Wow what a day!  Thursday I spent the morning finishing up work so that I could head to Washington DC.  Work finished around 10 and then I headed over, Reston is only about 20 minutes from DC.  I drove over to the city taking 267 East to 66 East, I was not prepared for what I saw, I swear I almost got into 3 separate accidents staring at the monuments from the road.  I was surprised how easy it was to get from Reston to DC, although coming back home is another story completely.

The day started out trying to find parking; now if you have never been to DC then you should know that there is less parking then in the City.  It took me 25 minutes of driving around to find a parking garage fortunately it was only 2 blocks away.  I started off my trek in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum which was just incredible.  I spent about an hour and a half checking out the museum, I probably could have spent another 2 hours in there but I had other things to look at.  I headed from the Air and Space museum to the mint, I had to double time it because the tour was at 2:00 and it was 1:35.  DOH! Didn’t make it, just to give you some perspective going from the museum to the mint is about ¾ of a mile.  The mint tour would have been cool but I didn’t stress I had about 5 other places I wanted to hit.

After taking a small water break (the weather was perfect about 68 degrees and not a cloud in the sky) I hoofed it over to the capitol.

  You see how far it is from the Washington monument to the capitol?  Yeah I walked that and back!  The capitol was neat except for the stupid girl who I asked to take my picture in front of the capitol and this is the garbage I got

Good thing she was hot or I probably would have gotten arrested.  I didn’t go inside the capitol because again I missed the tour and since 9/11 they don’t allow you inside without a tour.

From there I headed to the Japanese American Interment Memorial located on the corner of Louisiana Street/ D Street/ and New Jersey Street. It’s not huge and it’s not very gaudy, but for me very powerful.  They have a stone for each camp and a metal sculpture of two cranes with barb wire in the mouth flying up.  On another wall they have engraved all the names of men who perished in WW2 fighting for the 100^th battalion and the 442^nd.  I sat there for 10 minutes or so just reading names and reflecting.  I had a hell of a time finding this thing so when I got there it made it that much more powerful.  I was totally lost trying to find this thing and ended up calling my mom back in California to find the number to anyone who knew where the thing was.  She ended up calling the DC JACL who gave me directions and told me exactly where it was.  It was really nice to be able to sit down and think about all the men who gave their lives for our country when their families were imprisoned by that same country.  

From there I figured out that the closest point of interest that I wanted to hit was the National Archives.  I walked the 7 blocks or so from the JA memorial to the Archives which were fantastic.  The museum as a whole is kinda eh, but just to be able to see the Declaration of Independence and Constitution was something I think everyone should experience.  I mean you can still read the documents written over 200 years ago.  Not only were the documents themselves impressive but the technology that the Archives is using to keep them around is quite impressive.

After walking out of the archives I was just gassed and decided to head back to Reston.  I called my co-worker and made plans for dinner and then to head back to DC to check out the monuments at night.   We had dinner at the same Japanese restaurant as the other night then headed back out to DC.  One the way to DC we stopped in Arlington, VA to check out the Iwo Jima memorial.  I never realized how big these memorial and monuments were, you don’t get the full understanding of it until you are standing below it and the thing just towers over you..  It was about 9:45 when we finally got into DC, fortunately since it’s the evening there was street parking to be had right near the National Mall.  We started at the Washington Monument which is just absolutely massive up close, then headed toward the Lincoln Memorial and the reflection pond.  In between the Washington and the reflection pond is a new WW2 memorial.  Very classy and pretty, it has a wreath for each state in the union and our territories, fountains in the middle and in the back a star for each fallen American life in the war.

From there it was onto the reflection pond and the Lincoln memorial.  I think this moved me more then anything in DC.  The reflection pond because of it’s history with the MLK speech and the protests and everything.  Very impressive, if that pond could talk the stories it could tell.  The Lincoln memorial was just as impressive, the statue of him is so massive in size and the magnitude of what he did just overwhelmed me.  No I didn’t cry but I was really moved.  I stayed there for a good five minutes just looking at the monument and reflecting.  Very powerful………..

After that my co-worker and I walked back to the car and headed home.  Like I was saying before getting home from DC to Reston was a bit more of a challenge.  First off you have to get onto 66 West BUT you don’t go straight onto 267, you have the take 495 to 267 which doesn’t make sense since you go straight from 267 to 66 going there, then it’s not marked well and so we ended up taking a 25 minute detour because it was so poorly marked.  Well we finally got home and I went back to my room to pack up all my crap for my flight home the next day.