It's SNOWING!!!!

OK, we are back from vacation, it's the middle of April, and I wake up to 3 cm of snow on the ground - the world has turned white! And it is predicted that a bunch more is due tonight and tomorrow. I blame global warming, and in turn the Republicans. :-)

Vacation went pretty well, although it was not as relaxed a vacation as I would like. We started off to go visit my Mom, which had recently returned from Florida. She was quite sick when we got there, and after several hours of "visit", we ended up taking her to the hospital for general breathing and fluid electrolyte balance problems. They admitted her for the better part of the week. We delayed our trip to Washington for a day to help out and visit with her, and then proceeded to drive southward.

The trip to Washington when reasonably smoothly. Nina's electric wheelchair was waiting for us in the hotel. First, a bit about that. Something this is pretty impressive is that all of Washington is completely wheelchair compatible. Every street corner, every Metro, every bus, and every building (OK, excluding some old motels, like the one we were staying at) has a system of ramps and elevators. An electric wheelchair will run for 25 km, and can turn completely around in a space of about 80 cm. So Nina was actually the fastest walker of all of us, at around 7.5 km / hour.

The weather was a bit cold, but that is not surprising for April. We arrived late on Monday night (about 11 pm). After a bit of a late start, for the first day we got oriented. We took the Metro (our hotel was about 800m from the stop) to the Smithsonian stop, and then walked down the mall. We visited the Washington Monument, the (new) World War II monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. And all around we visited the cherry trees, for which Washington is famous. Most of these were "past bloom", but some species (they had ALL sorts) were either in bloom or starting to bloom. Very pretty. After all this the tired travelers returned for a late 9:30 pm dinner.

On Wednesday, Nina and I went and did some exploring and birding on Roosevelt Island, which is a quiet oasis on the river. Nina found a pair of pileated woodpeckers nesting, and the two of us saw quite a few other birds. We then wheelchaired back to the Metro (which is probably 4 km away from the Metro) and visited the Mall about the Capital building. There we were very surprised when Nina recognized Camille, the French exchange student at Fairport, and her family. In huge Washington, what is the chance of this happening?

On Thursday, we visited several museums that form the overall Smithsonian institution. The Smithsonian comes as close as we have to our national museum. It includes fifteen separate museums that cover almost everything. And it covers a vast expanse of land also, with most museums falling within a 1 km x .5 km rectangle. We started in the brand new Museum of the American Indian, then went to the Freer Gallery of Art, which features Asian art and some assorted American Art. By then we were starting to run out of time, but Gwendolyn and Nina did get to spend 1/2 hour in the Museum of Natural History.

Friday was departure and travel day. We packed our hotel room and then went to the Washington National Cathedral. This is an amazing beautiful cathedral with some amazing stained glass. It deserves more than a brief mention, but this will have to do for now.

After the Cathedral we started the 8 hour drive to Lakewood to visit my Mom once again on our way back to Rochester. She had been moved from the hospital to a nursing home for rehabilitation, and we visited her there. She sounded much better, with a functioning brain and all. She is still a bit weak and still has quite a bit of congestion in her chest. There are actually quite a few issues that we are going to have to resolve with her, but they are not a subject for this blog.

After that, back home to Rochester. We arrived this morning just after midnight. Now it is time to clean up the house.

Oh, and I forgot to mention - I fly out this afternoon on a one week business trip to San Diego. Life is a bit too busy.