Just before Emily woke up I took this picture from our sleeping beauty…

After she woke up there was a lot excitement “Papa, Mama, I wanna go in the white car! Eminy go in the white car! The washroom was broken yesterday! Eminy saw Bambi running” I guess that was her summary of yesterday…

Soon it was time for breakfast with a Banana, Pancakes, A-juice and scrambled eggs. And not to forget the Disney Princess crayons and colouring pages from Patti. The crayons were a big hit, Emily played with them throughout the whole day.

At 8:30 we left the parking lot and after we got the minivan filled with gas we started our 5:33 minute long drive towards Washington DC. Or better to say Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia.

The sights where beautiful and very diverse, high mountains, fog, small rivers, large industrial plants, trees and the best only 8 minutes of traffic.

For lunch we stopped just before we entered the Interstate 70 towards Washington DC, we ended up going to McDonalds. It was a quick stop but we didn’t rush, Emily was doing such a great job staying happy and excited in the car we wanted to give her some time to play. But no after she was done eating she asked: “Can I go back in the car, pleeeaaaaseeee?”

No problem and after getting a coffee at the first Starbucks we found after entering the US we continued for the last 2 hours. The road wasn’t so exciting as the first part but there were still some interesting views and we crossed 2 state borders, State #4 Maryland, State #5 Viriginia!

The most exciting were the last 25 minutes on the George Washington Memorial parkway, this road was covered by trees and we even saw a glimpse of the National Mall and the Pentagon. What we didn’t knew yet was that our hotel is only a 10 minute walk a way from the Pentagon. Needless to say that during preparation for this trip we only focussed on the driving part and not really on the attractions…

After we checked into the Crowne Plaza at Washington National Airport we had some fun in the hotel room!

After jumping on the bed we decided to visit the nearby Fashion Mall at Pentagon City. From there we walked over to the Pentagon.

At the Pentagon there is the monument for the 184 victims from the plane crash on 9/11/2001 9:37am. The memorial is not as impressive in size as the one at ground zero in NYC but this one got to us too. It feels more personal as every victim got its own bench and every bench is placed on a line symbolizing the birth year from the victims. One of the victims was Emily’s age at that time, unbelievable that this has happened to so many innocent people…

From the memorial we walked back to the Shake Shack we saw on the outside of the mall for some unhealthy food and delicious milkshakes and A-juice!

During the 10 minutes walk back the hotel we made a short stop at the Starbucks where Emily worked on another one of their “paintings” with the Disney Princess crayons she got from Patti earlier today.

Back in the hotel room Emily burned the last bit of energy had left with jumping on the bed and then it was bedtime. Somehow we convinced Emily that mama is a good alternative for papa and I have a bed for myself tonight.

Tomorrow there will be no driving as we are going to visit the National Mall and the White House by public transport. Yes, the weather was not great today but tomorrow it will be 31 Celsius and sunny!

We are on a family mission to complete a 5355km long road trip in just 17 days. Yesterday we picked up the rental car, a Toyota Sienna!

After we prepared the car with Emily her seat and necessary additions for entertainment, an iPad mount! And an powered cooler for cold drinks we started our first part of the road trip to Bradford just beyond the border from New York State and Pennsylvania.

We left at 3:30 and Emily slept in 15 minutes later for about 40 minutes, the drive went very smooth over the 407, a toll road. But as soon as we left the toll road we hit traffic on the Queen Elizabeth Way, not much we could do about it, but it was only a 15 minute delay.

From there we drove straight to the border to the United States of America. Here we encountered a longer delay, 10 minutes to learn that our last US entry stamps were to old and that we needed to go inside for a picture, finger prints and to pay 12 USD. Not a big problem if it wasn’t for the hour long wait…we all were annoyed and irritated while there is no system in place to see if it’s your turn already or not.

After a quick restroom stop we were in New York State, State #2 of the trip. Soon the TomTom app on our phones told us that the traffic around Buffalo was all gone and it should take us only 1:34 hours to get to our first hotel.

But not even 15 minutes into the USA Emily wanted to go to the restroom again, we literally drove in the middle of nowhere and the first restroom we found was a porta potty, normally not a big problem but this one wasn’t cleaned in this decade…we continued our search and only a couple 100 meter away we found a restaurant/bar/community centre/everything else a community of 20 houses needs.

After the quick stop and go we drove to our hotel without stopping, the hotel is in Bradford Pennsylvania which is the State #3!

Emily was happy that she could go to bed and at 8:30 it was all lights out. At 8:32 she asked if I could sleep with her in the big bed and so I head a challenging night of sleep and I’m awake at 5am, at least I got roughly 8 hours of sleep, Emily and Mama are both still dreaming softly!

Today we’ve got one of the longer drove ahead of us with 308 Miles towards Washington DC!