Roanoke to Washington

I did the last major run in the car today, and I'll be glad to get out of it. Uncomfortable and bad memories. I drove northwards until I picked up 'the Beltway'; the M60 or M25 of Washington at times it was mad with over 6 lanes each direction all full of traffic vying for to be the next F1 (or Nascar?!?) driver. Eventually I got off it and headed into the Suburb of Woodbridge where I had found there was a HRO Amateur Radio store to get a replacement battery for my radio. Duly bought I set the Sat Nav to take me the shortest route to Joanne's apartment in Silver Spring – this turned out to be straight through the middle of down town Washington. Joanne teaches at the British School of Washington and had kindly offered to put me up for a couple of days (some how I managed to get the days mixed up and arrived a day early!) The route in took me past the Pentagon and past Arlington and then over the Potomac river and into 'the District' proper, after that it was a slow crawl through busy city streets pretty much all the way up to Silver Spring which is right on the edge of the District in the North. I was early and didn't have the exact address in the sat nav so I parked up on a Shopping Centre Carpark and went into a Coffee Shop to use the net. It turned out that the Apartment block was on the very carpark I had parked on.