On the road out of DC...

On the walk up to get the car, I passed several more monuments and such, thought I didn't really do much more than snap a couple of pictures in passing.

The Holocaust Memorial and Museum:


And the John J. Pershing statue in the park which bears his name:


I got to the garage pretty easily, although it looked like traffic was going to be a total pain. There were traffic cops at several of the intersections, and I figured it would take me one hell of a long time to get back down to where the girlfriend was waiting for me. I set up the car so that she could sit in the back seat again and put her feet up, got the ol' GPS going again, and headed back out into the world.

It was actually a whole lot easier a drive than I thought it was going to be. There was a whole lot of stop and go driving because of all the traffic, but it was an orderly sort of logjam, and everyone for the most part was staying in their lanes and driving like sane human beings.

So I pulled into the little bus turnout without having my blood pressure too high, although I did have somewhat pale knuckles. She was surprised that I had put the front seat down and such, because she was going to drive us out of Washington. But just so we could get out of there, she climbed in the back and we joined traffic again. I missed several turns trying to get where I was going, but we eventually got ourselves pulled over in a little middle-class neighborhood of southeast Washington, where we switched drivers and tried to figure out where we had to go to get on the road to Maryland.

Once she was driving and I was navigating, it became quite a bit easier, and we didn't really have much problem at all getting out of DC. We didn't see a "Welcome to Maryland" sign, but that's not surprising, since we were kind of driving like chickens with our heads cut off trying to figure out where we were going in the traffic and such. But we do know that now we're in Maryland, stopped at a little gas station on the road to Baltimore, gassing up.

And we're back on the road again...

Almost done walking...

The girlfriend and I are just about done with walking for the day. We're taking another break in front of the Washington Monument, after seeing the FDR Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. Both of us have aching feet and ankles, so it'd be pretty much pointless for us to try to see many more of the sights here in DC, since we'd be suffering more than we'd be enjoying anything.

I took some pictures of the FDR Memorial, but as we were wandering through, I got the low-battery light on my camera, so I had to severely limit the pictures I took after that in order to get any of the Jefferson Memorial. Here are the ones I took at FDR:






There are a lot of water features at the FDR Memorial, but a lot of them were turned off now. Since most of the monument is brick walls and large stone structures, a lot of it just looked like piles of stones. I don't know if they're going to turn more of the water features on later or not. There were quite a few pieces of construction equipment in that area, so maybe it was just undergoing some repairs or renovations. The water features that were operational were pretty splendid:


As we were walking toward the Jefferson Memorial, a tour bus full of Japanese tourists unloaded pretty much right where we were walking. So we were surrounded by a bunch of people taking pictures, chatting about things, and generally doing the same kinds of things as we were. Which is fine, except that it made us a little more conscious of trying not to get in the way of the photographers or in the way of the little groups trying to go places faster than we were going. In general, it just made us want to get away a little quicker.

Some pictures I snapped of the Jefferson Memorial, as we approached along the Tidal Basin:


From near the back steps:


From the side, showing a little glimpse of the statue of Jefferson inside:


A view up the front stairs:


And a view of the monument from a little further away in front:


We were both feeling a little too tired to climb the stairs into the monument itself, and we also didn't really want to wade through the crowd of tourists inside, so we just settle with those pictures for now and head up toward our parking garage. We passed several people who we had seen during the course of the day, and all seemed to be pretty beat, including several couples younger than us, so we didn't feel quite as bad about having to cut our hike a little shorter than we would have liked.

Right now, we are resting across the street from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which I guess is where the stamps and the money are printed, or at least designed and developed.


I like the designs on the walls which can be seen between the columns. Kind of a Greek-style scroll design:


Now I believe that I'm going to go get the car and pick the girlfriend up from the little bus turnout here along the street. I'm pretty beat, but her ankles are hurting her too much for her to make the rest of the walk without being in total agony most of the way. So off I go...

Taking a break along the Tidal Basin...

After we left the Einstein Memorial, we walked back through the Vietnam War Memorial. We passed a group of high school students, I think, crossing the other way after seeing the Memorial, and there was another tour going through, but we were able to just trail along behind them and not get pushed along too terribly much. I'm not sure that I'd really want to be there during the real tourist rushes during the Cherry Blossom Festival or during the summer vacation months. I'm sure it would just be a total madhouse.

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the Vietnam Memorial. It doesn't lend itself incredibly well to photography, in my opinion, but I did snap a couple of pictures. This is just looking down one of the walls toward the center corner:


A close up of one section of the wall:


And some roses left at the base of the wall:


After taking our time walking through the Memorial and asking one of the Park Rangers how the names were organized, we passed the front of the Lincoln Memorial and took a few more pictures there. (Oh, and if you're interested in how the names are arranged, try this link. The explanation is about halfway down the page, under "How are the names arranged on the Wall?" They explain it better than I can.)

