Washington DC- Sunday, Dec. 28, 2014

We were up early, were the first ones to breakfast at the hotel, checked out and headed out to the battlefield before dawn.  Julie chose the Eisenhower Power Tower as our first stop, but only Scott and Anna went up.   From the observation deck, they looked out to the Eisenhower farm on one side and the southern end of the battlefield on the other side.  Last night, Scott thought it was funny that two crossing contrails in the sky resembled a Confederate flag when we were at Devil's Den.  As the sun started to light the clouds in bands of reds and blues, it was not hard to imagine that we were seeing Old Glory in the sky over Little Round Top.  Anna and Scott both took pictures, but the colors probably won't show how it really looked.

Emma stayed in the car.  She's not crazy about battlefields and cemeteries.  We used to think it was cute when Anna used to mispronounce "Gettysburg" as "Daddy's-burg," but Emma has taken it one step further.  She calls it "Dead-iesburg."  Oh well. &nbsp

We drove to Little Round Top as the sun continued to rise.  Julie commented that it looked like there was a pillar of color in the sky, and sure enough, a rainbow had formed in the sky over the battlefield.  It was only there for a few minutes, but we ran to near the Warren statue to take what pictures we could.  We snapped a few and then watched it dissipate before our eyes as the sun continued to climb.

We went to the north end of the battlefield and drove a short time.  Then we stopped at Walmart for some necessities, gassed up, and headed towards Washington.   Samantha brought us to our hotel in the Capitol Hill  area.  Julie picked this one because it's "walking distance" from everything on the mall.  It really is, but Washington being what it is, we still had a little haul to get to things.

Somewhere in the skyline is the Capitol dome, but the dome itself is completely covered in scaffolding right now, so it's not the inspiring sight that it usually is.  We walked past the Library of Congress buildings and the Supreme Court and around the Senate side of the Capitol.  We were making our way to the Museum of Natural History, but Julie felt that her sugar was a little off, so we got her a hot dog and a rest before continuing on.  When we did arrive at the Smithsonian, our first stop was the cafeteria for lunch for the rest of us.

Since its the 200th Anniversary of the end of the War of 1812, Scott was really hoping that the National Archives had a display on the Treaty of Ghent.   200 years ago, it was making it's way to America after having been signed on Christmas Eve. Scott and Anna went to the Archives to see if it was on display.  Disappointingly, there was nothing there to note it's anniversary.  So they returned to look for the others.

Meanwhile, Emma and Julie were exploring Mom's favorite Smithsonian-- the Museum of Natural History.  They saw the Hope Diamond and the many animals on display.   They looked at insects and the American dinosaur exhibit.  (The old dinosaur exhibit is temporarily closed but we did see a T-Rex and a few others.)  Finding everyone took a little bit of time, but we eventually reunited near the butt of the elephant in the Rotunda.

Our next stop was the Air and Space Museum, which was Anna's pick.  We took a quick look at the "Milestones in Flight" gallery, and saw the Wright Flyer, the first airplane that flew.  (They moved the moon rock, and we didn't seek that out this time.)  Emma and Anna seemed interested in seeing something of Amelia Earhart, probably because of the "Night at the Museum" movie, so we found the plane she flew across the Atlantic (which was also featured in that movie).  We finished the afternoon with an 3-D IMAX movie about D-Day, narrated by Tom Brokaw.  It was good, but not the best IMAX movie we've seen.

We made our way back up Capitol Hill to our hotel and checked in.  We're basically in a suite with a small kitchenette and quite a bit of room.  We rested a bit and ate astronaut ice cream while we waited for a pizza to be delivered.

After pizza, we a few blocks to Union Station.  Here, we bought tickets for a night tour of the monuments from Big B Bus Co.  The girls both commented on how the double decker bus felt like the one we rode on our tour of London, and it was a very similar set up.  We started on the open-air upper deck.  It was cool in the evening air, probably in the 40s, but when the bus started moving, the air made it feel very cold.  The girls didn't enjoy the first leg of the trip because of that, but after our first stop, they found seats on the lower deck.  Julie and Scott still  braved it out above.

From Union Station, we went past the Capitol.  Since the sun had gone down, there were now lights on the rotunda's dome under the scaffolding, so it was a bit more recognizable than it had been during the day.  We saw the Congressional Christmas Tree as well as the National Christmas Tree by the White House.  The White House itself was uncharacteristically dark, with the floodlights all off.  I guess the Obamas don't have their lights on a timer while they are away in Hawaii.

We rode past the Jefferson Memorial (sadly, without a stop there).  Our first stop was the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial, where we got out and followed our guide through it.  When we got to the portion that pictures FDR's funeral procession,  our guide told us that he had seen it in person.    What struck him most that day was how quiet the crowd of people was when the horses clopped by.   We also saw the new Martin Luther King memorial.  It was the first time that any of us had seen it up close and finished, except Anna-- she saw it with the eighth graders last year.

Our next stop was the Korean War Memorial, with a walk past the front of the Lincoln Memorial (again, without going in, unfortunately).  Again our guide personalized it when he said he remembered driving by a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on his way to work as an intern at NASA.  He didn't know what the rally was about that day, but it ended up being the day of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.  We walked from there to the Vietnam Wall.  The  Wall didn't seem to be lit well this time.  After getting back on the bus, we rode to Arlington and saw the Iwo Jima Memorial, before finally riding back to Union Station.  The whole tour took a little more than two hours.   We then walked back several blocks to our hotel for a much needed rest after a long day.