Vacation - Post #10, The National Mall

So we pick up our story on what we assumed was going to be an easy walk from Arlington National Cemetary to the Lincoln Monument...  foolish Iowans.

Reminds me of the time in Las Vegas when Aunt Molly and Dear ol' Dad were going to walk from the Circus Circus hotel over to whatever hotel had the Star Trek ride/exhibit/whatever it was (possibly called The Star Trek Experience, if memory serves).  We lit out shortly after lunch time in a baking sun and arrived after walking "a couple of blocks" nearly an hour later.  

It's Vegas.  

It's HOT!!  

Things are larger than they seem when your most common point of reference is a city block in Iowa.

And this is where our story picks up...  This pic was taken shortly before a fantastic black fella driving a bus pulled up beside of us and told us to get in.  It was a completely empty bus and he was returning to the Lincoln Monument after driving some fine folks from that side of the Potomac to Arlington.  We got on the bus with him and he gave us a personal little tour with his microphone as he drove. No charge. He just noticed some folks walking with kids and having driven that route several thousand times, realized how naive we were as parents trying to make the walk, and decided to pick us up.  We tipped him well.  He is/was a fine man who will be remembered by the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit! God Bless you, bus driver man!!  Notice the Lincoln Monument up ahead in the distance behind the street lamp poles!  We had a ways to go yet!

And so after getting dropped off by the fantastic bus driver, we had a snack/drink at a little stand and headed off walking again.  We had arrived at the Lincoln Monument in relatively good shape.  Again, the sheer size of things does not come into focus until you're upon them.

This place is huge!  That's Momma and China boy off to the bottom left of the photo.  Where's Robby?  Probably trailing behind but I'm sure he was within a safe distance...

Caleb likes himself some Abe!  Seriously, he pointed out every A.L. we saw on this trip and to a certain extent, still does!  I think the scaffold was due to the final clean-up of the mentally ill lady who spread the green paint across things in a less than stellar moment for her.

The speech, carved in marble.  Robby delivered it for me and whoever else was standing near.

Momma and the critters down front of the monument.

Daddy and the critters in roughly the same spot, albeit looking the other direction.

Caleb and Robby at the spot where Martin Luther King delivered the amazing & famous, and amazingly famous "I have a dream" speech".  Prez Obama was to be in this spot within a couple of weeks of our visit speaking from this very spot.

At the edge of the reflecting pool.

This is the 3 Soldiers statue commemorating the Vietnam War.

The memorial wall with the service men and womens names in it.  I liked this photo although it may not represent much to anybody who wasn't there.

This is Constitution Gardens Pond.

The main entrance into the WWII Memorial.

Looking up from roughly that same spot.

This is what's inside the WWII memorial.  All 50 states are represented around the outside of the this area and it's really much cooler than our meager little photos show.

Truly, this day included our visit to the front fence of the White House, the Washington Monument and much other stuff that is not document here as I sort of covered it in the other posts of Downtown DC.

That's partly because of having photos from 3 cameras and the fact that we threw all of those photos together into one folder and also due to the fact that I did not blog as it was happening and I have a really, really, REALLY bad memory.

Superbowl Sunday!

We are not a "house divided"!

If there are any questions about where our allegiance lies, see below!

GO BRONCOS!!!

Vacation - Post #9, Arlington National Cemetary

This post finds us in Arlington National Cemetary. Wasn't too sure what to expect when heading there, but whatever I was expecting, what we experienced wasn't it.

The drive to Arlington was absolutely beautiful as well.  We took interstate 270 down to I495, which was not the beautiful part of it, until the 495 crossed the Potomac River and we soon exited off onto George Washington National Pkwy.

That goes down the Virginia side of the Potomac and you're pretty much on the bluffs overlooking the river valley, with DC on the other side.  The sun was coming up, a bit of fog in the air and otherwise just a nice morning.

So, good morning aside, we get to Arlington and set out to walking up to the visitors center. 

I don't believe the sign needs much explanation...

There's a small Chinese boy checking out the statue of the bugler in the welcome/visitor's center.  There are multiple different areas of the building that are dedicated to specific wars, events (assasinations, 911, etc...) and artifacts of history.

One of those dedicated areas.  This one being to John F. Kennedy.

This was inside the gates, and shortly after leaving the building above.

And then you walk... and see tombstones...

Lots of 'em.

Acre after acre of them.

Don't believe me?

Here's some more...

more...

more...

Getting the idea?

Just one more photo.  I left a good many out but I was fascinated that you could just keep on going and going and in every direction you looked, there was sights like these.

