East Coast Trip Day 2: More Washington D.C.

We saw LOTS of stuff on day 2. Lots of memorials which were really cool. This is where I started being really annoying. Kurtis loves that I have a zillion questions about the memorials and the places we saw and the history that's involved with each of them, especially since he's answered all zillion of those questions at least three times for me.

This is a picture of the Washington Memorial, we didn't get too close to this one. Next was Arlington Cemetary

We got to see the changing of the guard. These guys guard the tomb of the unknown soldier 24 hours a day, seven days a week no matter what. Apparently to be a guard is one of the most sought after military positions. You have to be a certain height and have a certain size waist to be chosen. It was cool to watch and a neat experience for the kids.

The kids were all so good the whole trip. We got compliments from 3 or 4 different people about how well behaved our group was. That made things a lot easier!

This is Robert E. Lee's house. Arlington Cemetary is on his plantation. Robert E. Lee is Kurtis' hero. I can't even count how many times Kurtis has told me that

General Lee was "the man"! This is a view of the Lincoln Memorial from Robert E. Lee's house. The bridge that's going over the river is what seperates Washington from Virginia, or is what seperated the North from the South in the Civil War.

Next we headed to the Iwo Jima Memorial.

The Korean War Memorial was way cool. You just get these weird feelings when you're at these memorials. Almost like you wish you could go back in time for a minute and see what it was like to live in these times. Your patriotic side definitely pops up and it gives you a great sense of pride to be an American and to have the privilege to live in a free country. And makes you realize what people went through to give us freedom.

This saying was one of the coolest I saw while we were there. It says "Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met".
It's also amazing to see the numbers of people that died in these wars.

Lincoln Memorial

This is a view Robert E. Lee's house from the back of the Lincoln Memorial. His house is at the far left at the top of the road. And this is the river seperating Washington from Virginia.

This is the Vietnam Memorial. The sculptures they have around these places are amazing. Every detail is in them.

I didn't get the whole wall, but this is a picture of the wall of names of people who died in the war. It starts in the middle, 1959, and goes right and gets smaller then around and back to the middle again, ending in 1975. They said that also represents how many people died during those years, the most people dying at the first and then end of the war. Pretty breathtaking.

This sculpture respresents the women that served in the Vietnam War

After seeing all these memorials we headed to the mall for lunch. Just look at this mall! Huge! We didn't have time to do much shopping though, I wouldn't mind going back there for a few hours!

Next we headed to Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home and plantation. It was huge and so pretty. It's amazing to see all the things he did. He was way smart and a great leader. I learned a lot about him on this trip...stuff I'm sure I have learned before and had forgotten.

This super cute lady worked there. She played Mrs. Washington and she just sat in this room all day and answered questions. She was so funny. No matter what you asked her she responded as if it was still the 1700's. She must be a very knowledgable gal cuz she new every answer to any question about anything.

Group picture from the back of the house. This would be a great place to live. The back of the house looks out over a big river, quite the view!

Kurtis and I in front of George Washington and his wife's tomb. There's actually a lot of their family members buried behind the walls as well. And that's his flag to the right of us, only flown here and at Valley Forge.

We ended the night with a ghost tour of Alexandria. It's a beautiful little town that I wouldn't mind returning to just to look at the old houses and shops.

This funny guy took us on our tour. Alexandria has lots of old buildings and there's lots of ghost stories told from this town. He did a good job keeping our attention while he took us around the city telling ghost stories. This was his night job, he is also a kindergarten teacher. I bet the kids love him, he was really entertaining.