Perfect Day on the Great Loop

Solomons Island, MD - snow !

It snowed here at Solomons Island !! We have definitely gone too far north. These snow pictures are right outside of our marina. We have 3 portable heaters on board and are using all of them as is 39 degrees in the day.

It was rough trip from Deltaville to get to Solomons Island yesterday. The weather was predicted to be bad for the next 5 days so we decided to go for it and get up to Solomons rather than be stuck in Deltaville for that long. It was 15-20 knot winds coming from the north in the morning, decreasing at noon. So we left at 11AM. Bill genererally checks about 4 different weather sites twice a day. Their weather predicting is becoming very accurate. They were right on with the wind but the waves were much bigger than expected while crossing the Potomac River. You know its rough when the water is coming to the top of our flying bridge! This was our roughest time on the whole Great Loop behind Graves Reef, MI.

There were lots of crab pots out there that were especially hard to see with the waves.

Fighter jets buzzed us 4x as we crossed the Potomac River (leads right into Washington DC). It sounded like we were in the Super Bowl stadium during the national anthem.

Solomons Isand is a very nice island, catering to boaters from Washington DC and Baltimore which are only 1 1/2 - 2 hours away.
Lots of boats and marinas here.

Our marina the day AFTER the snow. You would never even know it snowed.

We arrived late that afternoon and then went to an art show event nearby that night. We knew the weather was going to be bad so we rented a vehicle to see Washinton DC in the morning. It snowed on the way into Washington DC

Driving an Enterprise van as they gave us a great rental deal.

The Anne Marie Art Center Sculpture Garden annual event . Yeah I owed Bill for asking him to go to this. They did have a band and food and it was close by. Many of the sculptures were on loan from the Smithsonian.

We drove in to see Washington DC which is
1 1/2 hours away until we were close by and then and took the Metro (subway) the rest of the way . We learned that you ALWAYS find out where the bad neighborhoods are before you take public transportation. We had very uncomfortable trips in and out of the city as there were alot of scary looking people on the train.

The Metro - Very confusing if you've never done it before.
We ended up on wrong trains going the wrong direction.

The National Mall in Wahiningotn DC is overwhelming. So many incredible things to see and everything is free to the public.