Day 11 – Washington DC – Finding Anacostia

Hi – Today was one of discovery. Specifically, discovering the location of the Anacostia METRO station. On a map it’s pretty simple. Like, it’s right there in plain sight, right? On the green line just before it crosses the Anacostia River. It’s only 10 minutes away from where we’re staying.

So, you may wonder why it took us two hours to find it. Yes, that’s 2 hours. Well, I’m going to tell you.

First, Anacostia, besides being close to us, has a Park & Ride facility that makes it a perfect fit for our needs. Just 10 minutes away. From there we have access to every place we want to visit in Washington.

After leaving the base, based on my questionable directional instincts, we headed South on I-295. In a very short time we were at the National Harbor and it became evident that I had selected the wrong direction. Therefore, Diane had to find a place to turn around. Finally, we got headed in the right direction and knew for sure we were headed correctly when we drove past the base again. We could almost see the Navy Lodge as we whizzed on by.

In about 10 minutes we wound up at the Anacostia Transit Center which was evident because there were buses going every which way. Sadly, we couldn’t see a parking garage anywhere so we drove around on a bunch of roads near the transit center looking for the garage. We finally stopped out near the river so I could take another stab at finding the parking garage.

Shortly, a nice gentleman who was sitting nearby reading his paper looked over at us and immediately determined that we were lost. He gave us very specific directions about how to get to the garage facility. We drove away happy and promptly got lost when we misinterpreted what he meant by turning left at the 2nd stop light, then left again at the next. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well, about two miles up Suitland Parkway East we knew we’d done it again.

We would have turned around sooner, but the parkway wouldn’t allow us to do that until we reached Stanton Road SE, the first stop light. We turned left and followed it until it t-boned Sheridan Road NE.

Against her best judgement, I talked Diane into making a right turn on Sheridan which brought us to the intersection above the transit center. Being in familiar territory, we took another trip down Howard Road SE. We’d been down that road about six times already, but apparently we needed another one. This time we went slower and looked to the right, instead of to the left, and encountered an unmarked driveway that we decided to investigate and guess what?! The METRO parking garage was right there in plain sight. You just couldn’t see it from the road.

We drove in to see what it was all about and discovered that the lower section had parking meters at every space which made me a little queasy thinking about all the quarters I’d have to haul around to park the car. Then Diane spied a sign that indicated it was for short-term parking. She drove around the corner and just about had to pay $4.90 for a 12 hour stay. Thankfully there was no one behind her so she could back around the corner and briefly into a metered spot where she could turn around. She did a lot of turning around today. She’s really good at that now.

Knowing we were finally in the correct location, we drove to the other end of the parking facility where I got out of the car and checked to see what was behind big gates. Turns out it’s the entrance to Metro station. Finally. While I was there I just went ahead and bought a couple of METRO passes for us to use while we’re here.

That meant we were totally set for our trip to the White House tomorrow for the tour we’re scheduled to attend. And it only took two hours.

We went back to the base, a 10 minute trip, and stopped at the NEX food court where we each had a sandwich from the Philly Cheesesteak place. Diane had a turkey version while I had a traditional sandwich. They were both excellent.