DC trip Day 1

The older two girls and I took off to DC for a three day trip.

We got up at o’dark early, aka 3:00 AM for our early morning flight.

I got a cup of coffee in the airport.

And another on the plane.

We took the shuttle provided by out hotel from the airport.  Our room wasn’t ready, which wasn’t surprising—it was only nine in the morning local time, so we dropped off our backpacks (our only luggage, so it was easy to transport) with the staff who tagged and locked it for us.  We tucked a day pack into my bag, so we stowed our visitor’s guide and water bottles in there and took off to explore.

The Metro station was about a block away.  We bought three day passes so we could ride as much as we wanted.

Our first stop was The Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum.

A fun find in the stairway

The Egyptian exhibit was the reason Katie most wanted to go there.

My mom’s parents loved polishing stones and gems, so I thought of them as we walked through these rooms.

Oh dear!

One big geode!

The Hope Diamond

Then we set off to The Mall, looking for the Washington Monument.  In trying to preserve our cell phone batteries, we were using the little map.  Here is where we discover that though the monument is very tall, and surely we can’t miss it, trees close by actually can obscure it, so we walked well past it.

We walked a bit to get a better view of the Capitol Building.  We turn back and find we were off to the side (the sidewalk just to the other side of those trees) for quite some time, so back we headed—with a fresh bottle of water from one of the many food trucks!

From the Lincoln

We also saw the WWII Memorial

This is another view of the WWII with Kentucky and Ohio showing—my mom’s dad was living in Ohio when he joined the Navy.  I wasn’t sure, but was guessing my dad’s father was already in Kentucky at that time (instead of his native Tennessee).  Neither saw combat (joining/being drafted late in the war), but both served.

View of Lincoln from WWII

And the Lincoln

We took some time off to the side outside the Lincoln Memorial to rest a few minutes and Katie wanted to play around with taking some photos:

After that we met up with one of my cousins, who lives nearby in Virginia with his family, for dinner at Oyamel.

We were wiped out and headed back to the room with nine miles walked for the day!