A Basketball Inspired Road Trip: March 30 ~ April 21, 2019

Being avid UCONN women's basketball fans, it seemed like a slam dunk (pun definitely intended) to go to the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four when we saw that it would be held in Tampa this year.  So I put my nimble fingers to the keyboard and began to plan.  Initially the plan was to see some Yankees Spring Training and then end our time in Tampa with the Final Four.  But spring training ended earlier than normal this year, and realizing that we'd be in Tampa without much to do beyond taking in the sun, we decided to switch our auto-train tickets to a later date, see the final four and then spend some quality time in Savannah, Charleston, Washington, DC, and then a quick trip to Strasburg before heading home.

Katie Lou Samuelson, one of our favorite players!
Napheesa Collier, another favorite!
That plan held firm until my niece, Nichole, and her lovely wife, Amanda, purchased a house in Elkton, Maryland.  My sister wanted to make it a family weekend and initially invited us to a "house warming" on March 16th.  I declined, saying it was just too long a trip to do two weeks before we would be heading in the exact same direction.  I had already planned to make the trip out to Elkton on our way home from Florida to drop off some of my Mom's painted items.  I felt badly about declining and threw out an idea to do the event on March 30 so that we could combine that trip with our trip down to Lorton (location of the auto train station).  As luck would have it, it worked out fine.

So, we modified the plan to leave two days early to head down to Elkton on Saturday, March 30th, spend some time with niece Nichole, and then head to Ocean City, MD for the evening with my sister and my brother.  We then discovered that our new favorite jazz singer, Veronica Swift, would be singing at the Line Hotel in Washington, DC on Sunday at 5 p.m., so we booked a hotel room there on Sunday night.

Now we had a solid plan.  The only other thing we need to make the plan perfect is for our beloved UCONN Huskies to beat Louisville in the Elite Eight so that they would make it to the Final Four!

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