Go West !

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We left a slumbering Stephen to catch up on some zzz’s and shared a final hour or so with Nick, Meg & Noah over breakfast…..whilst casually taking part in that often underestimated holiday activity of *ahem* accidently losing some items in our bag……okay, pretty well a full breakfast for the aforementioned son to enjoy later….

A decision to try to not leave it another 23 years was agreed, and off they headed for their 4-5hr trip home.

Thanks for coming to play, it was great meeting up !

The final packing up from our room complete, we took a last warm and sticky tour across the Mall to see dinosaurs and butterflies, ocean creatures, gems (including the cursed Hope Diamond) and how we evolved at the Natural History Museum. Very well laid out, yet with a surprisingly inappropriate Egyptian Hall feature, a nice touch!

From there came a trip past the J Edgar Hoover FBI Headquarters, an ugly monstrosity amongst streets of rather nice buildings, on our way to an obligatory trip to the Hard Rock café. Whoever had the idea of suggesting collecting guitar pins needs a good telling off……

Luckily, this was literally next door to the Ford Theatre, the scene of Abraham Lincoln’s sad and sudden departure from his mortal coil, so a chance to collect another photo (much cheaper than those pesky pins….)

Finally, we wandered back once more, this time to visit the Hirshhorn Art Gallery, a doughnut of a building which I have to say was a delight to visit: lovely simple displays, works by Warhol, Mondrian, Giacometti amongst less known artists, a fine dangly blue piece you could walk through and feel part of, as well as some rather interesting neon lighting exhibits. Also more lighting area's needing overshoes putting on, and a music & slide chill-out room playing Hendrix and having futons to lounge on.....nice !

We reclaimed our bags back at the hotel and climbed abord a Super Shuttle blue van to Dulles International. Have to say the security was the lengthiest I had ever experienced for an internal US flight, but we finally boarded UA1219 to SLC to follow the sun for the 4.5hr flight, drop our watches back a couple of hours, and head to Mountain Time for the Road Trip portion of this adventure....

& hopefully into some dry heat !

The flight was fine & our car was upgraded from a Ford to a Jeep (well, it sounded like an upgrade!).....the bags just fitted in, & I reckon we can take that down some canyons. TomTom worked a treat & we managed to get to the Red Lion Hotel without crashing, so all good :-)

It was noted that the rooms are getting bigger each time, & the other three headed off in search of food....for my part, I need a shower & sleep !

Looking forward to what tomorrow will bring

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