Neither of us had seen the cathedral before. The building itself is really spectacular. I
don’t think that pictures do it justice, but I have tried. One of the great things about the
building is all of the details. One could spend years examining them all – a bas relief of a
monkey grasping a rocket in honor of the first animals America launched into space;
humorous images of people and events in our history; a stained glass window commemorating
space travel that includes a bit of moon rock in it.
Of all of these, however, the one Linda
liked best was the column capitol that included a pussy cat. The bird next to the cat has
apparently been broken, so that it appears that the cat has bitten off its head. In addition
to the cathedral, the walk also included some beautiful flowers. We saw some tulips,
daffodils, and dogwood, some of which was breathtaking.
Trying to get work done on the Volkswagen was a problem. With the economy rolling along at a fast clip, none of the car and RV dealers wanted to spend any time on people who did not buy their cars from that dealership. At one point, I concluded that an RV is a fine thing to have, but only if you never leave home. That way you can always take it back to the dealer you bought it from if you need any work done. In any event, I got the car into a VW dealer in Bethesda, and they ran the same diagnostics that were run in Asheville for free, but they charged me $72. Once again they said that it wasn’t a serious issue and would only affect starting the car in cold weather. They added that the part to fix the problem would cost me about $700, and would have to be special ordered and not available for a week or two. The difference between their service that that we got in Asheville is that in Asheville, they turned the warning light off, at least temporarily.
After making many phone calls (all over the Washington area as well as the Winnebago plant in Illinois), I finally found a Camping World store in Mannasas that would look at the slow sink drain and the inoperable gas system in the refrigerator. They seem to have fixed the refrigerator – the mechanism had been all corroded and gunky. The slow sink, they said, was just the way it was designed. It was good to get the refrigerator fixed since we couldn’t leave anything in it. If we were away from the car overnight, or even during the day for some time while we were doing some tourist activity, everything would warm up. Now we will be able to keep some groceries again.
Meanwhile, between the chores and the errands we were running for her, Doris took us to some nice dinners, and an evening recital at the AOSS (American Opera Scholarship Society) of which she is a member. At that recital we heard four of the scholarship students perform, and they were very good. In addition, she arranged for the three of us, and her friend Sally, to stay at another friend’s house in Delaware, right near Ocean City, Maryland.
Between Ocean City on the south, and Rehoboth, DE on the north, is about 40 miles of
beautiful beach and commercial tourist facilities to keep them crowded in season. I don’t
think I have ever seen quite such a dense collection of hotels, strip malls, outlet stores, and
tourist (read “schlock”) shops. Being there in April is a good thing, because it is not
crowded. It is more like deserted. In any event, it is easy to see how the beaches attract a
large crowd from the surrounding metropolitan areas.
While we were there we did a volkswalk in Lewes, Delaware – about five to ten miles north of Rehoboth. We didn’t get up to the shoreline here, but the lack of resort type tourism leads me to believe that the beaches aren’t all that grand here. On the other hand, the town itself is a delight. It is a small town whose slogan is apparently “The first City in the First State.” We marveled at the architecture – Colonial, Federal, Queen Anne, and even Modern. Besides the fact that the volkswalk was pretty flat (and, therefore, easy) it was one of the prettiest that we have done on this trip.
Even our attempt to attend church on Palm Sunday was thwarted. We were prepared to go to Doris's church, St. John's in Lafayette Square. Unfortunately, there were protests all over the D.C. area due to the presence of the IMF conference starting Monday. As a result, we could not find any roads into the core of the city that were still open. By the time we discovered that, and got out of some pretty heavy and confused traffic, it was too late to find an alternative service.
