GE 2016: So Long, Farewell... End of 2016 Great Escape

We arrived in Washington DC on Friday night for the last leg of this event.  A simple Par 1 (after the very difficult Par 6 of Europe) ... which means we had from 7:00AM until 4:00PM to do a series of challenges in the nation's capital and then a final check-in.  Since Rainey and I have seen the monuments and landmarks several times, we decided to do the unusual scavenges (i.e. the ones that involved new stuff). Just a few examples:

- Photograph the 75 steps where the priest falls to his death in The Exorcist.

- Have a drink at Martin's Tavern and explain its fame: In the heart of Georgetown, this old pub is where John F. Kennedy proposed to Jackie O.

- On Embassy Row, find three embassies for countries we visited on this trip.  In Washington, all of the embassies are concentrated in one general area. Since it was "Open Embassy Day," many of them were open to the public and playing music from their country, handing out samples of local food, giving trinkets, etc. The whole area was packed and full of excitement.

This is the Mexican embassy, the country where we started this event 23 days ago.

-Protest outside of the White House:  We joined a rowdy protest for release of the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 report (supposedly the pages that directly implicate the Saudi royal family in the attack).  Not the cause closest to my heart, but why not?  Transparency is always preferable to secrecy.

And then the saddest part of every year ... the final check-in which marks the END of that year's event.  This means it's 365 days from the next Great Escape event.  So awful to say goodbye to everyone and close out this year.

But the Littlepage Booth teams ROCKED the 2016 event and came in first, second, third and fifth (Chloe and Chris - even though they missed the last week of the event).  So proud of us all. Getting a medal in this event involves a lot of hard work, long hours, late nights, dawn excursions and 14+ mile days of walking (per my fit bit). But our teams did it.

Medal ceremony:  First place - Lawyers Without Borders

Second Place:  Two Traveling Texans (T3)

Third Place: Soca Warriors (minus one warrior)

Heading home now.  So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu ... until next year.