Washington DC

Looks like I'm glad I made this trip instead of sticking around to watch the Jazz get spurred repeatedly. :) Oh well maybe they can turn it around in SLC.

Mikey wrote a little about DC but I'll give my perspective of what's happened since. After the Mitchell fiasco we drove up into Virginia and stayed at KOA there (4 KOA nights in a row now, nice to have a hot shower each morning) in a town called Wytheville. Then we headed up towards the bottom of Shenandoah National Park. (henceforth known as "Shen") Shen is this long, stringy, bizarre shaped NP that is essentially the northern 100 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which itself is like almost 500 miles. They do love their windy mountain roads here in the east.

It was Julie's turn to negotiate the Kia through the windy turns. Miles and miles of green tree covered rolling hills. More hills. Some more green. Some more green hills. Etc. At one of the many many turnoffs I made the observation that what this place really needed, behind the green hills, was a big gnarly jaggy rocky glaciated peak sticking up from behind. Yeah, that would be cool. :)

Eventually we got to the heart of the park, about halfway along the road, where the visitor center was located. We did a couple short waterfall dayhikes, Lewis Falls and Dark Hollow Falls. The sign to Lewis said 0.9, but it seemed more like 2.9. Those crazy easterners and their jacked up sense of distance. Must be moving to the metric system. Dark Hollow was a really cool area and hike. Mike and I spent some time experimenting with our cameras on the plethora of waterfall opportunities.

After the dayhikes and a brief visit to the Visitor Center, we were ready to cut the visit to Shen short as the last 50 miles most undoubltedly promised to offer more of the same, so we bailed with about 32 miles to go down a side road that headed east towards Washington D.C.

Washington D.C. (henceforth known as DC) was very cool. Julie had lived there for awhile before so she was our tour guide. That saved us a lot of time. We arrived after it had gotten dark the first night so we decided to park at Crystal City (across the Potomac in Virginia) and take the DC metro (very clean and nice) over and check out some of the monuments at night. This turned out to be a very cool idea. The crowds were minimal, the temperature was nice, and the momuments, in their lit up state, were spectacular, especially since this the was the first time I'd laid eyeballs on any of them. The Washinton monument sticks up 550 feet and can be seen from almost anywhere. We were able to walk right up to it and touch it. We also checked out the WWII memorial and the Korean War memorial, before we had to get back in time to catch the last metro back to our car.

The next morning we again took the metro (stayed at yet another KOA a ways to the north of DC) in and, like Mike said in a previous post, we hit DC pretty hard. We hit the Library of Congress (amazing building, both inside and out, DC reminds me a lot of the architecture in Europe), the Supreme Court BUilding, and the Capitol BUilding. You can't really appreciate the size of the dome on that thing from pictures, you really have to see it in person. Then we hit the Gallery of Art (I think that's what it was called. Honestly, all the places we've been in the last 72 hours my poor brain is struggling to keep it all straight). Although I'm not a big art guy, they had some pretty recognizable names in there, and it was cool to see the actual paintings up close. Monets and Van Goughs and Picassos. Cool stuff. Next we hit some of the Smithsonians. We spent a good 1:15 in the Air and Space museum. Despite it being an absolute zoo in terms of people and little kids running around, it was also pretty amazing. That building must have 50 actual airplanes inside in various exhibits. It also has missles and space capsules and rocket engines, etc. Quite the impressive combination of display and content. Next we went to the Museum of Natural History for a brief time. Of note in that museum were the Hope Diamond, and the Tiffany Diamond. Both famous, apparently. :) I'm pretty sure I've heard of the hope. Just one big mama blue hued gem...with like 40 people crowded around and snapping pictures like mad. Next we went to the National Archives building. I think was probably the coolest thing we did in DC, the others may disagree. It was a relatively long wait in line, but we got to what is called the...I think it was called the Rotunda of Documents. Something like that. Anyway, it is the room that houses the actual Declaration of Independence (could see John Hancock's actual signature), the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Pretty amazing to see the actual documents, even if they are behind thick, most likely bomb-proof glass. The Declaration of Independence was VERY faded, kind of sad really. You could barely read it.

NEXT (whew, just realizing how much crap we actually did in DC) we took the metro back over the Potomac and went to Arlington National Cemetery. This is the place that has the rows and rows and rows of those white graves all lined up perfectly. This place is massive. We ponied up for the tour they offer on a little shuttle with a guide telling you about everything. All kinds of military personell and statesmen are buried there. I think two presidents. Taft, and JFK. JFK's grave was kind of cool. Buried beside him were his wife and 2 kids, and next to that was the "eternal flame". Oooooh. I guess it never goes out, kinda like the Olympics. Then we attended the "changing of the guard" ceremony at what is known as the tomb of the unknown soldier. Some poor army guy has to dress up all formal and march back and forth in front of this tomb. Only he's not just marching back and forth all simple like and casual. He has to follow this perfect pattern of marching, turning 90 degrees at a time, clicking his heels together, rotating his gun, blah blah. It's quite a production. And he has to do it over and over and over. Then each hour (I think) a new guy comes along and takes his place. But that is also quite the production. There is a third guy that comes in and sort of oversees the change. They stare at each other, and do funky things with their gun, twirl it around, rotate it, hand it back and forth. I mean, it's impressive the discipline and ceremony of it all, but to me it seemed a little bit like overkill. I guess I'm a bad American? And I didnt' believe it at first, but apparently these guys have been doing this non-stop, 24/7, through hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. for years and YEARS. Craziness.

Anyway, then we decided to just make the trek back over the Potomac by foot, towards the Licoln Memorial. It was pretty cool crossing that bridge. It's close to the airport, and there was just one plane after another flying right overhead. Oh, and one thing I noticed about DC in general. There are joggers all OVER the place. And they all have their trademark iPOd headphones in. Jog with iPod. If you can do that, you'll fit right in in DC. Eventually we made it to the Lincoln memorial. It was pretty impressive. The statue of Lincoln sitting down inside is enormous. Larger than I anticipated. On either side of the memorial they have a couple inscriptions. One of them was the Gettysberg address. I forget the other one. Yeah, my US History sucks. :) THEN we hit the Vietnam Memorial. That's the one with the thousands of names engraved on the shiny black wall. THEN (last thing) we headed up to Pennsylvania Ave. and saw (cue presidential music) The White House. You get one little view of it from the front (surrounded by trees and gates), and that's it. There are cops in the front guarding it keeping you from doing unruly things. It was tempting to hop the fence, run past the fountain, hop in one of the black Suburbans in front and take it for a joyride...but I thought better of it at the last second. I think it was the officer's shotgun.

Okay, that's enough for now. I'm gonna just have to post this and catch up later. We've actually done Philidelphia and New York since DC, but I'll put up a post about them later.