Virginia is for Reunions

     

    When we planned our "post" pandemic vacation, we knew this would be the summer to explore Virginia and West Virginia.  One perk of one of these states is it's home to two of our favorite families - the Montgomery clan and the Kress Davis crew.

    Today was a long day, especially for Maddie, who started her vacation by getting on a red-eye in LA last night.  Daniel, Dana and I awoke at 5:00 AM and were thrilled to have our first reunion, albeit a masked one, at the Jet Blue terminal at FLL.  Despite our sleepiness, Maddie and I crushed several Soduko until we eyed the Washington Memorial out our plane window and knew our next reunion was imminent.

      We found a parking spot in Old Town, Alexandria, not far from King Street, then walked down to Ada's on the River, a lovely new restaurant that was one of the rare few to launch DURING the pandemic.  There we reunited with Scott, Christine and Q (and met his roommate for the summer, Colton) and enjoyed beautiful views of the Potomac, delicious food, and warm and wonderful company.

    With Q and Colton off to their daily baseball game, we bid farewell for a few hours, and headed off to check out the cool art gallery in the former space of a torpedo factory, shop King Street, check out Birchmere (though we want to come back to see Lyle Lovett!) and drive around the Parker-Gray and Del Mar neighborhoods of Alexandria.  Finally, we visited the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, something I had never known existed before today.  What an impressive feat!  A private memorial created in the 1920's and maintained by the Freemason Society, it is perhaps even more impressive a memorial to our first President than the one we all know so well.

    From there, "One More Time" was belted by the kids as we made our way to Arlington, to have one more short visit with Scott and Christine and get to see their beautiful house for the first time.  What a beautiful home it is!  A few humorous attempts to get a decent selfie, and we waved goodbye and headed off to our final reunion of the day.

    

    While I had somehow confused the location of the Founding Farmers where we were supposed to meet Anne for dinner in the yummy restaurant she had suggested, she was a tremendous good sport and insisted on saving us any extra driving and met us at the Reston location where we were.  Luckily, it was only about ten minutes away!  After a delicious meal spent catching up on everyone's lives, it was time for us to make the last leg of our drive to West Virginia.

    Since it was dark by the time we left, I took the wheel, and the famed country roads did not disappoint. Maddie's masterful playlist provided the score as we drove through Virginia wine country, over the Shenandoah River, and into Shepherdstown, West Virginia.  While it will be morning before we get the full impact of the view from our room in the quaint Bavarian Inn we will call home for the next few days, we peacefully stood on our balcony looking over the Potomac while a storm brewed in the distance.

    We are excited to explore the many wonderful aspects of these two states over the next 14 days, but it's hard to imagine a lovelier first day of vacation, having the chance to reunite with so many loved ones.