I arrived at the Hilton Newark Airport Hotel at around 1830 and checked in to my room which wasn't bad but not on the same grand scale as my 6th Avenue Warwick hotel, where I discovered, had been host to the likes of Cary Grant, Audry Hepburn, Elvis Presley, James Dean and The Beatles! I spent the evening down at the hotel bar where i chatted to a sqaudy based in Germany. He was also there for a Trek America tour, though not the same one as me. It turned out he knew a collegaue of mine at Headley Court. Such a small world. We were joined by a very nice American airline pilot who worked for Continental airlines. The three of us spent the evening chatting about english swear words that don't sound right in an American accent, the book I was reading 'In to The Wild' and the ups and downs of being a pilot (scuse the punn). We laughed (with slight disgust on our faces) over a picture of what was once a pigeon, that had come to an untimely death when it made contact with the pilot's cockpit window.

Too many glasses of wine later I decided it was probably a good idea to get some shut eye before setting off for washington DC the next day. On entering my hotel room however, i paniced, thinking i had just walked in to the wrong room! In my not so sober state it took a few seconds to realise the lump in the bed next to mine was a fellow trecker who had arrived late in to the evening. Phew!

There are 8 of us in total in the group. Seven girls, one guy. Two French, one Australian and five Brits, all of whom are very nice. we met early, went through some admin, grabbed some brecky and headed on a 4.5 hour drive towards Washington.

We headed through New Jersey and Delaware and finally reached Maryland, home of the cookie, where we stopped at the Cherry Tree Camp Site. We grabbed a bite of lunch, set up camp (which was a hot, sticky, uncomfortable task), and then had a hugely satisfying and cooling swim in the pool in the 38 degree heat. We made fahitas for tea and then headed off in to Washington.

We of course dropped in at The White House first which was mildly disappointing as we couldn't get very near to it. However it was still exciting to see. We had a look at The Capitol which is a pretty damn impressive building, home to lots of very important law making which I don't really understand. This was followed by some interesting photography over the Reflection Pool (the one Tom Hanks runs through in 'Forrest Gump'). We had a look at the memorial of Thomas Jefferson and also stopped at the vietnam and korean war memorials, which were ratherful 'powerful' as our tour guide put it. Finally finished up at the most impressive of the lot, The Lincoln statue. 19ft of big old Lincoln sitting there in his 20ft wide stone chair. Pretty impressive!

Back to camp now to collapse in the tent after a very long day!