A year ago Beth and I visited Washington D.C., mainly to spend time touring the Smithsonian Museums. Her family lives just an hour west with easy road and public transportation access. The day went well but it was brutally hot and humid, and any plans of visiting the Washington highpoint later in the afternoon were nixed. This time we again made a full day of our visit to the capital (there's no other option: traffic will keep you here most of the day!). This time we drove the city streets instead of using the subway. It's a good subway system but with our vehicle we had more leeway on where to go. So... anyway we rolled early from Millwood in Virginia, made a side trip to visit the Prince William County highpoint in the Bull Run Mountains, and wormed our way into the Washington road net, generally staying north of the downtown and passing through the cities of McLean and Langley, with the intent of passing into the city via Georgetown. This was Beth's old high school stomping grounds ... when she could wrangle a weekend away from her boarding school. In time we were inside the city limits.

With Beth navigating the map and me the roads, we battled traffic to get ourselves onto Nebraska Avenue, a major thoroughfare on the city's west side (NW, say the locals). Nebraska Avenue runs east of Fort Reno Park, and we ended up parking at the far end of a junior high school, just below a large tower. Fort Reno is a reservoir and surrounded by fencing. Nevertheless we walked the perimeter and the elevated berms and in some cases could clearly see that we were level with the lands inside the fencing. In my opinion the north edge of the fencing near 39th Avenue and Fessenden seemed to be the best candidate. The map shows natural 420-foot contours, some outside the fencing. It's probable that the land inside the fencing has been heavily altered - built up or flattened - leaving the natural highpoint to history. A jogger's path helps navigate the perimeter. It's actually a pretty nice area of town! After maybe 20 minutes we got moving and worked our way back to Georgetwon and a nice lunch at an old-time tavern famous for its clientele - and whose name I forget.

We ended the day with a highly emotional visit to Beth's father's gravesite at Arlington. Her pop, a Brigadier General in the Army, passed away in 1988 and was interred at Arlington soon afterwards.