A Plethora of Pictures: Inside the Washington Monument
Posted by Brian September 13, 2005
With a free ticket, you can ride an elevator up the Washington Monument, and take pictures through the windows at the top. Usually, you have to ride the elevator down, too. But as we were waiting for the elevator, a Park Ranger came along, asking, “Who wants to go on a guided tour down the steps?”
I’m so glad we took the steps down. The guide told us lots of info about the monument. All the states and various cities, organizations, countries, and individuals donated stones as memorials to Washington, which are visible from the steps inside. Some of them have very interesting histories, like the “Pope Stone”.
The walls of the monument are about 18 inches thick on the top, and 15 feet thick on the bottom. One thing that I thought was cool, that probably nobody else does, is that from inside, we could see the red lamps which shine through holes in the pyramid on top as a warning to airplanes.
