Up the Eastern Seaboard - Our Washington DC people!

(*note this is a catch-up posting. We passed through here from June 15-18)

Once we finished the Blue Ridge Parkway, we worked out way up the eastern seaboard of the United States. Directly from the Parkway, we headed toward Washington DC. At this point we decided to divide & conquer since we both had people in the city to visit.

On the first night in, I went to visit with my friend's Adam and Susanna. I met these two on my last crazy life adventure when I went hiking on the Appalachian in the summer 2011 and hadn't seen them since. Fortunately, I showed up pretty much the way they remembered me: unshowered and transient. They, on the other hand, were livin' it up in DC, with a real house (unlike our tenting trail days) and a new toddler to boot! We spent an awesome evening catching up on old times and took a minute in the morning to see if we could convince Jack to take up motorcycle riding as a new hobby (he seemed unimpressed).

From Adam & Susanna's place, I headed around the DC area to do the "Ferraro Family Tour" including three cousins, two cousins-once-removed (Lily & Jack - that's you, I had to look it up), two aunts, and two uncles, in four different locations in two states over the course of two days. We had brunch, snacks, BBQ at the pool, pizza & wine, lunch by the water, and a tour of the Annapolis Naval Academy. In all of it, of course, I forgot to take pictures, so Diane, Chris, Barbara, Warren, Barbra, Lily, Jack, Tom, Maureen & Hank - if any of you remembered to take any photos while we were hanging out, send them to me and I'll add them here. Otherwise, we know we were there and that will just have to do. :)

From the Ferraro family tour, I met back up with Jon who had been doing some touring of his own with his brother-in-law Alex around the DC monuments on their motorcycles. The three of us and Jon's sister, Vickie, headed to old town Alexandria for dinner & gelato and managed to time it perfectly to stay inside and dry and see a rainbow as multiple different thunderstorms rolled through.