I've known John and Mary for 25 years and they're always late except when being on time is inconvenient. So, we scheduled the departure time for 8:30, hoping to be on the road by 9. At 8:15 Friday AM Mary called to say despite all efforts they were running on time. This was annoying, because Dan had let me oversleep.

From Bloomington, IN, DC is 12 hours non-stop driving, which is impossible for a carload of people whose bladders are collectively over 200 years old. We took I-70 to I-79 in PA, and then cut south to I-68, which is much nicer than the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The trip was uneventful, fortunately, because we realized about 20 miles out that we had the local Shire's Seneschal, exchequer, herald, and half the Shire's Laurels all in one vehicle. (If the figures don't add up it's because the seneschal and the exchequer are both laurels.) Bobby killed time writing a story, excerpts of which were read. He has good grasp of narrative, unfortunately he had a bad grasp on the notebook which he left at a Bob Evans somewhere near Washington, PA. (That's Ok, he said he wanted to fix it anyway. A future Mike Resnick. Or Steve Jackson, as he's a second generation gamer.)

The only hotel in our price-range (under $100 per night) which had had a vacancy when John checked was a Motel 6. I realize that the chain has been trying to improve its image, but this hotel is the reason they needed to improve it. It's the kind of place that gives sleazy hotels a bad name. John, who'd made the reservations, went to check us in, and we clearly saw him hold up four fingers to designate the number of alleged adults we had with us. (OK, we had five adults, but Frida is about 4-foot 7, and can pass for a kid if she wears a hat and keeps her head down.) He came out with a card key and we went into the room. Which had one bed. So John went back to get another room.

Meanwhile Mary began to lose her cool, afraid that they'd figure out we had too many adults, and hid in the bathroom. That was when we noticed that the bathroom door had been kicked in at some point and had a broken bottom hinge. It had to be lifted up to close the door.

John came back with the key to a second room. It seemed that they'd tried to give him keys to two rooms to begin with, but he hadn't understood that all the rooms available were singles. Dan, Frida and I went two doors down to our room. We spent a peaceful night until about 6:30 AM DC time (5:30 Indiana Time) when the phone rang. I was next to it.

"Hello?" (Groggy Linda.)

"Hello." (Male voice)

(Had John left a wakeup call without telling us?)

"Helloooo?" Linda into silence on other end of phone.

"Helloooo!" Voice on the other end.

"Who is this?"

"It's Butch."

"I have no idea who you are." Linda hangs up the phone.

Shortly after this I realized that we'd better get up if we want to get to the Natural History Museum before the lines reached Baltimore. So I called the other room and woke them up. Revenge is sweet even if it's on someone else.

We had a good breakfast at the DayBreak down the road, and thence began the Public Transportation Argument. DC has a great Park and Ride System. It lets you off dead center on the Mall, it's clean, it's fast, it's easy. John, however, is one of these people who will not be parted from his vehicle for any reason. It took about two seconds for me to realize that it was a futile exercise and about 20 minutes for me to convince Dan to stop trying to convince John. Somewhere in this time period we got lost. (You'd think this would be more difficult in a town dominated by something as hard to miss as the Washington Monument.)

Mary does not like cities. She started to worry out loud about the terrible neighborhood we were in. We looked out and everyone in sight is a blonde Yuppoid, and all the row houses are nicely maintained. We offered to go look for a really bad neighborhood just to show her what one looks like, but Mary turned us down. (No, I don't remember where we were. I don't know DC and I wasn't the one looking at the map.)

Eventually we got to the Mall.

One of the reasons John does not like to use Public Transportation is that he has a handicapped license plate--legitimately, I might add. Despite the predictions of doom and having to walk forever, we found a 3-hour handicapped spot almost in front of the Museum of Natural History wherein the Vinland Saga Exhibit was located.

As we walked to the building we passed someone who looked, well--sort of seedy, wearing an FBI cap. As soon as he got out of earshot I remarked to Dan that it looked as if the FBI had lowered their standards a bit. Turns out FBI hats and T-shirts are on sale at nearly every cart along the Mall. Dan looked for a tie-dyed one. He was disappointed to find out that they only come in black with white lettering.

