Washington DC

I just returned from a week spent in Washington DC with Lisa. Here are some pictures of things we did and saw.

Sept. 5th
We went to Great Falls National Park in McLean, VA, for a picnic. The Potomac River runs through some narrows and rocky places in this location, and there are also remains of the canals that were built in the late 1700's to portage around the area.

Here are pictures of us at the picnic.

Some shots of the falls. There were a couple of kayackers who were playing around in at the foot of the rapids.

The park ranger was mounted on a beautiful gray horse. The kids came flocking to see and pet it.

It's hard to believe that the water could be as high as the marks shown on the pole, considering how far down the gorge it is presently.

The town of Matildaville flourished along the canal banks during the early 1800's, but died out when the railroads took business away from the canals. All that is left are foundations of houses and buildings.

This is a shot of the remains of one of the locks on the canal.

This is a shot of a root cellar or foundation of one of the houses.

Sept. 6th
Lisa's church meets at 1 PM. We relaxed in the morning and talked to her roommates. Turns out one of her roommates lived in the Canyon Rim area at the same time that Grandma and Grandpa Glade were there. Her son is also attending Harvard Law school and knows David.

Sept. 7th - Labor Day
Since it was a holiday, the Washington DC temple was open from 8 to 1, so we decided to attend a session.




Sept. 8th
Tuesday morning I rode into work with Lisa and then took the Metro to the Federal Triangle stop. I joined a bike tour Bike the Sites and spent the morning touring the capital.

The Bike - it was a "woman's comfort bike" with flowers!

We stopped at a monument to Japanese Americans who were interred in prison camps during WWII. The center feature is a pair of cranes entrapped in barbed wire. There is also a pond with rocks that represent the islands of Japan and a number of stone panels listing Japanese Americans who served in our forces during WWII.

We next stopped by Union Station.

We then biked up the hill to the Capitol Building.

This is a shot of the "other" side of the Capitol Bldg. from the bottom of the hill.

We next biked past the Washington Monument and down the mall to the Lincoln Memorial. This is high on my list of favorite places in DC. We were able to spend some time walking around the memorial. If you know ASL, look at Lincoln's hands and see if you notice anything interesting. The guide also told us that the original plans were for the distance between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Monument was to be 2 miles, but it ended up being 1.9 miles. As a result, you can't see the complete Washington Monument in the reflecting pool. If you ever see a picture that shows the complete monument you know it's been altered!



The last stop of the day was the Vietnam Memorial. We heard lots of interesting facts about the memorial, including the fact that the design that won the competition was quite controversial, because the architect was a 21 year old woman who was not a native-born American. Many Vietnam vets felt that she couldn't understand the war because she was 1) a woman, 2) only a teen-ager during the war, and 3) not born in America. However, I think that the monument is very impressive, including statue at the beginning and the wall of names of people who were killed.

Many people have left items at the wall in remembrance of people who died in service in Vietnam. The most interesting one was a Harley. Two guys - friends from high school - made a pact that the first one to make a million would buy the other a Harley. They went to Vietnam, but one was killed there. The other returned home and when he made his million, brought a Harley to the monument and left it there. Items left at the monument are kept and cataloged and some are on display at the American History museum.



After the tour I rented a bike for the rest of the day because I wanted to see the Jefferson Memorial. They took away the blue flowered bike and replaced it with a purple Trek, and I rode back to the mall, heading to the Jefferson Memorial. I went the long way around, and went past the FDR Memorial first.

The FDR Memorial has lots of fountains and pools and was a very pleasant place. They also included a wall that had lots of features for sight-impaired people.


After leaving the FDR Memorial, I biked around the Tidal Pond to the Jefferson Memorial. Apparently some of the land fill in that area is sinking. The original path is now under water, as you can see in these pictures.


The Jefferson Memorial was my next stop. Here are some pictures.


Last stop for the day was the National Art Gallery, looking for the French Impressionists. I found the Monet paintings. My batteries were getting low so I only got a few pictures, but I enjoyed the rest immensely, as well as the Renoirs and Van Goghs on display. This one was especially beautiful: Vase of Roses. It's thrilling to see the real thing up close and personal.


The last "objet d'art" was in the Sculpture Garden. This one made me chuckle because I haven't seen one of these since I worked for Grandpa Melvin at Western Steel in the early 70's. Ten points to anyone who can identify it!


