Washington DC!

This was Matt's and my first roadtrip we had ever taken together and only vacation other than our honeymoon. In the days prior to us leaving, we were anxiously counting down the days.  I couldn't help but assume our vacation would go a lot like a National Lampoon's Griswold family vacation.

And it actually almost did -- in the beginning.

If any of you have seen the movie, you may remember Clark and Rusty picking up the car in one of the first scenes. He was hoping for a brand new hot rod car and ended up getting a station wagon that he was not happy with. Well...

Two days prior to us leaving, Matt took his car into Chevrolet of Madison so they could rotate the tires, change the oil, and update the radio -- (there was a newer version available for a free update). After two hours of Matt waiting in the waiting room, some guy came out to tell him that they burned out the radio, had to order a new one, and it would be available on Monday. We were leaving for our roadtrip on FRIDAY.

A ROADTRIP WITHOUT A RADIO!? 

You have got to be kidding me.

Luckily, they put a rush order on a new radio - One arrived in Madison the next day - and it was installed just fifteen minutes before we had to leave.

Lulu did not want us to go at all.

But we were excited to get on the road and knew that they were in great hands. We loaded the car and were on our way.

We had a fourteen hour trip to Washington DC and left at 5pm on Friday night.

Matt's not too thrilled about the 800 mile drive.

Matt drove until 3am and switched places with me at the boarder of Ohio and Pennsylvania. I contemplated waking him up because the sunrise in the mountains at 4am was quite possibly the most beautiful I had ever seen, but I didn't think he'd be able to enjoy the "beauty" after driving for 10 hours through the night. So I let him sleep.

Around 8am, we arrived in DC. We were so excited to see the sights that our exhaustion didn't even phase us.

Enjoy the pictures.

Our Hotel - The Washington Plaza -- which was only a 10 minute walk to The White House (we will be back there someday! It was amazing).

After we checked in and parked the car, we went to see the town.

At the Holocaust Museum

We couldn't take pictures inside of the museum, but know that it was so moving, so real, and so incredibly sad. I highly recommend it to anyone who is planning a trip to DC.

Gluten Free Jimmy Johns

World War Two Memorial

The reflecting pool made us think of only this.....

Forrest Gump

In fact, all we kept saying was, "Forrrrrresssstt!!"

Sitting on the stairs.

Earthing.

After we walked all around DC, we headed back to the hotel for some drinkies and Gluten Free pizza. Yum!

We went to bed around 7pm (the consequences of driving through the night) and the next morning, we loaded our stuff back into the car and hit the road for OBX!

We found the pentagon on our way out of the city.

BUT THEN!

We saw an exit sign for Quantico.

What's Quantico, you ask? Only the FBI headquarters!

Side Note: Matt and I are obsessed with Criminal Minds. Like, obsessed. Every episode. Every night.
In the series, they live in Quantico and work at the Quantico FBI headquarters. 

We had to go check it out and see any of these people were there.

Just Kidding.

But for real. We got off the exit and went to explore. It wasn't until we got to the privacy gate that was protected by two armed Marines that we decided to turn around.

At least it will be a great memory ten years from now.....