D.C. - Day 2

Quote of the Day: "I think we need a refreshment." - RaNae


Day 2 for Dave and I actually started in the middle of the night, because we woke up to a snoring MONSTER. We were sharing a room with his two brothers, and we knew that Seth had a history of snoring, so we knew it was him. We kind of felt bad waking him up and telling him, so I just slept with a pillow over my head for the rest of the night, and Dave tried to ignore it the best he could.

We went to the Washington DC temple first thing. The temple was closed for cleaning the entire week we were there! We were really bummed about that, because we would have loved to do some temple work while we were there.  We walked all around the grounds (which were GORGEOUS), and spent some time in the visitors' center. The temple was HUGE - you can't even really tell from these pictures, but the building was gigantic.

Practicing my photography skills...

I'm that little pink dot at the bottom of this huge building!

Because it was Sunday, we went to church at the meetinghouse right next to the temple. Dave and I love to go to church when we are out of town, because we think it is so fun to see the different wards and how different things are, but how much they are the same as well. It was just a reminder about how our church is the same worldwide. It was neat to be there. However, I think Dave and I were the only ones who enjoyed church. We looked down our pew and, I kid you not, every single person in our party was sleeping. This pattern was to follow for a lot of the trip! :) On our way out the door, some of the ward members stopped to say hello to us and wish us luck on our vacation. One asked where we were staying, and we said the National Harbor, which he informed us was the crime/drug capital of DC, and that we were in the scariest part of town. That was some good news. I think he may have been wrong though, because we walked around the National Harbor a lot on our vacation, and never had any problems. So, if it was the crime/drug capital, we saw right through it.

After church, we went with Dave to find his 100th geocache. He found it in a little forest area in Maryland. He was a very excited boy!

  

It is about this time that the quote of the day comes in. It was pretty hot, and we were all kind of hungry.  While people were whining and trying to decide what to do, RaNae chimes in with this, "I think we need a refreshment." I don't even really know why it was so funny, but we all started busting up. Maybe because it sounded so proper? I don't know, but we did need a refreshment and we so we decided we needed some Mango smoothies from McDonalds. You'd think a McDonald's would be easy to find (there is pretty much a McDonald's on every corner, right?) but not so in DC. It was a nightmare trying to navigate everywhere, especially to places you weren't familiar with. We never found a McDonald's, but we did find a place called Smoothie King, and we knew that was where our refreshment was waiting for us.

They actually sold Happy Pills at the Smoothie King.

Your Mom always tells you that you need happy pills, but who

knew that they were actually a real thing??

Scott has a cousin named Wendy, who we had plans to eat dinner with that evening. She invited us over to her house for a home cooked meal, which sounded so delicious to us. On our way to her house, our GPS led us through Embassy Row, a street in DC that has an embassy for all the countries we have relations with.  It was neat to see all of the buildings, and crazy to see all the different countries. They had an embassy for every country from Zambia to Great Britain.  We had a delicious spaghetti dinner with Wendy and her family, and had a wonderful time chatting with them.

One of the recommendations Wendy's family gave us for our trip was that we go to the National Mall that evening (Sunday night) because that was when it was the least crowded. We decided to do it, and spent the evening seeing some of the monuments on the National Mall.

Lincoln Memorial

The spot where Martin Luther King Jr. stood to make his famous speech

Abraham Lincoln is my hero. Learning about his life

fascinates me, and I am so grateful for the sacrifices 

and hardships he went through to keep our country united.

He was definitely an inspired man.

Korean War Memorial

World War II Memorial

World War II Memorial

Washington Monument

Each one of these stars represents 100 people killed in 

World War II. There are 4,000 stars in all to represent the

more than 400,000 Americans who lost their lives in the war..

Seeing these monuments at night was such a neat experience. There was a really cool spirit about them, and being there in person, and seeing them up close like we did is something I will never forget. It is easy to spend hours wandering about the National Mall looking at these monuments because they draw you in so easily. This was one of my favorite parts about our whole trip.

One of the freeways that led us home from DC was closed, and so we had to detour through a WAY sketchy town. We tried to avoid this route at all costs, but sometimes it was unavoidable. We locked our doors tightly every time we had to drive through, and breathed a sigh of relief every time we got back onto the freeway and out of the scary city.  We finally made it back to our hotel, after a really neat evening spent on the National Mall.