Family Trip to DC

Washington DC - March 21-25 2016
Milt, Sonya, Kelly, Tom, Janine, Dean & Maddy - Spring Break Trip

We flew from DFW to Cincinnati, then on to Reagan National Airport, Washington DC, arriving at
a little after 10 PM. Picked up our rental car, a Toyota Sienna, and drove to Comfort Inn and Suites.
Checked in to our rooms and went to bed to rest up for the first full day of exploring DC. Had a great
free breakfast at the buffet where they offered: waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy,
boiled eggs, toast, sweet rolls and muffins, cereal, yogurt, milk, bananas, apples, oranges, coffee, juice.

Day 1, Tuesday
After breakfast, the hotel shuttled us over to a nearby metrorail stop where we rode into
the center of DC and boarded a bus for a narrated, 3-hour tour. We saw lots of monuments,
government buildings etc., stopping at several of the sites and looking them over more
closely. After this tour we ate at a sandwich shop, The Potbelly. Following that we went
to the White House Visitors Center and saw lots of information about the White House,
including some really good videos of the various rooms. Finally, we returned to the hotel
and ordered in Chinese food. That evening, we learned that the metro would be completely
shut down on Wednesday, the second full day of our trip. They were inspecting damage
from a fire two days earlier. So we had to come up with Plan B to get around DC without
the metrorail. Parking for our car in DC was not an option.

Star Magnolia Trees	Washington Monument	Jefferson Memorial	Lincoln Memorial	Dean Milt Maddy at Lincoln Memorial

World War II Memorial

World War II Memorial Entry	Plaque in Entry Walkway	Wall with 4000 Stars

	Pillars for each State and Territory	Texas Pillar	Maddy,Dean,Milt at Texas Pillar

Kelly had booked us all for a tour of the Capitol. Because of the metro shutdown, we drove our rental
car to Arlington National Cemetery and used their parking lot. Sonya and I had already seen the cemetery
on a previous trip so we got on one of the Hop on - Hop off busses and went on to the Capitol building. We
did that tour which Kelly had booked for all of us while Tom's family and Kelly toured the National Cemetery.
After Arlington, the others took the Hop-on Hop-off bus and rejoined us in front of the Library of Congress.

Capitol Building (Under construction)

Capitol Building (Most scaffolding removed)

Hooray, the metrorail was running again today! We were shuttled from the hotel to the Van
Dorn station and rode in to a station across the street from the Archives building shown below.
There was a pretty long line, but to our good fortune, there was a separate entrance for people with
a military ID and their guests. So we entered there and they made us into our own tour group. This
was Dean's number one priority, so we saw the Archives first and looked at our founding documents,
the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Some of the documents
were pretty faded and you could barely read them. They had been unknowingly exposed to a lot of
light from a skylight. Fortunately, they realized what was happening and corrected the situation
before the documents were made completely unreadable.

Following the Archives tour, we went across the street to the Museum of Natural History. This was
Maddy's favorite stop today: there were lots of exhibits and displays of insects, spiders and all sorts
of bugs. I think she will be an entomologist when she is grown grown. There was a museum docent
who was showing tarantulas that we watched and listened to and he fed a cricket to the tarantula.
The tarantula was completely still for a minute or so, then made a quick move and captured the cricket.

We ate lunch in this museum and although the museums all feature free entry, food inside is quite
expensive. Sonya and I split a large chicken salad sandwich, each had an 8.5 ounce coke from an
aluminum bottle, and split a brownie. That totaled just over $24. Not cheap by anyone's standards.
Next, we split into three groups to visit the places we were most interested in. Sonya, Janine and
Maddy went next door to the Museum of American History, Kelly and I went to the Smithsonian Air
and Space Museum, and Tom and Dean went to the American Indian Museum. We all joined up again
where we ate lunch in the Natural History Museum. Then we decided to make a complete circle on a
Hop-on Hop-off bus and see everything we could just staying on the bus, without getting off. The
driver provided a lot of information about the main sights and also had quite a bit of humor in his
remarks. We ended the day by boarding the metrorail at the same station we started from and
called the hotel for our shuttle one stop before our getting off station as usual. However, there was
some confusion this time and we waited about 15 minutes before calling the hotel back. The driver
had delivered another group just after our call and they all thought the people they picked up was
our group. So our last day's pick-up by the shuttle was delayed. But, all in all, it was a great convenience.

After checking out of our hotel we had about three hours before we had to turn in the rental
vehicle and report in at the airport's Delta counter. We decided to use that time to drive by the
National Cathedral. We took a few pictures there and then drove over to Georgetown to see the
unique sights there. This is the part of DC that Jack and Jaqueline Kennedy chose to make their
home while he served as a U.S. Senator. Following this, we stopped at the most inconvenient, small
gas station you have ever seen. They barely had room for the two sets of gas pumps and people were
having to back up, pull forward, and back up again just to get into and out of the station. We needed
to use their rest rooms and this was the first station we saw, but they had no rest rooms. The cashier
pointed our a nearby place where we could go to do complete our nature calls. Finally, we drove on to
the airport where I dropped off our crew, and I returned the rental car and was shuttled back to the
departure terminal and rejoined our group.