Washington DC Blitz

Thank you Tracy & Donna for being faithful bloggers. I must admit we have as much, if not more fun logging on to see who has commented than we do writing the actual comments. Tracy, only a former vegetarian would come up with the word 'quinoa'. Donna you are right this will be something awesome to keep. Someone asked me if I was going to make a scrapbook and I said sure, I will print off the blog and stick it in a book. Sorry Meme.

As James said we are ending our time off in a flurry of activity. We may have pushed our agenda a bit too far when we decided to do DC in a day. Thanks to the advice of our friends Corey & Lisa (who live in Charlottesville, Va and I hadn't talked to in 10 years but decided to call up while we were visiting Monticello and ended up finagling an invitation to dinner and had a great visit not leaving until midnight) anyway, they suggested we go in on a Sunday to avoid some of the school groups. Excellent advice. Not only were the school groups lessened, remarkably there were still quite a few, but the Metro was cheaper and the traffic was minimal. We tackled two Smithsonian museums, Natural History and Air & Space. If you haven't been to Washington DC it may amaze you to know that all of the Smithsonian museums are free! Not only that but they were started with a grant from someone who had never even been to America but was obviously concerned about our lack of education. I can't imagine what Mr. Smithson would say if he could see us now.

After absorbing as much information about dinosaurs, rocks, black holes and the Wright brothers (just to name a few) as we could from the two museums we checked out the Capitol building and were amazed at the amount of non-English speakers we encountered. It seems as if there are more foreigners interested in our government than Americans. I guess that could explain a lot about our economy. From the Capitol it was a long walk down the mall to the White House and all of the monuments. We also got to see the helicopter dropping of the President from a weekend away at Chucky Cheese or wherever it is he goes when he takes a day off.

Washington is amazing no matter what you think of our government. It is inspiring to realize that it is a living, breathing institution and it makes you want to be a part of it in some way. You stand on the steps of the Lincoln memorial and can't help but feel if he is looking towards the Capitol building saying ' I'm watching you guys to see if you screw up what I fought so hard to protect'. You walk around the FDR or Jefferson memorial and read their quotes and wonder if we will ever have people who were as passionate about our country and people as they were. You walk through all the war memorials and are overwhelmed by the sacrifice that so many have made for our country. You feel moved and inspired and then an obnoxious teenager cuts in front of in line and the feeling passes. All you feel is disdain for the environment that has breed such spoiled entitlement. Uh oh, maybe I am going to have a harder time going back to work than I thought.

We had a great, if a bit tiring day in DC and followed it up with a busy day yesterday touring Harper's Ferry and going on a 25 mile bike ride, probably not the best thing to do for my allergies. It was a really neat bike path though which was made along an old canal route along the Potomac river. The disadvantage of being at a higher elevation was that it wasn't as pretty, the advantage was the plant sexual revolution hadn't started yet so I could breathe. I am going to quit before the medicine takes a greater stronghold and I start making even less sense.

Love, Kim