The Last of Washington DC (05-12-13)

We did end up extending our stay in Washington DC so we could take in a few more sights, then still had to make tough choices on what to see.
We both really loved the National Museum of American History, and we hadn’t been able to finish it, so we headed back there and actually spent another 3 and a half hours there  The museums are open later some nights so we took advantage of that and exhausted ourselves by staying until the museum closed. 
Earlier in the day we toured the National Air and Space Museum but we have seen a lot of similar exhibits in the last year or so, so a lot of it was repetitive.  
Looking for something completely different, we decided to head to the National Zoo.  The weather forecast called for rain, but luckily it (mostly) held off.  Its been a lot of years since we’ve been to a zoo, and this one is free, so, what the heck.

  This zoo has Asian elephants, but none of the larger African elephants, because they aren’t endangered and the zoo felt that their available space would be better used  for the endangered species.  I know that elephants are intelligent, but when I read about some of the things they can do, I was still surprised.  Elephants have self-awareness.  If you put a white chalk mark on an elephant’s head, when he sees himself in a mirror, he will wipe the mark off!  Pretty neat.

I had never seen or heard of this cutie before- its called a Sand Cat, and it’s about the size of a house cat.  They live in the deserts of Africa and Asia, where the temperatures reach 125 degrees during the day, and 0 degrees at night. It has furry paws and leaves no paw prints.

  There were several Cheetahs, one of my personal favorites.  I didn’t know that when a Cheetah is running at full speed, 60-70 mph, their stride is 23 feet long. Holy Cow!

There are more pictures of the zoo in my “Recent Pictures” slideshow on the right hand side of my blog site.  You can click on it to see larger pictures.  Paul and I left D.C. and are on our way to Boston.  We both have colds now, so we are going to hunker down in a NPS campground in Pennsylvania for a few days. We are using our Wilson cell phone antenna and are still barely able to get online, so every time I try to do something with my blog, it gets messed up, re-posts entries and in general is just a pain in the neck.

Government Buildings- Washington DC (05-09-13)

The Capitol Building:
  Having spent the last two days in museums, we decided to break it up a bit and headed to the Capitol.  Here’s a clue for anyone headed to DC to sightsee- as soon as you know when you will be here, call your congressman to see about getting tour tickets for the Capitol. 

 



on the steps of the Capitol

We did call last week but weren't able to get a personalized tour. I don't know how different it would have been, because we did have a pretty good tour.

Once inside, we donned headsets for our guided tour of the building.  We’ve both been in this building before, and really only did the tour because it has been so long since we’d been here. 



The Rotunda is full of statues.  In fact, there are hundreds of statues in the Capitol building, but there are very few ways that the statues can be acquired.  Each state is allowed to showcase two statues that represent their state.  This statue of Ronald Reagan was donated by California.  In order to donate this one, California had to remove the statue that had been there before.  There are bits of the Berlin wall incorporated into the base of this statue.

 



Another way for a statue to end up at the Capitol is for Congress to pay for it themselves.  That doesn’t happen very often (its been 140 years since the last one), but they did have this statue of Rosa Parks commissioned.  It stands in Statuary Hall.  Rosa Parks was the first woman to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

 



The Capitol Crypt sits directly under the Rotunda and has enough columns to comfortably hold up the heaviness of the Rotunda and Capitol Dome.  It’s second purpose was to hold the tomb of George Washington. By the time the building was finished, Washington had been dead for many years and George was already buried at Mount Vernon.  His family refused to allow the body to be moved, since George had specified that he wanted to be buried at home.

Congress kept attempting to pressure the family into changing their minds, and pestered them so much that the state of Virginia passed a law making it illegal to move George Washington’s body out of state.  That stopped the pestering.

The Supreme Court Building:

  Directly across the street from the Capitol, is the Supreme Court.  I was hoping that they would be in session, but that won’t happen until October, so we didn’t get to see them in action.  The outside is being worked on so instead of seeing the actual columns, we could see a sort of tarp, with the columns painted on it. The building was originally built in the early 1930s with a budget of $10 million.  Thanks to the Depression, this is one of the only times a government project has come in under budget.




 

Great Hall, just outside the courtroom is quite majestic.  Although there are no actual tours of the building, there are regularly scheduled lectures given inside the courtroom itself.

No pictures are allowed inside the court,  so I took a picture of this diorama that shows the layout.  The lecture we listened to was awesome, explaining the room itself- some chairs are for the general public, some are reserved for attorneys who are not presenting, and off to the side are the Press seats.  Of course there is no jury box, since no trials are held here.

So, because I found it very interesting, here is a little information about how the Supreme Court works. The justices receive 10,000-15,000 petitions a year.  They all have to read all of them.  Each one votes on whether he/she thinks it is a case they should hear.  If 4 of them think it is, it goes on the docket. 

  Only specific attorneys are allowed to argue in front of the Supreme Court. To  qualify they had to have argued in front of their state Supreme Court for a number of years, and they have to be sponsored by two members of the Supreme Court Bar. 

When a case comes in front of the justices, each of the two attorneys who are going to argue the case has 30 minutes to present his side.  Within a minute or so they are usually interrupted by one of the Justices.  After all, everyone is familiar with the case, and the Justices want to get their questions answered and get whatever clarification they need, in the time they have allotted. 60 minutes later, that case is done, and they move on to the next one.  Usually within a few days, the justices discuss the case and vote on what they think the outcome should be.  If the vote of the Chief Justice is in the Majority, he decides who will write the Majority Opinion. If not, the most senior Justice decides who will write it.



