A Monumental Tour

Twas now the time to walk around since it was actually going to be relatively nice out today. We started out the morning by driving into the nearby town of Alexandria to see the sights that are to be seen. It was a cute little town with a lot of shops but we didn’t stay long, only long enough to eat lunch by the riverfront and walk up King’s Street, which runs up the middle of the town. Then we drove over the river back into D.C from Virginia and parked a little ways from the Jefferson Memorial so we could do the memorial loop. Jefferson was the first one we went to and it’s even bigger than Lincoln’s with it’s columns and marble floors. Then we started in the direction of the White House, stopping to see the Washington

Monument along the way. Now, no one can get anywhere near the White House since the Paris attacks so we had to content ourselves with a view from across the South Lawn. I was unhappy with my boy Barack though. He’s at a conference so we didn’t have time to hang out and catch up. Disappointing. There were snipers on the roof of the house, discouraging anyone from trying to get any closer so I was really very happy with our proximity if it meant not getting shot. On our loop back, we started with the Wrold War II Memorial, which is just impressively massive. There are

columns for each American state and colony as well as the names of all the major battles and two Metals of Valour set into the stone of the two pillar entrances, one facing the Pacific, the other facing the Atlantic. In the middle is a massive pool surrounded by fountains and in back is the Freedom Wall, holding over 4000 stars, each star representing 100 American soldiers who lost their lives coming to a total

of 405399 people. The sad thing is that this is second only to the Civil War where the loss was over 600000 killed by their own countrymen. Wow. We ended up at the Vietnam War Memorial as the sun was starting to set. It was pretty depressing, all those people whose names were on the wall. MIA or killed for really nothing. I read a short story about a soldier in Vietnam once, it was a

horrible war. We walked past the Lincoln Memorial again and got a good look at the reflecting pool and the Washington Monument at sunset before checking out the Korean War Veteran’s Memorial, which is just as sad at the one for

Vietnam. Instead of carving names into their wall though, they carved faces, which was extremely cool to see. It was dark by the time we made it back to the Tidal Pool but we still managed to get in the last two memorials, F.D.R and M.L.K, before hopping back in the truck and heading back to the campsite. Peace out m8s

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