Sept. 9th
On Wednesday I rode the Metro again, this time to the Metro Center stop, and then walked to the International Spy Museum. They didn't allow photography, but I had a great time exploring all the artifacts and history of spying through the ages. I was especially interested in the display about the German Enigma machine and how its codes were finally cracked through the efforts of thousands of workers in Bletchley Park in Britain. I also found the "tradecraft" fascinating - tools of the spy's trade, such as lock picks, small cameras, bugs, and other objects.

After spending the morning in the museum, I walked down to the mall, had lunch at the Native American Museum's cafe, visited the National Arboretum, and finished up the day at the Natural History Museum.

Here's a slideshow from the Arboretum:



At the Natural History Museum I started with the Hope Diamond and looked at all the jewels. Here's a slideshow of what I saw.



Sept. 10th
On Thursday I dropped Lisa off at work and took her car into Alexandria where I parked and rented a bike again. The bike shop is at mile 9 of the Mt. Vernon trail. I hopped on the trail and biked out to Mt. Vernon. The trail is not a rail trail, so there are some ups and downs on it, especially one steep long hill into Mt. Vernon, but it parallels the Potomac river for much of the first 5 miles, so the views were great.

View of the mansion across the bowling green

I really enjoyed the gardens, which were done in the style of English estate gardens. He had a state of the art greenhouse which was heated by means of ducts in the floor.

A shot of the fireplace and heating ducts

Surrounding the greenhouse are gardens full of flowers and vegetables, and a boxwood garden with fleur-de-lis shapes outlined by the boxwood.



We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the mansion, but I thought the view from the piazza was spectacular:

There are a number of buildings surrounding the mansion where the business of the plantation was handled: the Salt House, the Smoke House, the Stables, the Spinning House, and many others. As I was coming to the Spinning House there was a mother and 3 teen and pre-teen kids looking at the looms and spinning wheels. I overheard the conversation which went something like this: (Mom) They had to work hard - they didn't have stuff like we do, televisions, computers...(8 year old boy) How could they live without computers??

This slideshow features some of the buildings as described above.



One thing I found interesting was the descriptions about the slaves' quarters and labor. A Polish traveler of the period commented that the slaves lived in conditions that were worse than the poorest of the poor in Poland. They were allocated 1 blanket per year, and enough food to keep them full, but not nourished. They often raised their own chickens and vegetables and slept 3 or 4 to a bed to keep warm in the winter. They worked sun-up to sun-down, sometimes as long as 16 hours a day. One of the audio clips I listened to said that the only way they could rebel was to feign illness, and to work slowly or do the work poorly - they often didn't want to escape because they had family either on the same or nearby plantations that they didn't want to leave, so instead they used passive resistance. Washington became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of slavery and stated in his will that all his slaves should be freed upon his death. He was one of the first plantation owners to do so.

There is a memorial to the slaves of Mt. Vernon on the property that served as the slave burial ground. On occasion the names of all the slaves who worked at Mt. Vernon are read there.

These last 2 pictures are of the tomb where George and Martha are buried: she's on the left and he's on the right. This tomb was constructed in 1830 and the bodies moved from the original vault, which was disintegrating because of weather and water.

Sept. 11
On Friday Lisa took the day off and we drove to Harper's Ferry, which is over the border into West Virginia. Harper's Ferry is located at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, and was a booming industrial town in the 1850's, where there was an arms factory and other mills as well. The Civil War ravaged the town, but it was rebuilt after the war, only to be wiped out repeatedly by floods. It's currently a national historical place, with some of the shops and factories rebuilt to show what industry was like back then.

Harper Ferry's other claim to fame is John Brown, an abolitionist who wanted to free the slaves and who started a military action in October of 1859. The action failed and he was captured and executed, but this was one of the events leading to the Civil War. The firehouse is the place where he was captured.


The Appalachian Trail also goes through Harper's Ferry. The surrounding countryside is really pretty as well.


Here's a slideshow of all the pictures we took at Harper's Ferry. The pictures are mostly explained by shots of the historical markers. The ruins towards the end of the slides were from the Episcopal Church on the way to the Jefferson Rock. I left the trail and walked around inside the ruins in order to get the pictures. There's also a shot of a staircase that was carved out of the rock which we thought was interesting.