May 6,7,8,9

On Friday for forecast was for rain all day and that’s what we had.  Andy decided it was a good day to change the oil in the engines.  When he started up the engines, he noticed that he had an oil leak in the starboard engine, and there was about a quart of oil in the bilge.  Because we’re at a full-service marina, he called a couple of the contractors on site to see if someone could come take a look.  He was told there was a 2 week backlog but one company may be able to have someone come on Saturday on O/T, they would let us know later in the day.

Andy met a mechanic from on our dock working on another boat, who came to check our leak.  He told us what we required, and we called Trans Atlantic Diesel for the parts we had to send them this picture to ensure they sent the right one. 

We should have them on Monday.  So Andy changed the Port engine oil, and cleaned up the spill under the starboard.  It’s a 31-year-old boat things wear out!

 

On Saturday morning, we got picked up by Enterprise as we had rented a car, so we could go into Washington to play tourist.  It is only a 35 mile drive.

 

We drove around; a little and  went to the Lincoln Memorial,

as well as the Korean, Vietnam and WW II memorials;

We also saw this Einstein monument near where we had parked.

We did a lot of walking, as there was no nearby parking and thousands of people, many of which were foreigners like us speaking many different languages.  There were also lots of Pittsburg fans, as the Capitols played the Penguins Saturday night.  We went to the Happy Harbour restaurant, in another marina in Tracey’s landing for supper.

On Sunday we left the boat, shortly after 9 and headed back into Washington.  Our plan was to spend a few hours at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

and then go to one of the other Smithsonian museums.  We got to the museum, just when it was opening at 10:00, and got great parking just across the street.  We embarked on a 1.5 hour guided tour at 10: 30 which lasted until almost 1:30, and we hadn’t seen it all yet.

 

We went back to some areas to take more pictures and went into galleries, that weren’t on the tour—we left the Museum after 4:00.  In the 6 hours there we saw and heard about early flight, with the Wright Brother’s display, Spirit of St Louis,

 Amelia Earhart Lockheed Vega, as well as saw some of the early mail delivery planes,

first passenger planes and military planes

 

 i saw this Canadian flag flying outside of one of the windows while I was taking pictures of planes and focused in on it. Not sure what building it was on.

There was lots about the space program, and space race- some of the artifact are the actual ones used, or are the “back ups”.

 sputnik model supplied by Russia

Explorer 1  backup satellite

  

various missions and pictures and artifacts from the moon.

Here I’m touching  moon rock.

There were also displays from both World Wars, and the evolution of navigation from naval times, up to rocketry navigation including global positioning systems.  Here is a picture of the robotic car too.

How ironic leaving Washington, our GPS stopped working, we realized the adapter from the GPS to the cigarette lighter was faulty.  Luckily it had got us onto Pennsylvania Avenue and Andy figured he could get us home from there.  That’s why I let him drive both the car and the boat—he has much better sense of direction than I do.  We got off Pennsylvania Avenue in search of a store, where we could buy a “mini” adapter piece—tried several drug stores and one lady gave us some brief instructions as to where we could find a Best Buy, it was 5:30 by this time and being Sunday- we figured it may close at 6:00.  We followed what we thought were the instructions, but didn’t find it.  Andy still figured he could get us home and had an idea where there was a Wal-Mart.  We saw a Staples enroute however it was closed.   We found an adapter in Big Lots and once again had our GPS working.  We arrived home at 8:00—it was a long 11 hour day on the road.

 

Monday morning we got up, and Andy noticed that our American courtesy flag and staff were missing—not sure if they were taken during the night or yesterday while we were away.  Funny thing is that the flag was getting quite tattered, and I had taken it down on Friday when it was raining and cut off the tattered ends and re-hemmed it by hand.  Maybe I should have left it—no one would have wanted it in the state it was in.

We got ready and drove in to Washington, slower trip than on the weekend as there was a lot more traffic on the road and places where they were doing some road repairs and it was raining again.  There has been one stretch of Hwy 4, Pennsylvania Avenue that was full of pot holes and ruts so the repairs are needed.

We had an appointment to visit the International Temple of the Order of the Eastern Star at 1:30.  We arrived there at 11:30 because when we had cased the area on Saturday, I had noticed that many of the streets had no parking between 9:30 and 11:30 on Mondays for street sweeping- so we figured if we were there at 11:30- we shouldn’t have a problem finding a spot.  We walked by the OES headquarters and ran into a group of star members from Burlington Ontario, who had visited the centre in the morning.

  They had told us were they had gone for lunch nearby and we decided to go there as well.  I had Crab cake sliders.

They had also told us that there was parking behind the building for visitors.

After lunch we moved the car to the OES parking spot, and went into the building at 1:15.  Once our dues cards were scrutinized the tour started at 1:40.

Here’s some info about the headquarters from Wikipedia:  The building is located at 1618  New Hampshire Avenue NW in the historic  Dupont Circle  neighborhohood of  Washington D.C.  and was the former Perry Belmont Mansion completed in 1909.  This building serves as the headquarters for General Grand Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star. The Right Worthy Grand Secretary and his spouse live on the premises. Tours are usually for members only. Items from the Belmont era of the mansion, as well as items sent to the International Temple as gifts from chapters around the world are on display It was bought in 1925 for 100,000  and is now valued at 7.5 Million (2009 evaluation.)  Here’s some of the pictures from the building

These are on  the ceiling.

We were in the mansion for almost an hour- amazing rooms and furnishings.  But we really don’t understand why the O.E.S. needs something this opulent.