CHOO CHOO!

This past Saturday on one of the coldest days I can remember so far this year, Ryan and I decided we’d take a drive into the Wilmington train station. For those of you who don’t know, Obama was making his journey to Washing D.C. via a train that stopped in Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore. I had read about this shortly after he was elected and Ryan had been talking about wanting to go up to the station since I mentioned it.

When we left our house that morning we were all sorts of bundled up in layers of clothes to keep warm. While on our way to pick up Katy who came with us, we were driving down route 4 and saw two dogs running across the road. One disappeared across the field and into a neighborhood, but the other kept teetering back and forth on the highway. Being the dog lovers we are, we though it best to pick the little guy up. After getting Katy we tried to drop him off at the SPCA but they said they no longer took in strays and we needed to call the Kent County SPCA. I was frustrated. Here we are trying to do something nice for this dog with no collar or identification and we’re being held up from getting where we’re trying to go. We call Kent County and they said they could be right over and so the NC SPCA said they could keep him in a cage for a little while.

Back on track we head towards Wilmington.

There was surprisingly very little traffic going into town and I thought the cold weather was keeping people away. We park in the BofA parking garage (compliments of Katy) and make the hike to the Tubman park across from the train station. As we’re walking, the streets seem deserted and void of cars. We soon realized it’s because half the roads were closed down by the Secret Service and Wilmington cops. When we got closer there was a huge white tent set up that everyone had to be ushered through before entering the park. There were lines of people everywhere and random men and woman along the sidewalks selling Obama buttons, t-shirts, flags and much more.

As we enter the tent there was a line of metal detectors set up that everyone needs to go through and secret service men manning each detector. The process was pretty quick getting through and we entered the park. Looking at the buildings around us it was crazy to see men on roof tops scoping out the park to make sure things were safe. We got there at just the right time too. As we were filing in to grab a spot to stand the park was quickly filling up. While we were waiting I turned around at one point and I couldn’t see the end of the crowd. There were families, couples, individuals, just oddles of people there to hear/see what was going on. After a little while the festivities began with the Pledge of Allegiance, National Anthem, a local school Step show and a couple of local speakers. Then Biden came on stage with his family and talked about how he was making the ultimate commute to Washington. After a sweet little shot out to Delaware he introduced Obama and Michele onto the stage. He too made a short speech and thanked everyone for coming out before re-boarding the train to Baltimore.

It was a very neat experience!