Washington, D.C. November 2007

If you guessed these are pictures from Washington, D.C. you are correct (can you believe they are from my phone camera?). My youngest and eldest and I traveled there immediately after a hearty Thanksgiving dinner of Turkey and Dressing and Mom's Roast Beef topped off by peach cobbler and pumpkin pie at the Black-eyed Pea.

This of course, is the front of the Supreme Court building, our first stop.

And here is one of the statues outside the building.


You know who.

But I've skipped over a good part of getting there, so let me digress for a minute.

We began our trip on an almost empty airplane late Thursday afternoon and arrived on time with no lines at the rental car desk. I certainly recommend traveling on "the" holiday. It was a breeze!

We stayed in a brand new Westin 4 Star hotel with 300 or so rooms, but there were no more than 20 other guests in the entire hotel while we were there (more staff than guests, and they tripped all over themselves helping us in a good way).

And as you can see, the only draw back is the building rests on its side--it has not been raised to its permanent position perpindicular to the ground, but who knew?

The kids even enjoyed the healthy dining environment created by their father from snacks purchased at Whole Foods just down the street.

Overall, the weather in Washington was clear, dry and chilly, but not cold (mid-sixties during the day and forties at night), perfect jacket weather. As a result, and as you can see from this picture, we did pretty much everything we wanted to do without any environmental interference.

We toured the Supreme Court, Arlington Cemetery, Arlington House (Lee's home in the middle of the cemetery), ran around the Capital grounds (missed touring the Capital itself because it closes at 4:00 p.m. daily, and is not open Sunday), Smithsonian Museums for Indian Culture, Air & Space and Natural History (the all time favorite, the Smithsonian Museum of American History is closed for several months for renovation).

Here's a shot of the Capital.

This is Arlington House.

You probably know that Arlington House is the family home of Mary Custus, Robert E. Lee's wife. Mary and Robert lived there until the time of the Civil War when it was siezed by federal troops. The plantation itself covered 1000 acres but only 200 acres were decent farm land (the rest was forest or swamp).

The home is built on the highest point in the area, obviously chosen for its view over anything else (200 acres is not enough to support the lifestyle there, and Lee had two other plantations where real work was carried out). Here is the present day view from the front porch of Arlington House.

The tour guide explained that the Custus family built this home to show off their wealth. And it was designed to be a sort of musuem for George Washington (he had no children of his own, but married a Custus and raised two Custus children).

The rolling hills surrounding the main house now make up Arlington National Cemetery.

Which of course, now includes the Kennedy grave site and eternal flame.

We also saw Archie Bunker's chair and George Washington's uniform, the Hope Diamond and a huge assortment of stuffed animals and dinosaur fossils.

Here is the Hope Diamond.

This is one of the prize winning pictures displayed there.

We ran with the Zebras.


You know who got stuck on the flypaper.

Here's one of the dinosaurs.

We walked through the actual Sky Lab and saw what seemed to be every flying machine known to man.

Even Russian missiles that had been pointed at the U.S. during the cold war. Mutually Assured Destruction.

We even learned to navigate the highways in, and around Washington with some confidence and had time to see August Rush after the museums closed.

Then, late Sunday on the way home, we spent less than 5 minutes at the security check (again, the airport was not crowded at all).

All things considered, it was a Vacation with a capital "V."

No alarm clocks (we even drew the thick drapes that made the room pitch dark even when the sun was shining directly at the window and just slept until we woke up naturally).

No pre-set agendas.

No to do lists.

Everyone was happy and returned well-rested and much more knowledgeable about our history.

I'll post some additional pictures soon.