
We opened the door to the inside exhibit. We could see a glassed-in room where zoo employees were watching the animals on computer screens. We passed that room and came to another, larger glassed-in room containing large boulders. Pieces of fruit were strewn on the boulders, and armfuls of bamboo had been left on the floor. There were only three other people near us.
Then doors opened at the back of the glassed-in room. The pandas lumbered in. They found each piece of fruit, which they picked up and ate. Then they reclined by the bamboo, systematically stripping the leaves from the plants. The pandas looked very relaxed and comfortable. Between them and us was a sheet of glass and about eight feet of space. We watched them for 15 minutes, entranced. Art took half a dozen pictures through the glass. This viewing of the pandas was so close up, and there were so few people in the exhibit hall with us, that I thought we were trespassing or doing something wrong. I guess that’s one of the benefits of being at the zoo at closing time.
It often happened, on this trip, that something I’d really looked forward to sharing with Art wasn’t that big a deal for him. The National Zoo was something I hadn’t even considered as a primary attraction. I don’t remember even going to this zoo when I was growing up, so it was new for both of us.
By the time we left the zoo it was getting dark, so we decided to come back the next day and finish the volkssmarch we had started.
The next day turned out to be another nice walk, a good activity for our last full day in Washington DC. The highlight of the 6.2 miles, minus the zoo, was the National Cathedral. I’m not a big fan of churches when I’m sightseeing. Mostly I noticed how impressive it was from the outside, and how large on the inside. Art took lots of pictures. It was one of those occasions when I was ready to go after 15 minutes and had to sit and wait for him. I wish I were more appreciative, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet with churches.