Excursion to Hampton

We were standing in a 7/11, surveying our limited options on the the minuscule medical shelf. I looked at my friend Megan and asked, "Do we really want to spend $8.99 on sunscreen?"

You have to understand- the bottle was only a few ounces- but in the end, the economics of the situation got the better of us. You see, when something is in high demand, you can charge outrageous prices for the good or the service (apparently I did retain something from my Econ class). And the $8.99 bottle of sunscreen at 7/11 happened to be worth the price to us that day, because we were at the beach.

That's right- I spent my entire Friday in Hampton, Virginia, relaxing on the sand and playing in the Atlantic with a group of my friends. And it was 78 degrees. Jealous? You may want to hold off. After a four hour bus ride from D.C. to our destination, my group of ten got the vibe that Hampton wasn't exactly tourist material. We arrived after midnight Friday morning and realized that our hotel was at the end of a three-mile walk down an unfamiliar road. But wait-we walk all the time in D.C., so a little midnight jaunt wasn't going to hurt us, right? Well, we didn't get hurt, but about a block away from the bus station, we realized that the sidewalk had ended, and that we were walking through a dark cemetery. (I'm dead serious, no pun intended!)

"Maybe we should cross the street," Nate suggested.

We did. That's when the cop stopped us.

"What are you guys doing out here?" he asked.

I guess we did look kind of strange- nine college-age students carrying bulging backpacks, with a tenth companion in tow with a rolling suitcase (ahem...that would be Chris). After Nate brilliantly explained our situation, what did the cop have to say?

"Well, get moving then. You guys are in a really bad part of town."

Dun, dun, dun...Thus, the trek of fear began. We were just waiting for someone to jump out at us with a gun, but luckily, we were okay. Safety in numbers? Maybe. Or perhaps the cop was just lying to us so we wouldn't hypothetically cause trouble. He did drive past us five more times during the course of our walk, but at the time, I sincerely believed it was for our safety.

When we finally arrived at the hotel, we discovered that it was actually a motel called the Travel Lodge. The key to the girls' room didn't work when we first tried it, and after we had settled down for bed, I'm pretty sure the yelling and swearing we could hear was someone getting arrested outside. Needless to say, I was highly skeptical about the quality of our beach excursion at that point.

But the next morning, we woke up around ten (hurray for sleeping in!) and discovered that it was sunny and warm, and that the people we encountered throughout the day were actually friendly! "Have a blessed day," the man on the bus told us in his southern drawl. And it was a blessed day! We had so much fun at the beach, and Megan and I were even more blessed by our decision to buy that sunscreen. All of our other friends got fried! Case and point: I've never seen anything redder than Nate's face in my life! In comparison, Megan and I are as white as ghosts, though I still determinedly tell myself that I have a little more color in my cheeks than I did before our trip...yeah right!

So Hampton didn't end up being as scary or terrible as I thought it would be- but the area of town that we were in certainly wasn't used to having visitors, so it was a very interesting experience all in all.
  

At the beach!
Left to right: Me, Jen, Megan

Getting burried in sand!
Left to right: Chris, my head



The group (minus the two U of U boys who are taking the pictures)
Left to right: Chris, Jen, me, Alison, Casey, Kameron, Nate, Megan

On the Metro at 2 am- sooooo tired!

Saturday was glorious as well. We had made it back to D.C. around 2:00 am (thank heavens for late Metro schedules on the weekend). Around lunchtime, some of my friends and I went on a picnic near a large duck pond off to the side of the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, and then visited the Albert Einstein Memorial nearby. Later on in the day, another group of us walked over to Roosevelt Island (it's really an island in the middle of the Potomac, dedicated in honor of Teddy Roosevelt) before exploring the waterfront along the Georgetown area of town. Then, that night, after a glorious BYU basketball victory over Gonzaga, I very enthusiastically got another group together to go look at the "largest moon in the last twenty years," as CNN had reported earlier in the day. The fact that the moon looked exactly the same as it usually does resulted in an excessive amount of justified teasing that was entirely directed at me. Apparently though, I was kind of right based on an article and some pictures of the moon over D.C. that my friend Rob showed me on Monday. I guess we just went at the wrong time. At any rate, we ended up walking to the Lincoln Memorial and back. On Sunday, I mapped out how far I walked on Saturday, and it was over ten miles! The entire day was well worth the extra exercise.

Picnic at the Mall!
Left to right: John, Kameron, Jen, me, Rob

At the Albert Einstein Memorial (he was huge!)
Left to right: Me, Megan, and Einstein

At the Georgetown waterfront (Roosevelt Island in the background)
Left to right: Rusty, Alison, John, me, Rob

Me and the moon at the Lincoln Memorial

What the moon looked like four hours earlier- we missed it! :(
(Thank you Washington Post for justifying my quest...http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/super-moon-over-washington-dc/2011/03/21/ABZr4V6_blog.html)

Before I go, can I just say the weather has been beautiful out here! The world-famous cherry blossoms are starting to bloom, and the peak will be this weekend. Pictures coming soon!