Week of Adventure

This was a fun and adventurous week for the Karl and Angela Rees Family. Tuesday, Angela had the day off work, so she went into D.C. She met Karl near the firm were he was working and we had lunch. After purchasing an extravagant meal of hotdogs, chips, and cookies from a street vendor (this is actually one of Karl's favorite lunches here in DC, because they put so many good toppings on the dogs), we ate on a rock wall. It's a good thing Angela brought a huge umbrella, because it started pouring. After lunch, Angela made her way back to the mall in DC. Since she only had an hour until she could go into the holocaust museum, she decided to go see the Jefferson Memorial. Since she was so close to the FDR Memorial, she continued on around a bay of the Potomac river. She then made her way to the Holocaust museum. It was the only museum she hadn't seen yet. It was an interesting experience. The rest of the time she spent walking around the National Mall until it was time to meet up with Karl. We met up at the metro station. We then had dinner at Miss Saigon. The meal was delicious—noodles and beef and shrimp and plenty of nuoc mam. Except the waitress took Angela's food away while she was in the bathroom and Karl was on the cell phone. Rude!!! She just wanted a little more. Georgetown was a fun place to see. We didn't stay too long because we caught a cruise on the Potomac to Alexandria. The cruise was nice, except for birthday party for a group of teenagers on the lower deck. Take that away, and it would have been very romantic. We were able to see quite a bit. We even saw the Presidential Yacht (Karl swears he saw "W" in there). After docking in Alexandria, we had to walk at least 15 blocks to catch the metro home, and we didn't get home until 11.

Saturday was our next day of adventure. We drove to Harper's Ferry. It is a historic town next to the meeting of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. On the way to the town, we did a walking tour through Virginus Island. The island use to be inhabited and very industrial until a series of floods in the late 1800's destroyed just about everything. The town was fun to walk through. We then walked across a bridge into Maryland and went on a 4.8 mile hike. The beginning was rather steep and Angela didn't think she could make it. There was a sign that said the President Lincoln made the trip to visit the troops, but when he saw how steep it was, he turned around and went back. But Angela didn't give up, and after the steep segment, the trail was very nice. There were leftover rock forts. The view was pretty nice too. We enjoyed being out doors. On the way back to Manassas, we stopped at the Blue Ridge Grill. We shared a delicious mixed green salad with mango, tomatoes, walnuts, and vinaigrette (Karl is still talking about it) and some pork chops with potatoes. Yum Yum!!

Sunday after church we went to Angela's Mom's Friend's house in McLean for dinner. The meal was great. We had salad, rolls, roast, potatoes and veggies. For dessert we had a very delicious Carmel Apple Pie. It was interesting conversation—learning a little bit about Angela's mom when she was younger, and alos learning a lot about the church near D.C. Apparently there are quite a few Mormon lawyer in McLean.

Our final adventure happened today—we drove up to Baltimore and wandered around the harbor a bit. We visited a lighthouse and had lunch at Chipotle. But then our adventure turned sad—Karl had to drop Angela off at the airport. After a brief scare when Angela had been told they had overbooked the flight, they managed to find a seat for her, and she's off to Utah for the week so she can get a lot of work done.

(Just thought I'd briefly mention that pictures of these adventures can be found online at http://www.karlrees.com/epiphainesthai/archives/photography.jsp).

The rest of the week Karl went to work and Angela telecommuted. Karl had a welcome breakfast at the firm to "welcome" the interns. Two had just arrived. It's kind of ironic though, since Karl will only be there until this Friday. We also watched a lot of "Monk," which we'd never really seen before and now think is a really cool TV show. We also watched the season finale for "Lost" which Angela has always loved and now Karl's been hooked, too. He even had a very long dream about the show the other night in which he "discovered" what's down the hatch; so if you want to know before next season, just ask him.

We are doing fabulous. We are not looking forward to being apart this week, but at least it will be shorter—we'll meet each other again in Austin this weekend for Karl's 10 year reunion. Man is Karl getting old.

Posted May 30, 2005 (06:40 PM) | Comments (2)