By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 7, 2007

Queen Elizabeth II, who spent the weekend in Kentucky, received a low-key welcome to the Washington area last night as she arrived at Andrews Air Force Base on the final leg of her six-day visit to the United States.

Illuminated by the last rays of a setting sun, the 81-year-old British monarch, in aqua-colored outfit and matching hat, stepped through the doorway of a British Airways Boeing 777 and walked down a staircase to be greeted by the base commander, Col. Paul R. Ackerley, and his wife, Diana.

"I just said it was an honor to meet her," Diana Ackerley said later, describing the brief exchange she and her husband had on the tarmac with the monarch.

An official arrival ceremony is scheduled for this morning on the South Lawn of the White House, where President Bush will greet the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. They are to attend an afternoon garden party at the British ambassador's residence in Washington, then a state dinner in their honor at the White House.

After being welcomed to Andrews, Diana Ackerley said, the queen asked about the base and how long the Ackerleys had been there. The colonel took over the command in June.

Diana Ackerley, who has twice met President Bush and first lady Laura Bush, said she was not nervous meeting the queen. She said she mentioned to the queen "how it was such a beautiful night" for her ride from Andrews into Washington.

In addition to the Ackerleys, the welcoming party at the foot of the stairs included eight other Air Force officers and enlisted men and women and Raymond P. Martinez, the State Department's acting protocol chief. Behind a fence 50 yards away, about 100 people -- military personnel and Defense Department employees and their families -- cheered and waved British flags.

Within a few minutes, the white-gloved queen got into a Cadillac limousine, and her 85-year-old husband walked around the vehicle to take his seat.

Then, led by a squadron of police on motorcycles, the royal motorcade set out over the roads of Prince George's County and into Washington for the closing days of the queen's first visit to the United States since 1991.

Tomorrow, the queen and duke are scheduled to visit NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Children's Hospital in Washington and the National World War II Memorial on the Mall before departing for Britain late in the day.

The couple, who began their visit in Richmond on Thursday, traveled to Virginia to help commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the New World.