This was a section dedicated to the Spanish War Vets.

This was a section dedicated to our nations Army, Navy and Air Force nurses.

The reverse side of the Memorial Amphitheater from the TotUS.

Two little varmints at the fountain which is at the bottom of the Unknown Soldier uh... area.  That's the Memorial Amphitheater up behind them and the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier is almost directly above the right edge of the fountain (at the top of the steps).

Having never really understood (and sadly, cared) what this was about, I had previously thought this somewhat silly that they guard this and do a ritual every hour.  This was in my younger, and dare I say, dumber and more cocky days.  I was dumbfounded by the emotions that came up up standing and watching the changing of the guard!  I cried.  I got angry with my fellow Americans when they dared make the slightest noise.  I didn't want to leave when my family began to move on.  Perhaps what struck me is that I feel most Americans used to have a strong sense of pride, the same kind of pride these soldiers had guarding their fallen comrade, but now we have have more of a sense of "me first".  Powerful moment for dear ol' dad here!

The new guard, walking off the previous guard towards the end of the ritual.

This is the Kennedy's burial site.

As we left and were (foolishly) walking over the Potomac over to the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall, I turned around to take this photo.  That building in the background there is the Robert E. Lee National Memorial, which was just up the hill behind the Kennedy graves.

I then turned back around to take this photo of my family.   Way, way way ahead in the distance, blending in with the trees and sky just above Mom's head, is the Lincoln Memorial...

You're supposed to train for this kind of walking.  Just like on the Great Wall Of China, we were caught off-guard by our less than optimum physical prowess...

Next up, the National Mall.

It's The 100th Day Of School

Monday, January 26th marks the 100th day of this current school year.  Caleb's teacher had a project where the kids were to decorate a shirt in any way/shape/form they wanted as long as it had 100 of something on it.

I sort of figured that the boy needs work with his handwriting so we would simply write the numbers 1 - 100 on his shirt.

He got a kick out of doing an "art project" with daddy and did most of the writing himself.

Now the question is, is will they have school tomorrow?  The temperature has dropped about 33 degrees in the last 4.5 hours and we're getting wind gusts that are making the house groan.  Thankfully, the snow missed us this far South, but not too far North of here was supposed to get a few inches to be rearranged according to the whims of 60 mph wind gusts!

Fun stuff.

Class Character Robby!!

It was only 364 days ago that I wrote this post. It seems that I am blessed far beyond any realm of my own deserving with two great boys!

Robby is a football junkie as anybody who has spent any time on this blog already knows.  What they may not know about him is that he is a bit of a history buff and doesn't only have the memory of 1 elephant (as it is said), but rather the whole herd!

I could babble on and on about the boy, but I'll let the photos and paragraph that his teacher wrote about do the speaking.

This is Robby (He's the one in the football jersey, in case you're wondering...) receiving his Ram's Way dog tag necklace.  That's his teacher at the mic reading what she wrote about the lad.

I had to include this photo as well because you can tell by the way he's holding his arms that he's excited!

The lad with some other fine fella and "fella-ettes".

This is what Mrs. Conley had to say about him.

If he looks a little glassy eyed, it's because he's been out of bed for about 15 minutes at this point and it's not quite 6am yet.  But that is the boy displaying his newly acquired dog tag necklace.

Congratulations Robby!  Way to make your parents proud!!

Silliness...

Guess who got the boys ready for school on MLK day?  (hint: it wasn't mom)

Robby wanted to wear his hair in a ponytail since it is (mostly) long enough now.  I didn't care, and quite frankly, niether did Mom.  So Dear Ol' Dad got him all ponied up and ready and to my surprise, I found myself missing the days of my own ponytail. So I wanted to take a picture of it.  Caleb, being one who will never miss a photo op, asked to take a silly picture and a good picture.   We never got around to a good picture of both of them, but the silly picture is delightful!

Robby's ponytail.  He liked it and thought it was pretty cool.

And for other good silliness, last night was Robby's first swim meet of the season.  He did good.  That's beside the point and not my other "good silliness".

While waiting for his third race, he was in his lane on the side of the pool next to his buddy, Brody.  He looked up at us and tried to motion something with his hands.  I motioned some non-sense back to which Robby motioned even more.

I did my best Eddie Murphy sign language impression from The Golden Child and finished it up with the motion of an "armpit fart".  Robby got a good chuckle out of that from 30 yards away and soon he and Brody were doing armpit (and knee-pit!!) farts on the side of the pool.  I was about dying laughing.

Mom?  Not so much.  You see, she was never a young boy!

Silliness, indeed.