With a little luck and lots of pluck, Ellen O’Hara, 69, and her husband, Pete, 73, will get into their Subaru Outback on Monday and drive from Cranston to the nation’s capital for an event their friends tell them they’re crazy to attend — the presidential inauguration.

Undaunted by the millions of people expected to descend on Washington, and lacking a ticket to get close enough to see the swearing-in ceremony firsthand, the O’Haras are excited just to go to the National Mall, in sight of the Capitol, and watch Barack Obama’s historic inauguration on a big screen.

“It’s an adventure,” said Ellen O’Hara. “I want to be there.”

The one part of their plan that’s solid is the $142-a-night motel room in Waldorf, Md., that they booked even before Election Day, hoping that Obama, for whom they campaigned, would become the nation’s first African-American president. The hotels she usually stays at during visits were already full.

All sorts of Rhode Islanders are planning to attend the inauguration, some with detailed plans and coveted inauguration tickets and others such as the O’Haras who are more or less winging it.

If you haven’t made travel plans yet, you could still fly from Providence. But a trip on Southwest Airlines to Baltimore, which usually takes less than an hour, would take more than three hours with a stop along the way. And it would cost about 10 times the usual fare — as much as $940 or more.

There are still a few seats on Amtrak, but very few. Most trains are sold out.

Bus service is still available. The Blackstone Valley Tourism Council of Rhode Island has a bus leaving from the Rhode Island Convention Center, in Providence, at 10 p.m. Monday. It will leave passengers at the Shady Grove Station, in Gaithersburg, Md., for the Washington Metro commuter service.

The bus is scheduled to leave Shady Grove at 10 p.m. Tuesday, giving passengers one long day in Washington. It’s scheduled to reach Rhode Island at 5 a.m. Wednesday, so passengers can get cleaned up and back to work if they wish, says Bob Billington, executive director of the tourism council.

The cost is $139. Billington said the tourism council initially reserved six buses, but it sold only enough tickets to fill part of one bus.

“It’s a good price and we’re the only ones leaving directly from Rhode Island,” Billington said. “But I guess the economy prevented a lot of people from going.”

For tickets, call (401) 724-2200, or go to www.tourblackstone.com.

If you want to take a regularly scheduled bus, you’ll have to take Peter Pan (formerly Bonanza) to New York City the night before the inauguration and arrive in time to connect with a 1:45 a.m. or 3:15 a.m. bus bound for D.C. the following day.

Either that “or you’re not going to get there in time,” said Robert Schwarz, executive vice president. “We think we’re going to see a bump in the regular route service.”

No extra buses have been added, but they could be if demand requires it, said Frank Dougherty, general manager of Peter Pan Providence. As of yesterday, he said reservations were up just 5 percent over normal.

“What we did see is a dramatic increase in inquiries for chartering buses to go the inauguration,” Dougherty said.

Peter Pan has chartered 55 buses in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, but none in Rhode Island, said Schwarz.

“We’ve never experienced this before, with so many chartered buses,” he said.

Thousands of groups have chartered buses, but the total remains unclear. Officials in Washington said they expected 10,000 charter buses. But they required bus owners to register and get assigned parking. Only about 3,000 have done so, according to the latest report, and there was no immediate explanation of the disparity.

You could drive. But parking in the Washington area is limited. However, the Metro has about 60,000 parking spaces in 29 lots and 22 garages in the region. Most roads downtown will be closed to traffic, and so will some key highways. Plan ahead.

Trip Verde, based in Austin, Texas, has launched a national rideshare program. When people register, it matches riders with drivers and figures the costs each should contribute. Hundreds of people have registered and 70 matches were confirmed nationwide as of Monday, said spokeswoman Debrah Dubay.

“We have 11 riders coming down from Cambridge and one person has registered in Providence,” said Dubay.

The Washington Metro system created a humorous video to help visitors negotiate the huge crowds on Tuesday. (It is at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzpIXJBxMvw) The video uses images of Obama and other political leaders to depict how crowded the commuting trains will be and to warn people to buy passes ahead of time so they don’t have to stand in line at vending machines. The video also warns visitors to avoid the doors on Metro trains — they won’t reopen if someone is in the way.

The 240,000 people who managed to get tickets to Obama’s swearing in will be confined to areas marked with color codes that key to their tickets: orange, blue, silver, yellow and purple.

One of the ticket holders is Coventry state Rep. Raymond Sullivan, chief of Obama’s Rhode Island campaign staff. He learned a month ago that as a staffer he would have tickets to the swearing in and an inaugural ball the following day. He had no trouble getting train tickets to Washington on Saturday and he found a friend to loan him an apartment.

He is not worried about weather or crowds.

“It’s one chance to be part of history and say you were there. And for those of us who worked so hard on his campaign, it’s a chance to be together again,” he said.

Jeff Danielian, a 32-year-old teacher at La Salle Academy, got his tickets the lucky way. He entered his name in lotteries held by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and U.S. Rep. James R. Langevin. Reed’s office called him to say he had won two tickets.

Danielian had planned to go even if he hadn’t won the tickets, combining the inauguration with business he does part-time for the National Association for Gifted Children, in Washington. He’ll stay at the home of a colleague at the association, just outside the Beltway, and plans to meet his brother Jared at 6 a.m. at DuPont Circle, before trying to reach the main gates by 9 a.m. His brother, to whom he’s giving his other ticket, is driving down from Burlington, Vt., with a group of friends.

Danielian said he wouldn’t be surprised if his brother, who recently drove a motorcycle to Panama, “is staying in someone’s basement on a roll-up mattress.”

Ellen O’Hara, a former Cranston councilwoman, helped canvassing efforts for Obama in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Her friends keep telling her “horror stories” they are hearing about what it will be like in Washington for the inauguration, she said.

“My friends are a little aghast,” she said. “I just don’t think it’s going to be that bad.”

O’Hara visited several Web sites and signed up for e-alerts to get the latest information on the inauguration. The subway stop they will go to is a 25-minute drive from the O’Haras’ hotel. From the last stop, they’ll be a few blocks from the Mall.

“I don’t care where, but near one of those Jumbotrons,” she said. “I would be very happy to be there and part of the crowd and part of the excitement … being with such a diverse group of people — the camaraderie of people who might in other walks of life have no contact with each other.

plord@projo.com