National Mall, Washington, DC

As this morning was the 33rd running of the Marine Corps Marathon, we stayed out of DC until the afternoon. Brian and Laura focused on homework in the morning – I helped Laura with her algebra, while Teressa focused on Brian’s history class. They will be taking finals for some of these classes later this week. Rocky went to the groomer in the morning, and while he smells 100% better, his obsession for crashing through the brush after rabbits and squirrels has not abated. We extracted two more ticks this week.

After a quick lunch, Brian drove us to the Greenbelt metro station. There we caught the Green line train to the National Archives. We entered the building, cleared security, and then watched their introductory movie. Since we were short on time, we made a quick sweep through the Rotunda to view the Magna Carta (one of four originals from 1297), the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and various other historical documents. In an effort to preserve these cherished works, the lights are dimmed in the Archives, so most of our pictures didn’t turn out.

From the Archives we hailed a cab to the Lincoln Memorial. The kids were surprised at the size and scope of everything – the monuments, the distance between them, the length of the reflecting pool on the mall, the number of times mom and dad keep saying “do you know how lucky we are?”. The setting sun provided a warm diffused light for viewing the Vietnam, Korean and World War II Memorials. We walked the entire length of the reflecting pool, then turned north and passed the front of the White House before having dinner at Old Ebbitt Grill. From there it took two Metro trains to get us back to our car at the Greenbelt station.