Jun 20, 2012 - Sam's Entry: The Air & Space Museum with some other stuff thrown in

Today we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. My favorite part was the World War Two exhibit. They had everything from American bombers to a German officers’ suits. It was amazing. I liked the bullet shells they had. Some of them were incredibly big. They also had bombers that had flown more than 50 missions. There was a room that had a short film that about how to take off and land from a aircraft carrier. There is an order of what planes take off at what times. I also saw the engines from the titan 5 rockets used to first propel...

Jun 20, 2012 - Cole's Entry: DC Day 3

Today we did a lot of things. The first Smithsonian we went to was the National Air and Space Museum. It was totally awesome, and had a lot of cool information and exhibits. For example, let's go to the topic of the Space Race. At one point, when Neil Armstrong and his crew took off for the moon, the Soviet Union tried to beat us to the punch with one final gamble: they sent a robot to gather lunar soil (which would have beat us to the moon). However, it crashed a little bit after Apollo 11 landed. If it hadn't crashed, it would have came...

Jun 20, 2012 - Cosmo’s Entry: Air and Space Museum and Great Monuments

Today I visited the Air and Space Museum. I saw many different kinds of aircrafts and spacecrafts. I thought the most interesting exhibits were the World War I and World War I exhibits, because they showed what planes they used and what planes everyday citizens needed to watch for. They showed pictures of Zeppelins and pictures of fighter planes and saw actual trench machine guns, which are nearly 100 years old. At night, we saw the Jefferson Memorial, the Roosevelt Memorial and the Vietnam memorials. I thought the Vietnam Memorial was...

Jun 19, 2012 - Jill's Entry: Appreciating All of Our Treasurers

Today, we received a fabulous tour of the Capitol, courtesy of Paul Taylor, a really kind and knowledgeable intern in Congressman Mike Thompson's office. Not only did we get to sit in briefly during a House hearing, but we were also treated to detailed explanations of the Capitol's history, architecture and art. We also took in a tour of the Library of Congress and saw gorgeous stained glass and ceiling art as well as a rare Renaissance map and a Guttenberg Bible. So wonderful to know this is all ours! We zipped home for a break then a left...

Jun 19, 2012 - Cole's Entry: The Tour

Today, we went on a bus ride to Congress! Well, not exactly, but we went to the Cannon building, which is where the some of the House of Representatives’ members’ offices were, including the one for Davis where Auntie Jill and Cosmo lives in. We didn’t get to meet congressman Thompson, but we met his intern, who led us on a tour, that started from the Cannon Building, and went underground to the Congress building! We toured around, and the things were very interesting. For example, each state gets to pick 2 statues of people to have in the...

Jun 19, 2012 - Sam's Entry: Downtown Capital Bound

Today I took a bus downtown to the capital. I was surprised that there were so many poor people. I didn’t know that the capital of our nation would have such a poor population. When we got off the bus we walked about a mile to the Cannon Building. In there we met Paul Taylor, an intern for Mike Thompson (Auntie Jill’s congressman). He took us on a tour of the Capital Building. He was real cool, taking us through an underground tunnel from his building to the visitor’s center He told us that the skylights in the ceiling were on the lawn of...

Jun 19, 2012 - Dan's entry: A whole lot of learning going on!

Today after some discussion we decided to take public transit in. With five us there is no real savings (parking is $20.00 and a round trip for all of was $17.00), it is more a matter of the convenience of not dealing with parking the car. The bus ride was interesting, we are staying in a economically depressed part of town and the bus told the story. It was absolutely packed; there were babies in strollers, people in motorized wheel chairs and many people who did not appear on their way to work. We were obviously tourists (for one thing I...

Jun 19, 2012 - Cosmo’s Entry: The Capitol Tour

Today an intern from our Congressman's (Mike Thompson) office gave us an exciting tour of the United States capitol building. He took us underground through the tunnels that congressmen and congresswomen use to get to from the capital building. There is even a railroad in there, which is pretty amazing. We saw a famous picture of George Washington used on the dollar bill, and we saw a lot of paintings and sculptures of famous Americans from every state. We also got the chance to sit in on Congress while it was in session. It was pretty...

Jun 18, 2012 - Jill's Entry: Connecting the dots

Unintentionally, our trip has taken on a pattern that is both logical and historical. We began with Jamestown, the first settlement, learning about how much people struggled to come to America, then came Williamsburg and Yorktown, seeing how people took the concepts of personal liberty and free thinking developed during the Reformation and made those ideals concrete with the Declaration of Independence as eloquently voiced by Thomas Jefferson. Today we took another turn around the circle, visiting Manassas in the morning and bearing witness...

Jun 18, 2012 - Cole's Entry: DC or Bust

Greetings from Washington, D.C! After visiting Manassas, the site of the Battle(s) of Bull Run One and Two we went to the state that isn’t really a state. First we visited Ford’s theater (which is where Lincoln was shot) then across the street to the boarding house where he died, which has been converted to a museum. From there we went to the Smithsonian. However, I should be more specific; there are Smithsonians then you can count! We went to the Museum of Natural History. We saw things about the ocean, about dinosaurs, even about this...

May 30, 2012 - Day Trip to Washington DC

Hi All, Today we went searching for the Vietnam wall and we actually found it my mistake because we were also looking for some other monuments and there it all was. In wandering around we also found the Korean War Wall. We decided to walk over around the "White House" (we could not find it yesterday by car). We were not able to get very good pictures as they were not letting anyone in the front, did get some from the back. Something was going on and we were asked to halt! Here comes out of the drive about 8 motorcycle cops and two police...

May 23, 2012 - Joan's trip to DC/NJ

Joan’s Trip to DC/NJ (May 23 – June 5, 2012) Joan had a first - she took a vacation by herself. She enjoyed the entire experience (watch out Ken!) which included exploring DC and being in NJ for her Aunt Helen’s 100th birthday celebration. Travel took many forms. She left from Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco, WA late Wednesday morning and arrived at 8:00PM at Dulles International Airport. Our son Kenny picked her up to take her to his place in DC. On Friday, Joan took the Megabus from Union Station to Grand Central in NYC, and then rode the NJ...