Ronnie, Hunter, and Mitchell at the Jefferson Memorial

I just realized I never finished posting about our trip to DC, so I will try to finish up this coming week.  One afternoon after conference sessions we drove up to DC and easily found a place to park for free by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.


After a short walk we made it up the marble steps and walked around inside and checked out the gift shop and the bronze statue of Jefferson.  I really enjoyed reading some of his most famous words.


We decided it would be just as easy to just walk around to the monuments since there isn't any easy parking at each one.  Next up was the Roosevelt Memorial. 


On the way we saw the beautiful reflection of the Washington Monument in the Tidal Basin. 


It started to rain, but we were prepared and put on our rain jackets and ponchos.  It was a light rain, but kind of steady.  Before we came I looked up the memorials and was surprised to see this one to Roosevelt.  It wasn't built until the late 1990s.


The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is my favorite!  It sits on 7 1/2 acres and has four outdoor rooms that depict each of his terms in office.  Each room contains one or more waterfalls.


I love how open and peaceful it is!  We only got to see it at night in the rain, so I'm sure it's even more beautiful in the day.


We saw the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial after that.  It was the most crowded of all the monuments possibly because it has been open for less than a year.

On the side of the MLK Jr. Memorial

Personally, I didn't think it looked as nice as I thought it would.  It could have been I didn't see it as well since it was dark and rainy.


After that our plan was to see the Lincoln Memorial, but by then I had lost my map and we were walking, so we got lost and ended up walking all the way around the whole Tidal Basin.  We were so tired we gave up on seeing it.

We had a good view of The Jefferson Memorial from the other side of the basin

Mitchell with the Washington Monument

We did see the Washington Monument on a different day.  It's currently closed because the earthquake last year damaged it.  If you look closely you can see some cracks in it.


The last memorial we saw was the World War II Memorial.  It's also very new as it opened in 2004.  There are more that we didn't get to see this time, so I guess we'll just have to go back :-).

WWII  Memorial