The exhibit is housed (until mid-August when it went on to NYC and thence to someplace I don't remember) in the National Museum of Natural History. The line at about 10 AM wasn't too bad and moved quickly. While waiting you can while away your time reading about the reason the exhibit of the large stuffed elephant looks different than you remember it did when you were here last. Before it was a large stuffed elephant on a pedestal. Now it's the same large stuffed elephant on a pedestal with some dried grass and stuffed birds and an endless video tape showing hyenas and elephants interacting in some way that is much more natural than standing on a pedestal.

I didn't stop to watch it, because standing to the right of the Viking Exhibit entrance is a full sized reproduction of the Jelling Stone. The Jelling Stone was erected by newly converted Harold Bluetooth in honor of his parents. One side is a dragon, symbolic of the Christian conquest of paganism, and on another is a crucifixion which is symbolic of the crucifixion. Actually, it's very pagan, and I've been told that Harold just recarved a Christian dedication on an older monument. The artist has turned the cross into a sort of knotwork vine, giving the impression that Christ is not so much being crucified as being strangled in bindweed.

Once in the exhibit the first thing you see is a list of donors, including Volvo and Husquavara, makers of chainsaws and the Viking sewing machines. (I find this hysterical; I'm not sure why. I think it's the mental image of Viking's wielding chainsaws while their wives do elaborate machine embroidery in the background.) Then you start seeing stuff.

The first section was an introduction to the Vikings for those who thought they were only pirates. Included are a piece of sail from one of the Viking ship burials, a real carved stone--I've misplaced the brochure with the information on which one. It had a longship in full sail on it, though.

The next room is about the Vikings as they weren't. It had a case with a collection of horned helmets (which, in case you didn't know, Vikings never wore.) Stuffed ones, plastic ones (on sale in the gift shop), and a Minnesota Vikings football helmet (which I'd never known had horn decals on the sides....), a ca. 1900 Wagnerian Valkyrie costume--wings and all, and pictures of a probably phoney runestone.

From there you travel all over, there's a 1/6th size Viking ship, fully rigged, cases of jewelry, some real and some reproductions. The man's outfit from the Mammen burial was reconstructed, including the embroidery and tablet woven leg bands. The silver decorated axe from the burial, and the bucket were displayed with it. A woman's dress from a Finnish burial was also reconstructed. I found this one especially fascinating, as the lower part of the hangerock--the wrapped overdress--is decorated with small metal coils twisted into the cloth. This was a style of decoration also found in Latvia about the same period.

We thrilled a fifth grade teacher. We found her photographing one of the exhibits (exquisite reproductions of two carvings that were probably the shafts of a ceremonial cart. I'd seen pictures of these many times before, but until I saw the 3D copies I'd never appreciated the richness of the carving.) At the sight of the camera a chorus of three voices, Frida's, Mary's, and mine warned her that photographing was against the rules. The said that she had permission because she wanted pictures to show the class, since the materials her school had for covering the Viking period were really inadequate. After about five minutes we left her frantically taking notes as Frida gave her a list of sources....

I wandered alone for a while, and thought I'd seen the whole exhibit, so I went back to the "Saga Hall". Here they had two figurines standing in a reproduction of about 1/10th of a long house. Most importantly for those of us with sore feet there were benches lining the hall so you could sit and look at the figures (probably plaster or papier-mache') and listen to the voiceover reciting parts of the Vinland Saga. On the wall over the hearth slides of contemporary art appeared illustrating the story. It was quite effective.

So effective, in fact, that I had missed the exit on the far side that sent you into the second half of the exhibit until I saw someone else coming out of it.

In one of the first display cases on the other side were The Lewis Chessmen. These are chessmen dating from the 1100's carved from walrus ivory, found on the Isle of Lewis. The exhibit had a king, queen, knight, warder (rook), pawn and bishop. The warder is a berserker, chewing on his shield. I'd seen all of them in dozens of pictures over the years, but these were the real thing. They are lovely, the color is mellow, and golden, and the carving is incredible. The backs of the thrones of the king and queen have little knotwork patterns which I've never seen in reproductions.

