DC Motor Vehicle Registration and Parking Permit

In Wisconsin we had a two car garage and a long driveway. We never worried about parking. Things are much different here in DC. Yes, you had to register your car, but you didn't have to pay for the privilege of parking in the street somewhere near your house - if you're lucky. I envy anyone who has a garage around here. Luckily we can usually find something close by, but you need to be adept at parallel parking. I'm so sorry our new subaru doesn't have that function! So today we decided we better put the new parking sticker on the front left lower windshield as the old one expires this month. It's always a tricky business, and we had our scraper with the cutting blade to help. With the holiday weekend the neighborhood is a ghost town. All he locals leave and that means ample parking. I suppose it could be worse. But I still wish we had our own driveway and garage. It's just one more thing to think about. 

President Taft's 1909 Whitehouse Steam Car

It's not every day we come across a 1909 steam car. And it wasn't just any car - it was President Taft's car. He was the first to be driven to the White House in an automobile. It is part of the national historic vehicle register established in 2014. It was surprising to see it sitting, totally enclosed in glass, in the middle of the national mall across from the national gallery of art. It attracted the attention of just about anyone who was passing by. I remember seeing President Truman's vehicle at his library in Missouri, and the Downton Abbey lookalikes at Winterthur in Delaware. Neither my husband nor I are car enthusiasts. But since it was right in front of us we stopped by to see it. I can't recall that ever happening in Milwaukee. That's one of the reasons we like it here - an unexpected surprise on a morning walk. 

Google Maps, Waze, Apple, or Car Wayfinders?

The last fifty miles can be torture, unless of course, you like to travel at 3 AM. Add the holiday traffic to the mix, and things get even dicier. But now we have all kinds of gadgets to help us navigate around congested areas - or do we? Our new Subaru Forester has a navigation system that has a lot of drawbacks. But having a map shown at all times is a good thing. My favorite source is google maps because we are used to it, and it usually works the best. Then we noticed the Waze app whenever there was a traffic accident. I read the reviews and they were mixed. But how many interruptions do we need to hear all at once? We haven't used Apple maps since they were scorned the first time out. Supposedly there are improvements. All I can say is the car system tried to take us off the freeway off a ramp and then make a u turn back on to it whenever there was congestion; Google maps sent us in the completely opposite direction when we turned off to find our hotel; we didn't bother with Waze or Apple. I still have an old hard copy map of our route from DC to Florida and back that I sometimes pull out to get the big picture. We were just happy to see all the familiar sites as we finally approached our home town, without incident and in good time. I don't know how we ever managed before!