2005 September at Brian Harmon

A Plethora of Pictures: Inside the Washington Monument

Posted by Brian September 13, 2005 No comments yet

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.

A Plethora of Pictures: Lincoln, Jefferson, Vietnam, WWII Memorials

Posted by Brian September 13, 2005 3 comments so far

Boy, did we do a lot of walking!

I think the Lincoln Memorial has always been my favorite, even though the Jefferson one is prettier. I always like to read the Gettysburg Address while I’m in there.

The walk over to the Jefferson Memorial is where most of the famous cherry trees are planted.

The new WWII Memorial is impressive. I didn’t realize or remember that the fountain in the middle of it was already on the Mall. It used to be called the Rainbow Pool.

And the Vietnam wall is always moving.

A word of advice and an apology

Posted by Brian September 13, 2005 4 comments so far

First the advice. If you are walking to your car in the morning with something in your hand (like a bowl of pasta, or a book), and you suddenly remember that it is trash day: DO NOT put whatever item you are carrying on top of the car before you take the trash can to the curb.

Fortunately, this morning, it was only a book, and I noticed it fall, and was able to retrieve it from the street.

Now, the apology. I was working on a post with the pictures that both of my readers are waiting for last night. However, the major power outage in LA knocked out the server which hosts this website, so I couldn’t post anything. Sorry. I hope to post them today.

We saw nearly everything on the list

Posted by Brian September 12, 2005 2 comments so far

Believe it or not, we actually did see nearly everything on our list while we were in DC. I’m pretty surprised by that, but when I remember how sore my feet were at the end of every day, I know how we did it.

We stayed with my friends Matt and Stephanie Hemm, who were great hosts. They not only let us stay there, but fed us and drove us around (working around their work schedules). Thanks, Hemms! When they couldn’t drive us somewhere, we rode the Metro. They live about a mile from the Ballston Metro station in Arlington. Very convenient.

Believe it or not, below is a list of the stuff we saw while there. I’m working right now to rename and resize and upload a bunch of pictures….