Around the corner from that was the domestic arts section. A wonderful lady from the Longship Company was demonstrating sprang work--sort of a cross between braiding and lacework--on a frame copied from one found in a bog. Then I saw the warp-weighted loom.

I have the Shire's warp weighted loom in my basement. I want to set it up, but, while I understand the idea of how it's supposed to work, the descriptions in Hoffman's Warp-Weighted Loom had escaped me. The reproduction loom made it clear. I grabbed the first member of my party I could find, Dan,I think, and babbled at him.

Wandering further I went through the Vikings in the New World section of the exhibit. And then the Greenland finds. Where I found myself face to face-hole with The Herjolfness Hood. This is one of the finds from the cemetery in Greenland dating from the 14th or early 15th century. A number of garments in good condition were excavated including a man's hood. There was also a small child's garment from the same place. I'd never thought that they'd actually let them out of storage since, like most textile remains, they're very fragile.

The hood is made the way most SCA folk make hoods--cut out two half-hood shapes (the liripipe may be separate, but we couldn't quite see) sewn together with a gusset on the shoulders to make it drape right. More importantly, most SCA folk complain that because of the way the face hole has to be stretched to get it on the seam under the neck tends to stretch and the seam starts to give after a while. The neck opening of the hood is stretched and the seam is coming apart. Conclusion: they didn't have a solution to the problem either--at least not in Greenland.

It was almost as exciting as seeing the warp-weighted loom. Once again I ran through the exhibit, found a victim--Mary in this case--and dragged her to the case chanting, "the Herjolfness Hood! The Herjolfness Hood!" and wasn't carried off or tackled by a guard once.

Once we'd all adequately toured the exhibit we headed for the next most exciting part of the trip--the gift shoppe. It had a lot of nice stuff, but was disappointing in that they had no postcards or pictures from the exhibit itself. The only way you could get pictures of items was to buy the catalog. (We opted to wait and get it at a local bookshop.) There were some lovely pieces though. I wish I could have afforded one of the wall hangings which had a tiny but complete reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry. I nearly bought a Viking Muppet, but decided that was just too silly. Instead I bought a small necklace with a pottery pendant made by a woman from Sweden who uses the pre-Viking pictographs from a nearby park as her models. Mine has three goddesses and a sunstone or three guys and a broken wagon wheel; it's hard to tell.

At that point our 3-hour parking was up, so we went to lunch. (If this makes sense I'm telling it wrong.) Smithsonian food is fast food cleverly priced to extract maximum cash from people who don't want to leave and find a real fast food restaurant.

After lunch Frida, Mary and I decided that we wanted to go to the National Gallery of Art, even though the National Portrait Gallery was closed for renovation. (Frida, unnecessarily as it turned out, mourned missing the chance to see the Smithsonian's da Vinci.) Dan wanted to get photos of the White House and check out the National Air and Space Museum. Bobby didn't want to look at "all that art stuff" and decided to go with Dan so they took off on foot. The rest of us went to the van to search for another parking space. We'd fixed a particular entrance for a 4:30 meeting place.

This time the Parking Gods did not smile at once, so John let us out at an entrance and went off to find one on his own.

The featured exhibit was "The Triumph of the Baroque: Architecture in Europe 1600-1750". It was a huge collection of Baroque architectural scale models. They included minute details of decoration, sometimes painted on, sometimes modeled in plaster or gesso. We opted to look at the domestic architectural section upstairs, which was sort of interesting. I'd never thought of the Kremlin in terms of domesticity, but it was originally. Kind of like living in your county courthouse.

My favorite was the model for Smol'ny Convent in Saint Petersburg. It stood no more than 3 feet tall, but it was incredibly detailed, down to, or rather up to, the spire that was never actually built.

Being girls, of course, our response to this was to wish we had dolls to put inside them.

Off the gallery with the domestic architecture was the Italian Renaissance Art area. This was cool, and we duly admired the da Vinci, which we guess had been moved from the portrait gallery.

