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How to get around Washington, DC
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I hereby offer you warm wishes for the Holiday time and hope you get to spend time with family and friends.
We chose to hop into our Van "Monroe" and drive up to New Jersey, so we're part of the "Holiday Travel" crowd. It's COLD up here - highs of 28 degrees - so enjoy the warmth of Florida if you're still there - while we enjoy the warmth of family time even though the temperature is not welcoming.
Anyway, as we headed North, we had to choose our route - hence the question:
How do we get around Washington, DC?
The vagaries of the English language make it possible to answer that question as:
The best way to get around DC is on the Subway - or a Segway (as we did on a recent visit - see picture) - but I'll cover *that* question in a future column. For now, let me refer you to our DC Examiner for *that* question.
Meanwhile, to answer the question of how to get *around* DC - meaning "how do I best travel from South of DC to North of DC?" - I'll start by saying that this is one of those times when you might not want to just trust your GPS unit's choice. There are a daunting plethora of ways around DC and the mapping systems told us that it was fastest to go right thru downtown DC on surface streets. Refer to the map below. Coming in on I95 from the south, the mapping systems tell you to go on up 95 to *395*, dump out onto surface streets for a short distance, then pick up *295* and just stay on it all the way to Baltimore.
But Kathy and I didn't really look forward to Tuesday-morning downtown DC traffic, so I forced some alternatives in the mapping system - and found out that if we (again, look at the map - courtesy of Microsoft's "Streets & Trips") cut off onto *495* around DC, then picked up 295 all the way at the north end - that it only cost us an extra **6 miles**. It seemed to us that it was a better choice to spend 6 miles to avoid weekday downtown traffic. So that's what we did - and it seemed to work really well. So that's my recommendation: I95 to I495 to the NORTH entrance to I295. Of course we still have to re-negotiate DC on our way home, so please share your favorite way to circumnavigate our Capital in the comments below.
A couple more words: it was rather daunting to follow the route. You literally have your choice of 95, 295, 395, and 495 - and 495 splits "North" (which is really West) as well as "East" - which is really the way you want to go "North" - AND you have the extra choices of "HOV" (High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes) or not - so decide which way you want to go BEFORE you get there - and stick to your choice. "HOV" is another choice which most GPS systems don't know about, so you have to "override" them when you want to use them.
Overall, we happily, safely, and smoothly motored the 1100 miles "To Grandmother's House" and sincerely hope that you, too, find yourself precisely where *you* want to be for this special time of year.
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