Day 23-Thursday (D.C., Washington-Charlotte) 6/13/13

Awaken by the droplets of water raining in from the cracked windows, we roll around and do our usual, wake up… close our eyes and lay for another 30 minutes” routine. Unfortunately this time we forgot that we were parked in a “2 hour maximum” zone and stretch our legs to the sight of a parking ticket on our window. That one officially makes #3 for the trip if anyone is keeping count.

Our plan for the day is to get a good head start on visiting shops right at 10am so we can get to as many as we can and have time to head south to Charlotte before we got too tired. So around 10:15 we headed to the first few shops and they can tell we’re still tired. Non-the-less, we still receive warm reception from the people we show. We visit a few across D.C. then more in Arlington before we head back to follow up with a few we visited earlier in the day.

Another part of the plan was to have time to miss traffic and the horrible storm that was supposed to be coming in but from the time we woke up from a little re sprinkle, to the time we left town, there had barely been any rain. As we hit the road we start to see the storm everyone was talking about headed over our heads. We get a few rain drops but not much as we head south of the city. Then we hear reports of tornados in the area we had just left. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a good video or pictures but we were ok with not being stuck in a tornado.  But we continue to ride and stop in Raleigh NC to watch game 4 of the NBA Final between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs.  After the Heat victory we finish our trip and arrive back in Charlotte for a nice late night dinner at the family’s place with dessert.