DC-- Day 2

Day 20
Tomorrow marks 3 weeks of our cross country trek. The time has flown by—we’ve stayed busy and yet most days are still flexible enough to make you think you’re still on a vacation. I suppose the timing is right with the boys too-- we have no babies and the boys are still close enough to pre-teen to be cooperative—most of the time. They carry the luggage and load and unload the car at each hotel. They can be found swimming almost every night and don’t need pool supervision—nice. They like each other about 90% of the time-- like the same books, games and TV programs—so there’s little negotiating –most of the time. Today we took the tour and ride up the Washington Memorial. It was very hot and humid today and so the fact that the memorial was air conditioned was really nice. The Memorial is the tallest building in the Capital so you had a great view—only ever need to do it once though. The subway system in DC is wonderful—clean, fast, affordable and air conditioned:)--You can get all over the city easily and most everything is close together in proximity. From the Washington Memorial we jumped on a tour bus—one of those you can hop on and hop off for the short ride to the Smithsonian museums. We started with the castle a big wow and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the air and space museum. Jacob would still be there is it didn’t close at 5—They have the Wright brothers first airplane, several of the Apollo space capsules , a moon rock you can touch, several WWI and WWII planes and several other exhibits that are very male oriented—it was crowded but clean and air conditioned. Back on the tour bus and we hopped off at Union Station for a late lunch. Union Station was the largest train station in the world—built with no limits on cost in the early 1900’s—it was refurbished in the 1980’s and is a show piece with a history of it’s own. The building is beautiful—the food was only fair. Tomorrow we’ll see the Vietnam Memorial , Arlington Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Archives and the Hope diamond.