Here's another shot down the Reflecting Pool toward the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building:


And the girlfriend posing in front of the Lincoln Memorial:


And then we wandered over toward the Korean War Memorial. I had never really seen any information about this Memorial before. It's pretty interesting, with a collection of statues of soldiers marching up a hill covered with small evergreen shrubs. Along the south wall is a polished granite wall, similar to that at the Vietnam Memorial, but not inscribed with names. These are the statues:





The wall along the south side of the monument is polished granite, very reflective. You can barely see the ghostly figures engraved in the stone in the bright sunlight:


If you shade a section of the wall, though, the figures come into easy view:


I'm sure that with the statues lit up from below at night, it's an incredibly haunting sort of memorial.

After the Korean War Memorial, we walked south toward the Tidal Basin. We didn't have the time or energy to go see one monument along the way, but we saw if peeking through the trees as we walked past:


I believe it's the DC World War II Veterans' Memorial, but I'm not completely positive of that. Something else that we definitely need to go see on our next trip to DC.

While resting on one of the benches here along the Tidal Basin, I've snapped a few pictures of some of the memorials and such visible from here. There's a great view of the Jefferson Memorial:


And a wider view:


From just a little further down the walk, there are some great views of the Washington Monument reflecting in the Basin, too:


And some of the other buildings between the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial:


Unfortunately, we're here just a little early to see the cherry blossoms. They're budding out now, and it looks like it'll only be about a week or so before they're in full bloom. It's kind of hard for me to get a good, focused picture of them, with the wind starting to pick up a little, but you can see from these just how close they are to opening up:



Next time, we're hoping that we'll be able to come back in April, when they're in their full glory. Of course, that means a lot more crowds, but we'll just deal with that. And now, off to see the FDR and Jefferson Memorials, and we'll see how much more we can do before our legs give out on us...

Einstein Memorial

We passed the Vietnam War Memorial on our way toward finding something to eat, and I snapped this picture of the Three Soldiers statue that stands near one of the sides of the Memorial:


We stopped at a little sidewalk cafe and souvenir stand which obviously caters to the tourists on the Mall. We each had a little pre-made plastic-wrapped sandwich and a soda, and it wound up costing us about $16. We also got some refrigerator magnets for our respective mommies and I got a shot glass as one of my souvenirs of our visit. After we sat on their little outside patio and ate our sandwiches, we headed across Constitution Ave. to see the Einstein Memorial which is in front of the National Science Foundation. Here's a picture from across the street:


When we actually got across the street, there was a family there at the monument, and their couple of little boys were clambering all over the statue. It looks like it's pretty much designed for that, and they weren't doing any damage or doing anything malicious, so I just sat down on one of the benches and waited for them to leave so I could take a couple of pictures.


The monument itself is kind of interesting. The semicircular pattern at Einstein's feet is a star map, with all of the stars down to 4th magnitude indicated by little metallic tacks in the granite. If we didn't have quite a bit of other stuff to see and a short time to see it all, I might have stuck around this little monument longer and taken more time to look at the star map.

My parting picture:


And then we were off to see if the crowds had thinned a little at the Vietnam War Memorial, and to see how far we could get before our legs gave out...

At the Lincoln Memorial...

Here are a couple of views down the reflecting pool toward the Lincoln Memorial:




And a view from the side of the pool, probably about a quarter of the way to the Memorial:


This is on the tree-lined walk that leads up the reflecting pool, facing toward the Lincoln Memorial:


And looking back the way that we came, toward the Washington Monument:


Approaching the Lincoln Memorial from the side of the Reflecting Pool:


On the plaza in front of the Lincoln Memorial:


Looking back at the Washington Monument and the Capitol from the foot of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:


Looking up into the Lincoln Memorial from the foot of the stairs:


The decorations on the stair banisters of the Lincoln Memorial. I don't know if these are actually lit as torches or what:


And looking back from the top of the stairs toward the Washington Monument. The Capitol Building is nearly covered by the Washington Monument in this view:


The statue itself appeared much larger than I thought:





The inscription of the Gettysburg Address on the inside of the Memorial:


The girlfriend liked the murals painted in the side areas of the Memorial, which are lit by skylights behind columns. I couldn't really get a single picture of all of them, but this is kind of a quick snap of the entire side gallery on the north side:


Here's a view down the portico, between the wall and the columns that front the Memorial:


A few more views toward the Washington Monument and the Capitol, from the top of the stairs on the south side of the Memorial:




And this is a view off the back porch of the Lincoln Memorial, looking back across the Potomac toward Arlington:


Here's a little closer view of that, showing the monuments (lions? I'm not sure...) a little closer:


Here's my effort to do the ubiquitous "grab the Washington Monument between thumb and forefinger" thing, but the wind was blowing fairly hard, and a gust knocked me off pose just a little before the girlfriend snapped the picture. I really wasn't feeling like trying it a dozen times till I could get it right, so we just skipped it.


And now it's getting to be time to find something to eat...