Day 4 - Cool Stuff!

This was our first official day in the city. We had to get up very early because of an 8:30 a.m. tour of the White House. We were pretty excited. I had done hours of research on getting the most of our money using various forms of transportation. The people at Cherry Hill Park were very helpful in making our decision. We decided to drive to the nearest Metro station (train) and then ride the train into DC. Everything worked out perfectly. We made it to our destination with time to spare. There was a really, really long line for the tour but it moved along fairly well. We were able to see several rooms in the White House. Honestly, this could have been any museum with mock ups of the rooms, but it was pretty neat knowing that many of our presidents have spent time there. The tour was self guided and was over in about 20 minutes. We felt it was worth it and glad we did it.

Because the security at the White House is so great, we had virtually nothing with us and there was no place close by that we could have stored it temporarily. They did allow us to have our phones and we were able to score a couple of pics.  We then had to get back on the train and head to our truck where we kept the rest of our stuff. We got everything and then headed back into the city to sight see some more.

Our next stop was the National Archives. There was a line at the entrance, but it moved along quickly. We got inside and instead of going straight to the freedom documents we went to some of the other areas that explained about preserving old documents, and it was really interesting. They had a huge display of Civil War documents with letters and other things that made me realize just how little I knew about the Civil War. After that we saw that there was another line that allows you to see the actual Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution. We noticed that there was an area called Public Vaults. That sounded neat and there was no line, so we went. This had displays of other interesting historical documents including old sound files of presidents and the actual homestead grant of Charles P Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie). Erin really liked that. After we looked a while, we exited and Erin noticed a door that led to the Rotunda (Freedom Documents location). What we didn't know at the time was that this was the exit for the rotunda and we had just come in the way to go out.  No one said anything to us and we realized that we had jumped in front of a couple hundred people waiting in line. Oh well. The girls really enjoyed seeing the Declaration of Independence and you could really tell that they were taking it all in. They understood just how old the document was and were pretty quiet as they studied it. This is something that they will remember for a long time, I think.

After that, we went to eat at a Fuddruckers we found in China Town. Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but the food was good. We then took a quick walk by Ford's Theater. We will be taking a tour in this area later in the week.

We then went to the Old Postal Pavillion. This is a really big building that has a huge clock tower. There was a food court in the bottom of the building with some souvenir shops. We looked around a little and then headed up to the clock tower. The view from the top was amazing. We could see the mall area with a great view of the Washington Monument and Capital. This was something that not many people make it to during their time here, so there was not that many crowds.

It was time to go meet our tour guide for the DC by Foot tour. This is a free tour around the monuments and the guide works for tips only. Great value for sure! On the way to our meeting place, Erin realized she had forgotten her purse in a restroom in the Postal Pavillion. We went back and it was gone. She was devastated, because the purse included her brand new Nintendo DS and headphones. One bad memory on the trip for sure.

The DC by foot tour was excellent. The guide was informative and could ask pretty much any question asked of her. We had fun seeing the monuments and hearing stories about them. The tour ended at the Lincoln Memorial and by that time, we were very tired. We made it back to the nearest Metro station and headed back to the campground for some much needed rest.

Sorry for the long post. We hope you are enjoying reading it.