The road to Washington, D.C. traverses three state borders: Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. In addition to posing at each “Welcome to…” state sign we pass, I’m also attempting to moonwalk in front of each sign and landmark from home to Los Angeles. George is doing something similar. Think of it as a combination of this guy’s photograph of himself in front of every state sign in America and Matt Harding’s dancing jig around the world.

I’ve mapped out where each state sign appears along the highways, the first being Delaware at about 1 hour and 2 minutes into the drive. To be even more precise, I noted on my itinerary that this particular sign is located right after a fork on I-95. Even with the approximate time and the knowledge of a unique road split, the sign came out of nowhere. We had to run through tall grass to backtrack a bit (you can’t go in reverse on a busy highway and turning around would take up too much time). On the plus side, photographing and videoing ourselves in front of the large blue sign only took eight minutes, two minutes less than the ten I had originally allotted for our brief stop along the shoulder of a busy/terrifying I-95.

We did the same for Maryland, where the tractor-trailers seemed bigger, but the shoulder was thankfully a bit wider. While Delaware’s enormous blue sign had the slogan “It’s good to be first,” noting it was the first state in the Union on December 7, 1787 (beating PA by a mere four days), Maryland’s yellow and white sign was smaller and simply asked you to enjoy your visit. I won’t be stopping in either of these states on my trip, but I’ve been to both before and am focusing on places I haven’t been to yet.

One of those places is Checkers, a fast-food restaurant neither of us had tried before. It was perfect because we wanted a quick lunch and to eat at a place that was along the way. I stumbled upon this Checkers as I searched the route of our nearby hotel via Google Street View. While Google is fantastic, it doesn’t tell you everything about a location. Namely, we didn’t know it was an outside-only restaurant in which drive-through or ordering from a window and sitting outside where the only two options. We chose the latter since neither of us wanted to wait to eat at the hotel. Of course, it was really hot in D.C. and, despite the umbrellaed table, I was wishing there was an air-conditioned inside to Checkers. The wings, a rarity for fast food places around me, didn’t make matters any easier. The other downside to sticking around was that the 60s soundtrack playing outside repeated three or four times while we were eating. So, Elvis’ “Return to Sender” and Gary Lewis & the Playboys’ “This Diamond Ring” will be in our heads until Knoxville tomorrow night.

Arriving at the Hyatt Regency on New Jersey Avenue NW, just down the street from Checkers, we checked in at about 1:30 PM, ordered Internet access–even before turning on the lights, as you can see–and are about to go to the Newseum until it closes at 5 PM. From there, a tour of The National Mall in the daylight (for quality photographs), dinner and a nighttime walk on the Mall are all on the agenda.