More Washington DC (05-06-13)

Monument Day: The day we walked 5 miles to see all the monuments.  Ok, not all of them.  We didn’t walk the extra mile to see the Jefferson Memorial, but maybe we’ll get a chance before we leave.

We walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and dutifully took our pictures of the White House. 

We couldn’t get too close to the front yard- we could get closer in the backyard, for some reason.

I zoomed in really close and took a picture of the sniper on top of the White House.









We spent hours walking up and down the National Mall.  Don’t think stores- think Memorials and Monuments.  On the way there we passed through a really cool sculpture garden:

stainless steel tree

old fashioned typewriter eraser

 

The World War II Memorial is really well done.  I have an App on my phone that has a map of the Mall, and short blurbs about each of the monuments/memorials.  The amount of thought that went into the design of this one  is amazing.

  Every part of the monument has meaning, it seems. For instance, the 56 columns (stalae) represent the states, territories, and the District of Columbia, arranged according to when they joined the Union.

Each star on the Freedom wall represents 100 people who died in the war.

The Mall is a very busy place.  While we were there, an outdoor yoga class was taking place, as well as a celebration of Cinco de Mayo. I am not sure I’d be interested in a yoga class where the instructor is using a microphone with massive speakers, but then, I don’t do yoga.

   

The Lincoln Memorial is as massive as ever, really huge and somehow awe inspiring, with his immortal words carved into the nearby granite for all to read.

The view from beneath the columns of the Lincoln Memorial was pretty impressive as well.  It doesn’t show as well in the picture but behind the Washington Memorial is the Capitol Building.  The Washington Memorial is closed due to damage from an earth quake two years ago.  There is scaffolding surrounding the exterior.

  These larger-than-life stainless steel servicemen represent the Korean War veterans, trudging through the windy and cold terrain. 

My dad was in the service during the Korean War, although he was lucky enough to be stationed in Boston, his home town.












Most people are familiar with the Vietnam Wall, inscribed with the names of the 58,000+ service members who died in the Vietnam War.  Young schoolchildren wrote and left notes written to individual people on the wall, thanking them.

In addition to the “major” memorials, there are lots of lesser known ones.  We stopped by the Memorial to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Every day, on the way in to town, we pass right by the U.S. Navy Memorial. We finally stopped today to wander through part of it, but we need to stop and take a better look.  It started to rain while we were there.

Snippets of Washington D.C. (05-02-13)

Every day at 4 pm, the RV park we are staying in has a seminar for new visitors.  They explain how the Metro works, give out maps, explain what there is to see around DC, give opinions on the best tours, hand out brochures, and answer any questions.  It sure made it easier and less overwhelming for us!  Since Washington D.C. is not a dually friendly town, it was great to learn that bus stops in front of the RV Park.

We wanted to get our feet wet, so to speak, so our first day, we ventured in on the Metro and went to the International Spy Museum. Walking around the city was fun in and of itself, looking at all the buildings, the architecture, and enjoying the hustle bustle of the crowds (made more enjoyable by not needing to find a parking space).

The Spy Museum is dedicated to all things espionage related. It was fun but would maybe be more fun for kids. You pick an identity when you first enter,  and have to memorize some basic information, which you are asked about later.

The first main room is Spy School, where you learn how to act like a spy.  This photo was about signals- there are 4 signals in the picture that could be used by spies to communicate that a task had been completed: the book in the back dash of the car, the white mark on the mail box, the pack of cigarettes on the ground and….I forget the 4th one.

In the “Hall of Fame” of spies, we learned about Juan Pujal Garcia (code name Garbo). He worked for the British during WWII, as one of the most effective double agents in history. He fabricated an entire network of make believe agents and contacts and convinced the Germans they were real. He played a large role in the invasion of Normandy, a hugely successful piece of trickery on the part of the Allies. Garbo helped convince the Germans that the invasion would take place at Pas De Calais.  If you google this guys name, his story is really interesting reading!

One entire floor of the museum is dedicated to James Bond.  I did not know that the author,  Ian Fleming, was a British Intelligence agent. One of the quotes from him essentially said that although fun to write, the life of James Bond is much more exciting than a real secret agent’s life!

Doing some basic planning based on the weather forecast, we had to focus on outdoor activities for a few days because the weather is going to take a turn for the worse.  We met up with my friend Steve, who I have been friends with since high school. Yikes! That’s 40 years that we’ve been friends!

 

Steve found a great hike for us at the nearby Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park.  The canal isn’t maintained anymore, but there is a museum about the history of the area. The trail was pretty rocky, which meant we had to watch our step, and we ended up turning around at the sign that warns that the trail is about to get a whole lot more difficult.  We weren’t prepared for that challenging a hike that day.

The Potomac River flows through the park, and there were great views of the waterfalls along the way.

After that workout, we decided we deserved Margaritas even though it was the 4th of May, not the 5th.  We went back to Steve’s place for Margaritas and tacos.  Yummy!

Paul and I also took a bike ride the other day.  There’s a bike path very close to the RV park (with tennis courts too, but I haven’t been able to convince him to play). We rode about 4 miles towards the city, and passed about 4 parks along the way.  One of them had a great set up with several workout stations, right along the bike path.

 

This pretty Cardinal keeps trying to fly into our living room, and of course, smacks into the window.

If nothing else, it sure does serve to entertain Dozer, who hopes in vain that the bird makes it into the room.