Fire Weed and Progress

I took this shot of fire weed at the rest area where we stopped so that Meisha could breast feed Aldon.  I was surprise to see it.  The only other time I had been in England in July, back in 1997, we spent most all of our time in London or on a tour bus heading for Dover to catch the ferry to France.  It is also surprising that fire week is something England has in common with Alaska.  In any event the trip back to Heathrow was nothing like that coming.  Sure, there was plenty of traffic, but almost none of it slowed us down very much.  We had considered stopping in Leicester to do a little sightseeing because it had some interesting fifteenth century possibilities besides being the place where Richard III had been buried--and unburied to prove it was really him, but we were still too nervous.  We decided to wait until we were much closer to Heathrow.  Consequently, we got off M1 to visit St. Albans, only 30 miles away from Heathrow.  Here some advice: never take a Volkswagen Tourareg into and English parking garage.  I should have known better from my experience in Norwich back in 2012 with the Volvo stationwagon, i. e., forty zigzags to get into a partking space between two pillars.  This time I finally got in but we lost one of Everett's shoes and couldn't open the door wide enough to search for it.  By luck the car in front of us pulled out and there was an empty space beside it.  So after waving at another driver not to pull in I pulled forward, taking up m  ore space than each car was actually allotted.  But we found the shoe.  But this time, however, Everett was rather upset.  The parking garage exit opened up into a modern shopping complex.  So we just looked around a bit, got some treats and headed back to car.  Little did we know that we we always remember St. Albans as the place where I managed to get the car stuck trying to fit it within the space allowed at the exit.  The tires were wedged on both sides by concrete and it took me three tried to force the car past the ticket gizmo without ripping the mirror off, a mirror that would not retract.  Let just get to the airport!