Thursday, August 13, 2009

Family trip to Washington DC



What a whirlwind tour! We set out on our adventure on Wednesday Aug 5th. We stopped outside Cleveland to visit my sister for the night. I was happy with the initial leg of the trip. I do not think my husband and I heard from our children. They were totally content with their games and toys. With such success the first day, we were unsure how the next 6 hrs would go. Thursday we were on the road by 8:30. We stopped 2 times during the trip. Another successful day! We were very proud of our kids. Utilizing our GPS we were able to arrive in Alexandria at 2:30. Being in the city for country dwellers is quite a shock to the system. Our hotel had a view of the metro station, which my son was completely enamored with. I think he would have been content to ride all day long.

We spent Friday afternoon visiting Arlington. What a truly amazing sight! This venture brought a whole new meaning to my earlier "Hero" post. Reading some of the grave stones and seeing how much all of these men and women accomplished and sacraficed. The young people in their 20's, never experiencing life to its fullest. I was astounded at the number of people in the cemetary who seemed to have a complete lack of respect or reguard.

On Saturday we set out for the monuments and the Smithsonian Natural History and Space musuem. The temperature was about 95. We loaded up on water and hit the metro. Our first stop was the musuem. Everything was so crowded. We did a quick walk through both musuems. We walked to the monuments from the museums. That was a bit of a hike. The nice part about walking was we were able to see a lot of sights along the way. Seeing the monuments was a great experience for our family. The unfortunate disrespect was also apparent at the monuments and memorials. There were people soaking there feet in the World War II memorial. Crazy enough there were people doing this right next to the sign stating "Please respect the Memorial Keep out of Pool area".

What a long day! We were sure to be settled in early for our venture home on Sunday. We got our rest and were on the road by about 10:00. I failed to mention that my wonderful husband does all of the driving. We made our 2 stops during the 10 hour tour. The kids were great again. I sat in the back seat with them for awhile and they entertained themseves the rest of the time. We arrived home at 8:00, happy to see our home and chickens. The next morning I was thrilled to look out the window and see a chipmunk and not a street full of people.

We have decided next time we go back we will go during a less busy time of year. May be September?