Washington D.C. Trip

Daphne and I took a trip down to Washington D.C. to (1) give John a break to study for finals and (2) have a totally awesome and almost free vacation since my friend Rylie is living down there for the summer. All we had to pay for was gas to get down there and for any extra thing I wanted to do. All the sites and monuments were free, so it ended up costing very little.

The drive down there was very long. All the online directions said it would take anywhere from 9-10 hours. Well, it ended up taking almost 12. YUCK. But we got there in one piece very late on Tuesday night. We stayed with my friend from Michigan's (Rylie) in laws. They had a very cool town home in Virginia. We spent Wednesday hanging out with Rylie in Virginia going to a huge mall. The next day (Thursday) we hit downtown and saw a BUNCH of stuff.

National Archives and Records

This museum houses all the original historical documents such as:

the Magna Carta

the Declaration of Indepedence
the Bill of Rights
and the Constitution
this is the National Archives room. Sorry the pictures look like this. There is no flash photography allowed, in order to protect the original documents. It was funny to see how many people's flashes went off anyways.
A picture of Daphne in this museum. This was the only way she would stay still.
The Natural History museum. We did this mostly for Daphne.

And to see the original Hope Diamond.
The Air and Space MuseumA rock Daphne wanted to sit on

THE WHITE HOUSE

This lady lives across the street from the White House. I think she's protesting the war.

Across the street from the white house is a statue of Andrew Jackson. This is a picture of Daphne in front of it. She looks that way because she snuck in between the bars and almost slipped out of my reach. I barely was able to grab her and pull her back through and her head almost got stuck. Needless to say she wasn't happy about any part of the ordeal.
The Capitol Building
This fountain is right in the center of the courtyard behind us.
Looking out from the Capitol is this view of the Washington Monument.

Here's me being a little touristy....

Washington D.C. has an awesome Metro set up. More often then not you need to go down escalators to get to it. Here's on of the longest ones I saw.
Botanical Gardens. Technically, we did go there.
Daphne loved the metro. She called it the train and I'm sure it was her favorite part of the entire trip.

On Friday we headed out to Arlington National Cemetary. This place has a whole lot of history which I found out about here. If you have time, you should check it out.

Rylie was telling me how cool the funerals are that take place there right as we happened to walk by one. Which actually shouldn't be too uncommon, seeing as they hold about 100 of those a week- Monday through Friday. This was as close as we got, but we stopped to observe. As you can see it's heavily guarded. They did a gun solute and played the Last Post on the bugle. It gave both of us goosebumps.

Very cool.
We saw where JFK is buried with is wife and I believe his children as well.

Here's the flame that never goes out
And I'm pretty dang sure this is John Smith's grave.
We also made the LONG hike up to the Arlington Mansion. Which also has a very interesting history. You can check that out here too. This is the view of D.C. from the mansion.

And here we are infront of the mansion.
Next we saw the Tomb of the Unknowns, AKA Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. We got there just in time to watch the changing of the guards.

Here's the tomb with 24 hour guard watch.

On Saturday we hit the monuments. Here is the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall.

The Lincoln Memorial

As you could assume, it's very busy and impossible to get a picture of yourself infront of it without someone else trying to do the same thing.
Here is a large printing of The Gettysburg Address

Here is a picture of us infront of the Reflection pool, infront of the Lincoln Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background.

This is the Korean War Veterans Memorial. There's a wall like the Vietnam Memorial, and they also have all these statues of soldiers climbing up a hill. Very cool.

Chris walking with Daphne alongside the Reflection pool. And FYI, that pool is NASTY. In movies n stuff they make it out to be clean and clear blue, but it's really all mucky and green with geese living in it.

An all white squirrel.
In front of the reflection pool again, just this time we're on the other side with the Lincoln Memorial in the background.

The World War II Memorial. I thought this one was really cool and I didn't even know it exsisted. Each one of those little tiny pillars represents a state, with the name printed on it.

Of course you have to stand by the one with your state on it and take a picture.

But I had to do one for Washington too, of course.

We stuck our feet in the water... which I think we got in trouble for. Oh well, it was so HOT!
The Washington Monument

"You have to touch it!"
Here we are at the FDR Memorial which was really cool. It had lots of water falls and wasn't very crowded at all.
FDR and his dog with Daphne and I.

This is the Potomac River with the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in the background.
At the Jefferson Memorial.

On Sunday we went to see the house where Abraham Lincoln died. It's right across the street from the Ford's Theatre, which is closed for renovation til next year. So we didn't get to see inside.

The bedroom that Lincoln died in.
We even went to church. Kinda. We went and saw the National Cathedral. It was SO cool! It had a lot of stained glass windows that Daphne kept calling fireworks.

They had SEVERAL little chapels and doorways leading you all over this huge cathedral.

This is a children's chapel with Daphne demostrating some prayer action.

Casting some pennies into the fountain.

So we left on Monday morning. One of my goals was to eat at a Hardee's because I thought it would be like Carl's Jr. I don't get it though. Carl's Jr is what they have out west. And in certain parts of the east coast they call it Hardee's. It's the same star logo, same type of marketing, but completely different menu, and a different name. I was so looking forward to having a western bacon cheeseburger, but they had nothing like it. I did get a bacon cheeseburger though, which was still good. They didn't even have criss cut fries, or onion rings! So for all you west coast readers out there, next time you're eating your western bacon cheeseburger, just know that there are poor starving people out in the east coast who don't have western bacon cheeseburgers!
Anyway, we're glad to be home and are now on to our next adventure... packing!

TWO MORE WEEKS EXACTLY!!!