Funkdubie.com - The stories of the Dennis/Couch Clan

Every few years Marc and I take off on our own...

...for a little adult vacation time. Nothing sordid, completely innocuous, I assure you. This year we decided to celebrate our mutual birthdays (mine on May 20th and Marcs is on June 7th) and go to Dover, DE; Annapolis, MD; and Washington DC.

(Skip to PICS or to a VIDEO compilation of the pics that is [11:06 min 41.8 MB] - or the 3-min non-nascar video)

The only reason we went to Dover was for the NASCAR race - now I can boast visiting two tracks. Dover was my choice - it's larger than Bristol and much smaller than Talledega (which is somewhere I *don't* want to go - I've heard the horror stories from the women there!) and it was pretty fun. It was a fairly uneventful race, my driver [Kasey Kahne] did well and Marc's driver [Tony Stewart] only raced till the first caution (due to a prior broken shoulder injury). It wasn't too far from where we were staying (Annapolis, MD) and the drive was pretty. I think Delaware is even smaller in person than it is on the map - go figure.

The next place we went was 'downtown Annapolis' in Maryland. Don't know how many of you know this, but Annapolis was temporarily the capital of the good ol' U.S.A. and we stayed in a hotel that was built in 1776. We actually ate a place in our hotel's basement called the Treaty of Paris and that's where John Adams, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin celebrated after signing the Treaty of Paris (hence the name, right?). It's even rumored that George Washington used to 'do business' there. Quite cool if you're into history. The town is still really old, but kept well. I did some checking after we got home and it appears that the hotel we stayed at in historic Annapolis (the Maryland Inn) is haunted... I didn't see any ghosts, and believe me, I was looking. Apparently it's not quite as haunted as the Middleton's Tavern (which is in the pics page) or the Ram's Head Tavern (which I wanted to go to, but we didn't get a chance opting for the Treaty of Paris that night instead). Anyhow - lots of ghost stories from that little district.

During our stay in Annapolis we ventured to Washington DC - Marc had never been and I hadn't seen the sights there since I was a kid. Lots of walking, but totally cool. Marc, who was named after his dad's friend who died in Vietnam, found his namesake's spot on The Wall, which was heartbreaking and totally cool at the same time. That wall... it's something. Made me want to cry and I'm not usually sappy. Of course we went by the White House (didn't stop though - Daddy told me it's turned into an all-day-affair with bag checks and security - which I don't mind, keep my nation safe, you know? Good job Patriot Act) and zoomed in for a few on some guys on the roof with some serious fire power. It was funny, I was zoomed in looking at them and they had binoculars checking me out (likely cuz I was holding what *could* have been some intrinsic device high on the fence). We saw Abe and the WWII monument and of course the Washington monument. We saw the Capital Building, but only from a distance. We also walked through the National Museum of Natural History, which was cool.

On the way home we drove the Skyline Drive over the Shenendoah Valley/Appalachain Mtns and it was scenic. Saw quite a few deer (two fawns, two bucks, and at least six does), we *think* a red wolf, and kamakazi chipmunk.

I have a video uploaded, but BEWARE because it's 11:06 minutes long and a 41.8MB download. If you'd rather, I put some pics up also, but they (in usual Stephanne style) are also large. There is a 3-minute (small by my usual standards) video that is NOT nascar related... nascar video is on the Nascar page.

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