Wow! What a day .. Finished packing before heading to a quick breakfast so we could head downtown to pick up our car. After arriving at Union Station we found our car place and ended up with Dodge Duarengo which is a 7 seater SUV but huge!!!! Successfully managed to get back to the Hilton to checkout.. Only a couple of wrong turns but still no idea how that happened. Quickly checked out and with no working GPS ( ours only showed Australia) and the car place wanted to charge $11 a day ( 18 das) plus tax so opted to not get it. So with the advice if our friendly Hilton men we successfully got out of Washington. Heading down the highway we took off to the Visitors Centre and after our visit to them we changed our itinerary to visiting Fredericksburg. A historical town and very pretty. Had a yummy lunch in the local cafe - fish and chips, chilli and other typical American fare. Saw a Celtic shop so we popped in and now Adrian and I are Claddaghed.... After our visit to the Irish shop we went up the street to the Apothecary where we were given a tour back in time. For all Dianna Gabaldon fans it was amazing seeing all the herbs, tools etc that Claire talked about or used. The ladies took us through what the doctors did in those days both her ally and medically. Very interesting. We then headed off again for Petersburg our bed for the night or so we thought. Oh we did try to get a prepaid Internet package for the iPad so we could use maps but no luck. So we had our first stop at Walmart to grab a GPS - $60 cheaper this way than renting one!!! I must say that our first experience at Walmart was not the best - service was non existent - in fact it was like shopping in Australia. Then when we finally got some they declined both my credit card which is almost clear and our debit card that has $5000+ available ... Whats with that???

Back on the road again we were getting on great with our new friend the GPS until she led us into Fort Lee Military camp where the guard man got upse when we didn't stop on his order! Oops! Nearly got extradited as criminals!

Could not find any hotels that were not seedy and our lady GPS kept losing us... Changing directions just as we would arrive at the street. After an hour of wandering aimlessly lost in Petersburg we headed back up the highway where we found the Courtyard Marriott exactly where GPS lady said! Must be interference from the Military scrambling our GPS lady!!

Had quick bite in the hotel as too hard figuring out how to get around in the dark! A couple of games of Scrabble Slam , some blogging and an early night as we re all in one room.

Plan is to hit the 85 in the morning heading for Charlotte North Carolina. Maybe a chance to get my Panthers shirt!!!

Night all. Xxxxxxxx