Washington D.C. – Final?

I know we’ve gone a bit long on this series of posts and I’m sorry if it’s not what you’re here for but this will be the final post on D.C…. for now! I wanted to save the best for last and I hope you’ll agree that it’s pretty special! So shortly after we arrived in D.C. at our dock, we happened to run into a fellow boater just cleaning his boat. Little did we realize who it actually was at the time!

Now to paint a picture, we were walking down the dock back to the boat and there was this guy washing off the front of his boat in shorts, no shirt and flip flops and we didn’t pay him any attention. He seemed like any other boater we’ve ever seen out cleaning his boat, right? As we walked past, he apologized for spraying the dock and we said “no problem, good to see ya keeping the boat ship shape”. He then asked how we liked our Marlow and Leslie proceeded to tell him all about her. I continued on as I had a call to make and didn’t think anything else about it till a few minutes later when I heard voices down in the salon of Steppin’ Out. Next thing I hear, they’re coming up the steps to the bridge and I’m still on my call. When I turned around, I immediately recognized the Senator, told my call I needed to call them back, hung up the phone, and extended my hand out to introduce myself to a U.S. Senator!

Well, we chatted about boats and boating in general and invited him over to dinner, which he accepted! His wife was out of town that night so dinner was all set. Our conversation at dinner never touched politics and revolved around just boating. He shared the times he had run aground (what honest boater hasn’t) and some of the stories of traveling up and down the East Coast on his boats over the years. We were laughing and having such a great time with just another boater…. not a U.S. Senator! Towards the end of the evening he asked if we had seen the White House, Capital, etc and I shared that this was a last minute trip for us and when I contacted our Florida Senator’s, their office’s just kinda laughed and said, you needed to schedule this 6 months ago. Well, he responded with “I’ll take care of that and will call you later with details”!

A bit later after he left, he called and said, meet me on the dock tomorrow morning at 8:45 cause you’re going to the office with me, oh, and wear a tie if you have one! Well, we were beyond excited and couldn’t believe our good luck in crossing paths on the dock! Let me tell you, he set us up with a private tour of the U.S. Capital, lunch in the Senate dining room and a private tour of the Library of Congress (which happened to be closed that day)! We were like two kids waiting for Christmas morning and couldn’t wait till the next day!

Neither of us were able to get much sleep cause we were so excited! We were able to pull together some appropriate clothes cause on a boat, you don’t typically travel with formal outfits! That next day, we all met on the dock and his “driver” took us over to the Senate office building to get us thru security and then a walk over to his office to meet his staff.

We were also treated to lunch in the Senate dining room and while trying not to look the part of a “tourist”, I completely forgot to take any pictures, not even of the menu! There were Senators from Texas and Maine also having lunch while we were there. I’ll admit that even though I “settled” for the Senate Cheeseburger on a “Brioche” bun, it was by far the best dang cheeseburger that I had ever had!!

After our tour of the Capital, we headed over to the library of congress for a private tour as it’s closed for tours on Monday’s. We were escorted by the head of the Library who shared the history and artwork within this magnificent building!

“The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., that serves as the library and research service of the U.S. Congress and the de facto national library of the United States.^[3] Founded in 1800, the library is the United States’s oldest federal cultural institution.”

For more information, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress

A few days later, the Senator asked if we’d like to see the inside of the Capitol Dome… as you can imagine, we couldn’t say “YES” quick enough! For this guided tour, which is not an easy tour to obtain, he said to wear comfortable shoes as there would be lots of stairs, little did we know!

Once we made it to the top, it was time to step outside to get an amazing view of D.C. Standing nearly 287 feet tall, the view from the top of the dome is just spectacular! It was a bright, cool day but you could see for miles! Not only was it a bit chilly, it was windy as well but so worth the climb and that view!!!

What an amazing time touring the Capitol and Library of Congress! We are so grateful for the Senator’s hospitality and we had such a great time meeting him, his wife and awesome staff. It was definitely 3 weeks that we’ll never forget and will always cherish the experience!

This wraps up our time in D.C. Next time, we’ll be headed back down the Potomac and going to major “boating” center in the Chesapeake so stay tuned. We’ll leave you with a quick recap of our time in our Nation’s Capitol and thanks for following along! The Crew!