Washington, D.C. Trip - March 2015

For Spring Break, March 2015, we decided to take a trip to our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. The pictures taken in the albums are pictures taken by all three of us on the trip. The one place that we went to that could not be documented was the organized tour of the Pentagon, during which no pictures are allowed at all.

	Pictures taken while on the trip up to Washington, D.C. We decided to drive up so that we could go through Sumter, SC where we used to live. We stayed over in the same hotel that we stayed in when we first moved to South Carolina from Missouri. The second day of the drive took us to Virginia and the friends that we were staying with.
	On the Sunday we arrived in the area, we went with our friends, Barb and Larissa Merritt to Arlington National Cemetary. An incredible place to visit and it's a very emotional place to visit. We witnessed the changing of the guard, took the tour around the cemetary and visited the Robert E. Lee house. While taking a lot of pictures, there was one that I was really reluctant to take initially, and that was a picture of a relative visiting a grave. While not wanting to intrude, I thought it was the epitome of what Arlington is all about.
	The first of our organized tours was the Washington Capitol. Currently, the Capitol is undergoing renovations, so that is the reason for the scafolding around the rotunda and the tarpaulins on the inside of the rotunda. Following the tour, we visited the Library of Congress and in particular the exhibit on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which is only available for a year.
	Having been to the Air & Space Museum in the city previously, this time we went to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum at Dulles Airport. Some incredible exhibits there including the space shuttle Discovery.
	The longest day we spent in downtown Washington was the day we spent walking around the National Mall. The day had started with an organized tour of the FBI building, but no pictures are allowed aat all. After the FBI tour, we started off at the Washington Monument, followed by the Lincoln Memorial, the Korea and Vietnam memorials and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. the one thing about the King memorial that was interesting was that there are speeches etches into the memorial in all different places, but the "I have a dream" speech is not one of them. Then, there was one of the highlights, actually seeing cherry blossom trees in bloom, something we didn't think we'd get a chance to see.
	The last section of pictures is just general photos taken during the trip, including dinner with my brother Paul, and, a snowball fight in 70 degree temperatures. The day before we arrived, it snowed 11 inches but that melted before we arrived. Then the day after we left, it snowed again. Octavious is desperate to see snow, but because it didn't work out, our friends stored snowballs in the freezer so that we could at least have a snowball fight.