DC Challenge

Eric smiling at the Arboretum because he caught a frog by the leg and accidentally let him go.

Yesterday, Eric and I attempted the DC Challenge. We were all pumped up and excited to read the 12 challenge clues. Using his smart phone and knowledge of D.C., Eric was able to crack a lot of the clues quickly and offer up possible leads for other clues. We had a bunch of sites lined up and decided to go to the National Arboretum first because of this clue:

"When you visit this garden-within-a-garden, we bet you don't realize you're actually standing on the roofs of several different subterranean galleries. To complete this clue, replace "water" with "moon" in DC scandal lingo and you'll find the name of your objective. Take a photo with your team inside the two 9 foot tall, pink granite namesake objects."

So, obviously, we were looking for a moongate. Eric immediately skipped over all of the other details when he realized where he had seen a moongate near a "garden-within-a-garden" before. I had thought that since it said "standing on the roofs of several different subterranean galleries" that it was probably the bontanic garden instead of the arboretum. However, Eric insisted that it was at the arboretum because the moongate he was thinking of was by a bonsai garden within a larger garden. Okay. Eric has been living in D.C. for longer than I have and I should trust his opinion...

However we got there eventually (it was near no metro, and a very long walk which was suspicious of our inevitable failure because there was a time limit for the scavenger hunt and it was beginning to seem impossible to complete the rest of the clues if one was being asked to walk all the way over to the arboretum) and ran to the bonsai garden. It was so beautiful! Sorry for that intolerable run-on within those parenthesis back there...

Eric led me to the moongate but there was no sign of the "two 9 foot tall pink granite namesake objects (moongate)". Those would be pretty hard to miss. We searched around some more and went to the information desk in a small trailer building to ask a man for help. After some more deducing we looked at each other crazily and realized that we should have been at the Botanic Garden all the long, which would have made a lot more sense because it was much closer to the rest of the items on the scavenger hunt list. So, I was right.

Eric felt absolutely terrible about wasting a couple hours of our time and admitted to me that even though his competitive side felt defeated and embarrassed about not returning to the competition to look for other clues, his logical and nature-oriented sides felt it was probably best to enjoy the rest of the afternoon slowly looking at the flowers at the arboretum because there were eleven more clues and only a couple hours left to make it to the finish line. So, for the next hour or so, we walked through the arboretum hand in hand and took lots of photos of ourselves in front of beautiful trees and flowers instead of in front of random clues in the D.C. area.

Love,

Monica

P.S. Yes, those are blue and orange lizards. Long live the head band.

P.P.S. My fish were adopted this past week by a nice lady with some kids and a new pond. Orange and Julius have both out grown their 55 gallon tank and I no longer have the time to visit them and take care of them (they were living with my parents). Orange was about 8 inches long and Julius was about 5 inches long. Now they are the two biggest fish in their new pond called "home" and have made new friends in three little (comparatively) koi fishies. When Eric and I went to the Arboretum there was a big pond with many, many koi. A lot of them were very big and it made me sad/happy about my two koi. I've had them for almost three years and one day they will be the size of a cat. I had always thought I would keep them and one day make a pond for them. It didn't work out that way, though. I feel good for having given them a chance to live outside in a big pond and I will hopefully get to visit them as they grow bigger and happier.