Maddie’s Travel Diaries: DC Day 1

Hello and happy Wednesday! Today was day 1 of our high school senior class Washington DC trip; here’s a little recap of our day!

I woke up bright and early at 3:45am. We had our luggage packed and checked Tuesday night, so all I had to do was get dressed and ready, eat, and head over to the high school around 4:30am. We arrived and met in the cafeteria, then boarded buses and departed around 6:15am. We drove for 2.5 hours before our first rest stop, sleeping a majority of the way. After a quick Starbucks stop and bathroom break, we boarded the buses again just to find that another bus broke down and needed a repair truck. Thus, our first delay (of many). After about an hour and a half, we were back on our way (and watching Twilight) for a second stop at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, PA. We spent about an hour here, exploring the visitor center and the lookouts around the memorial. This was an incredibly humbling experience, especially listening to passengers’ last calls to their loved ones and reading personal accounts of 9/11.

Shortly after departing from Flight 93, the broken bus broke down again on the side of the highway. The remaining buses stopped at the nearest rest stop, and we deboarded one bus to disperse students among the remaining 3 buses. We send the empty bus back to pick up the stranded students, then we sat 3 to a seat the whole 2 hours to lunch. We finally stopped for lunch at McDonalds around 4pm, about 4 hours later than our scheduled time. At this point we’d been up 12 hours. After finishing lunch, we dispersed back onto 5 buses again after a replacement bus came to meet us. Back on the road, it was another 2.5 hours until we got to DC! We stopped for dinner at the Pentagon Mall, where we got hit and run while parking! Eventually we got our Chipotle then were on our way to the Pentagon 9/11 memorial by 8:30. We walked through the tunnel and stopped to see the memorial benches and read signs with the names of victims. After this stop, we finally arrived at the hotel and showered then went to bed. See you tomorrow!