So here's a few pictures from the trip to DC and OBX. We left a few hours late Sunday, June 11th headed toward our friends' house in Silver Spring, MD. We hit the Metro first and rode into DC to let the kids check out the monuments on the mall. We got off at the Smithsonian stop and walked from there past the Washington Monument down toward the WW2 memorial and Lincoln memorial. From there we walked back down past the Vietnam Wall and back to the metro. We were basically just wanting to get the kids some time out walking after being in the car 3 hours and get them used to riding the metro when it wasn't as crowded. From there we headed back to our friends' house and hung out with them.
The next morning when they headed for work, we ran back down to the Silver Spring station and ate at Tastee diner. From there we hopped the metro again and rode back into DC to see the US History and Air and Space museums. We spent the day running, trying to see as much as we could and make the most of our last day there. We saw a good bit of stuff and made it back to our friends' house and they made us a great supper.
In the morning, we packed our stuff up and headed back for another go at breakfast at Tastee diner then hit 495 headed around the eastern side of DC (as recommended by our friends) down to take HWY 301 south to Virginia and then used HWY 17 to get down to Norfolk and hop 168 to the OBX.
When we crossed the bridge, we stopped at Wal-Mart and bought our food and water for the next couple days and then made our way down to our camp at Oregon Inlet Campground. We spent the next day on the beach under our canopy, about 6.5 hours total and had a sandwich lunch under the rear gate of the Xterra in the parking lot of the beach access site we parked in. Getting back to camp, my wife used our 3 burner Coleman stove to whip up some hot ham and cheese sandwiches and then we played some card games with the kids and walked over to the ocean before showering for bed.
Not knowing how the weather would play out, we decided to play it by ear and wait to decided on another night there till we saw how the next day was going. The wind died down that night and a heavy fog settled in. I got up early and kind of milled around camp, waiting for the fog to break. Around 9 when my wife got up, it was still too foggy to see across camp so we pulled down camp and headed out. We had a good breakfast at The Jolly Roger in Nag's Head and then headed out.
On the way home, we stopped on top of Afton Mountian and had a picnic at the Scenic Overlook there on the Parkway and then rode that home.
It was somewhere around 1074 miles total and the Xterra averaged just over 20mpg for the trip. I'm very pleased with the Xterra and we're planning on taking it to the beach next month instead of my K2500 truck. As the kids get older, we seem to need less space to haul our stuff, so we can save the bit of fuel money going from 15mpg to almost 20.