If I had failed to freak the guards before Mary and I managed to do so now. Among other things we found a Fra Lippo Lippi nativity with wonderful details in which the Magi were wearing sheer scarves, with tiny designs picked out in gold something that is far too tiny to show up in reproductions. Did you know the guards really don't like it when you put your face 4 inches from a 500 year old painting and poke at it?

From here we found another featured exhibit by one of Rembrandt's students. The name escapes me as does the guide that listed it. Whoever he was had a wonderful grasp of light and shadow. He also had a globe, a basket, a lute and a clavichord which were used in various configurations in about 80% of his portraits. ("Do you want the basket or the globe? The lute is extra.")

We found our way out of the Museum with time to spare and as we oriented ourselves we saw a familiar van parked near the entrance. Mary checked. It was theirs. Then we circled the building and went to the agreed upon entrance. There was a little plaza with benches to one side so we sat in the shade and watched for Dan, John, and Bobby. While we were whiling away the time we petted a rabbit on a cat harness someone one had brought out for a walk.

Dan and Bobby turned up. They had photographed the White House then headed to the National Air and Space Museum past the Boy Scout Memorial. Later, Dan described it to me. It portrays a Boy Scout in uniform, and behind him is a large naked man, behind them both is a woman in long robes. We're not sure what it's symbolic of, but all things considered, it's well, interesting.

We waited nearly half an hour after the agreed upon time for John. I finally suggested to Mary that he might be inside waiting for us. She checked, and sure enough there was John sitting inside exactly where he couldn't see where we were. He'd started to go to the National Archives, but saw the long line, and then realized that it was because everyone had to go through a metal detector. Since John wears a leg brace, he decided it wasn't worth the hassle, or the wait.

Our options were to have dinner now and go back to our decidedly squalid hotel rooms and watch the four or five channels of TV available or find something else to do.

I wanted to see Mount Vernon, which was closed for the evening, but what the heck. So we found our way to the George Washington Parkway with minimal trouble. We saw the gates of Mount Vernon, turned around and drove along the very scenic Parkway route. It was somewhere past Theodore Roosevelt Island that we realized that once you get on, there is seemingly No Way Off the George Washington Parkway.

We drove and drove and drove, and finally came to Scenic Overlook #1. We decided to look at the scenic overlook and to try to figure out the map. The view of the river and trees was spectacular. It also had a sign which I assumed was a description of what one was viewing. When I got to it it turned out to be an explanation of "How the Hell to Get Off the George Washington Parkway". Others had been here before us!

We followed instructions and made it to the beltway. One of the sights on the beltway is the Mormon Temple. We'd been told about it by a former resident of DC. Specifically we'd been told that it resembled the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz. Our friend was right. All we needed were green glasses. (Somebody once hung a banner saying "Surrender, Dorothy!" off one of the over-passes.)

For dinner we found an Ihop, which made Dan happy. He had seen an ad for the "Red, White, and Blueberry Breakfast" on TV and figured that if he were in DC he couldn't pass it up. Alas, it is only served on weekdays, which I guess are more patriotic.

We got back to the hotel and found that the next surprise of the day was that the keys to the room no longer worked. Since we had paid for two nights and our stuff was in the room (the choice was to leave it in the room or in a van in the middle of DC--pick one) we were understandably upset. We waited and waited and finally John returned. The line at the desk had been long because everyone was trying to find out why they couldn't get into their rooms. The keys, it seemed, only worked sporadically. Dan later proved this when he went out for towels later. I had to let him in then, because he couldn't get the door to unlock, but the next morning, with no intervening trip to the desk, it was working fine. This, combined with the fact that the 800 number for Motel 6 kept booking people after the hotel was full, was why the poor folks at the desk looked so worried.

Butch failed to call the next morning, so we slept late. It helped that we decided not to tell Frida, who was sleeping in her sleeping bag on the floor, about the dead bug in the bathroom.

The trip home was uneventful, except for the moment of excitement when the hood on the car in front of us flew up unexpectedly and the car went careening across several lanes.

It was a pretty good trip, but next time we go there we go in the Fall when the tourists are home recuperating.