Today’s day trip was to Arlington National Cemetery.  Since it’s one of the few places not affected by the  government shut down you can guess it was pretty busy.  Yup, school trips, tour groups and just in general lots of people.

We left the visitor’s center and headed up to Kennedy’s gravesite.

We heard someone mention that they still had time to make it the tomb of the unknown soldier for the changing of the gaurd.  So Dwayne and I headed up there to watch.

 

After the changing of the guard we walked around the Amplitheater and looked inside.  The entire thing is made out of Marble.

 

 

On our way over to look at the Space Shuttle memorials we noticed a military band coming and realized it was a funeral procession.

Next up was the space shuttle memorials.

We wondered our way up to Arlington House which sits up on the top of the hill in the cemetery and can be seen from just about everywhere.  It has a great view out over the cemetery and down to the back side of Lincoln Memorial.

The Pan Am memorial was on our way to Arlington House.

We were looking at some of the headstones as we walked through and I saw this one that I thought was really interesting.  There are some really old headstones in here.

On our way back down a path behind Kennedy’s grave site we came across a grave that they think is the original person buried in the cemetery.

We also came across the grave site for Abraham Lincolns son Robert Todd Lincoln

There is a section over by President William Taft’s grave site that is nothing but 2-5 star generals.  We realized too late that I didn’t take a picture of all the headstones showing the 2,3,4 and 5 starts.  I did take a picture of one that Dwayne recognized though.

When you walk out you walk past the memorial for Women in Military Service for America.

It’s lunch time and we decided to ride the Metro back into town and get off at the Federal Triangle stop.  We went into the food court only to see first hand some of the affects of the shutdown.  There was no one in the food court and they were all just waiting to go home for the day.

After that we decided to take a wall down the National mall and just see what was going on.

No surprise there……..nothing.  In fact the street is closed off on both sides to car traffic.  The only traffic allowed right now is bike and foot traffic.

That was our day today.  Still no plans for tomorrow but we’ll come up with something.  We are still hoping the get their heads out of their butts and we can still see some of the things we came to see by Thursday.

We’ll see……..

 

 

A government shut down and a holiday……holy crap there were a lot of kids and people in general at Mount Vernon today.

Showed up at 10:45, bought our tickets and the tickets said we could get in line for the house tour at 1:55.  Talk about a wait to get to walk through the house.  So, we walked around the grounds and took our time.  Took a lot of pictures.

First up was Washington’s tomb.  Well actually the new tomb.  This was his original tomb and it was closer to the actual house.

Here is the new tomb.  Both Martha and George are in the front of the tomb and visible when you look in.  25 other members of the family are entombed behind a door between George and Martha and another 3 are entombed off to the right.

 

Then there was the slave graveyard.

 

We wandered down the path to the dock and around the corner is a farm that’s sole purpose was to grow food for the main house.  George envisioned a 2 story 16 sided barn where the planks on the upper floor had small gaps between the boards.  You would throw the wheat after it was harvested on the floor and let horsed walk across it to break the wheat kernels off from the strand they would fall through the floor to the bottom floor leaving only the stems on the upper floor.  They would then round up the the wheat off the bottom floor and prepare it for winter.  Whether they ground if for flour or left it as is.

 

George was a surveyor when he first started out and you can tell when  you walk around the grounds.  Everything is layed out nicely and everything is in it’s place.

In the stables they still have a carriage that belonged to Washington.

Along with some other interesting stuff.  I think the sign said it was a riding chair.

When it came time for us to get into line to make our way into the house we both looked at the line and said to hell with it.  The line was ridiculous and there was no way either of us wanted to stand in line.  We have been through the house before and then we learned that the main dining room (which in my opinion is the best room in the house) was closed for restoration.  That decided it for us.  You also can’t take pictures inside so since I’ve seen it before i wasn’t going to gain anything.  Here are some pictures of the house and in the first one you can see the line of people on the left side.

I have lots more pictures if anyone wants to see them but there are just too many to put up on the blog.

Tomorrow we are off to Arlington National Cemetery and possibly a night tour of the city.  Still deciding on that one.

 

 

Today was a late start for us.  We finally got moving about noon and decided today we would just walk around some and see what there was to see.  We ended up walking roughly 7 miles by the time we got back to our apartment today.

We took a trip down to Dupont Circle Metro stop.  Needed to pick up a metro pass for later in the week.

Kind of looks like you are going down into the center of the earth…….oh wait..you kind of are.  LOLOL.

Dwayne took pity on me after a while and we made a pit stop at Starbucks for a drink.  Then he proceeded to walk it off.   Down by the World Bank saw this and thought it was kind of interesting.

After that we find ourselves down by the White House.  We were even able to walk around the monuments.   You still aren’t able to get into the Lincoln Memorial or the Jefferson Memorial.

 

 

 

 

They actually had the barricades down and we were able to walk through the WWII memorial and along the reflecting pool down to the Lincoln Memorial.  You still can’t get into the Memorial but you can at least take pictures.

Here is the WWII memorial.

Lincoln Memorial

 

WWII memorial

We walked around to the Vietnam Memorial.  Along the way we went by this pond.

 

Vietnam Memorial

Saw Albert Einstein on our way back.

All the fountains around town are off thanks to the Government shutdown but the Federal Reserve seems to have money to burn because theirs was the only one running…….

They didn’t have just one of these running…..oh no they have two of them running.

We stopped to have dinner on our way back and that was pretty much the day.  Tomorrow we are off to Mt Vernon and who knows what else.

 

We got up at 3am this morning so we could get ready and make a 5:30 flight. Good grief that is early and I still can’t believe that the airport was busy at that time of the morning.

We transferred planes in Denver and sat there at the gate for easily half an hour while we waited for them to finish fueling the plane.

Finally……..we made it to Reagan Airport.  Here is a neat shot from the upper level of the airport.

The car rental place was not very fun to find.  We hadn’t originally intended to even rent a car but thanks to our wonderful government and their very large temper tantrum we had to rent a car because now we have to leave the city to still be able to see anything.

After a 10 minute walk out of the airport and through the parking garage we got to the rental counter.  The easiest way to get to our apartment from the airport was to go up behind the Lincoln Memorial.  WOW…..these people are hideous drivers.  Driving from the airport to our apartment was most definitely and experience.  Luckily for us it was Dwayne driving an not me.  We finally made it and found our parking.

Yup, that’s it.  Four parking spaces for the apartment and it’s an alley.  Once we got settled we took a walk to Safeway and got us some supplies for the week.