The three of us went down to National Harbor, MD on Saturday the 1st for  Abbey Road on the River, the musical tribute to the Beatles. We went last year and stayed at the Gaylord and had a fun time. I changed the room this year to the atrium area so we wouldn’t have as far to walk. That helped,  as did bringing foods for a few meals, but that’s about it.  It was very humid and just standing in the sun for a few minutes was miserable.  We purchased ‘general admission’ tickets and not ‘preferred seating’. Even though it was suppose to be half price for two days, it was still $70 and we had a hard time just standing and finding a place to stand. Last year they had seats open and we usually got to sit down, almost at every venue. Many times  this year, there were empty seats for the P.A. and people standing elbow to elbow everywhere even up and down the walkways for G.A.. To me that isn’t too safe and not very organized. Saturday night we sat in a little area  for hotel guests near the pool with tables-we could barely see the singers, but we could hear them fine. That isn’t right.

We took a few shots of the bands-I have to ID them by looking at the schedule later, but I think we saw maybe 4-5 bands and last year twice that many.

See all the empty seats for the preferred seats? Behind this fence it was jammed.

That evening we did have a nice dinner at McCormick and Schmicks Seafood right on the waterfront. Sean and I had their McCormick Seafood trio of salmon with grilled shrimp and stuffed shrimp with green beans (under cooked-ugh) and cheesy kind of potatoes.

Brian had Mahi Mahi with  a corn bisque. We also got a huge, delectable piece of  carrot cake to share.

We took a little walk to find a cache. It was about 1/4 mile away and we had to cross over 4 roads, two which had a lot of traffic on them. It was near an interesting rock formation:

This is my early 1970s look.

The hint for the cache made it a little too easy to find. I ‘always’ look at the hint since I have gone to the trouble to go and look for the cache in the first place. It was down from this area behind a rock. Not in good shape. I forgot to bring my bag with my geocaching stuff, so I had no travel bug or swag to drop (really didn’t want to take it to the restaurant). The pen was between another rock which I didn’t see right away, so I used a crayon from the swag-lol.

So we walked on back up through the town to listen to more music and I started to have a coughing attack. It happened when we drove into the place a few hours earlier.  I think my sinuses decided to act up. I was okay after I got into the hotel’s air to revive. I am spoiled by a/c. So we ventured out to ‘good ol’ general admission and right smack in the middle were 4 hotel chairs-with papers on them. I had seen them earlier with papers on them. I watched those chairs for 10-15 minutes and then decided to go sit down. You don’t save hotel chairs in this area. I was the only brave person to do so and another 10-15 minutes went by and sure enough a woman came back and said they were their chairs because they put papers on them. I said you don’t save chairs in this area and I needed to sit for a few minutes. She had a chair next to Brian and her hubby was very nice and said to stay. I said we will leave in a few songs anyway which we did. (We did see her later at another concert and she decided to sit in the 1st or 2nd row-now that’s not a good idea in a closed room with big booming speakers).

Look at the nice view they were stealing from other people. If they wanted preferred seats, they should have paid for them.

On the pier

It felt like about 94-that fan with the mist was worth every penny I paid. I seemed to be the only person with one-crazy!

So after the above fiasco (this was at the night show) Sean took a water taxi over to Alexandria like he did last year. Brian and I walked along the river and still heard the band and saw them from the back. And then…

the lightning show began….

in all my years I have never seen lightning like that-truly spectacular and scary at the same time! We decided to go in as the rain began and they cancelled the show!  Inside everyone was going upstairs, so we did also. They did the firework show anyway which was pretty awesome.

‘Fire and Rain’

Not a fun way really to watch fireworks

We sat and waited for an indoor concert and listened to a few songs, but we had Sean on our mind as the rain was coming down in buckets and the power had gone out in the bar he was in. He asked the bartender how often that happens and he said about once a year! The roads in those old towns tend to flood out and Sean had to wait a bit to come back on the water taxi. We could have driven over to get him, but thank goodness that worked out well.

DC tomorrow!