Photo taken at the Vietnam Memorial - May 28, 2007

Our Memorial Day 2007

Our day turned out to be great and quite unexpected. We woke up exhausted with no plans to do anything but sit at the pool all day. Then at 9:00 am Jeff packs up lunches and puts the bikes in the back of the car and says - we are going downtown. Within minutes we were all ready to go. (we never schedule anything and are so last minute and I think why we end up doing more than if we planned it out)

Our families favorite song is the Jonas Brothers "Year 3000" Whenever it comes on Caroline says, "It's the Jonas Brothers" even Sally Jane knows the words. So i had to take a photo of the song when it came on Radio Disney. (if you have not seen the video it is so cute!) We of course love them even more after we saw them perform live on the White House lawn at Easter.

As we were getting ready to pull of the GW parkway we noticed a low flying helicopter. Traffic seemed to be stopped anywhere it was flying over, we got off the parkway and pulled right into the city in front of the Washington monument the block before the White House. We had at first thought that the President was in there getting ready to land on the White House lawn, then we figured it was just securing the area and that the motorcade was getting ready to drive by. We were about 5 cars back from the line of vehicles that drove by.
I could not get a good shot of his car so I turned to take a photo of the girls peeking out of the car to wave to him. They were so excited! We figured he was on his way to Arlington to make his Memorial Day speech.
We were so lucky to get a street parking right across from the Vietnam Memorial. We got out our bikes and then started at the Lincoln Memorial to head to the Capitol and then back.
Most of my photos were taken today while I was biking, so they are not that great but so lucky to have a sleek small camera to use. This was the line to get down to the Vietnam Memorial. There were news cameras everywhere and broadcasters doing live broadcasts.
Photo of the many flowers of the Vietnam memorial the black wall is right behind my back.
We felt lucky to be able to maneuver our bikes through all the people on the sidewalks. Jeff was nice enough to pull the trailer today. You can't tell from the photo but all the flags around the memorial are flying half mast. On Memorial day you fly flags half mast before noon and then rise them to the top. So when we came back around they were flying high. Kind of cool.
we rode past the Smithsonian Carousel and just had to stop. something we had never done before. The Carousel is directly across from the Red Castle that now serves as a visitor center for all the Smithsonian museums.

Annie Kate on the Carousel that has been there since 1967 but was built in the 1940's.

This could be one of my favorite finds of the day. It is a mailbox in the visitors Center that will get a hand cancelled post mark. The post mark is what is shown on the sign. (kind of like what Jill talked about at the Eiffel Tower) Ok, so my heart started racing thinking... I am going to bring my Christmas Cards here to get this postmark. I studied the box to see if could hold 250 cards. Jeff thinks that it is too much to drop off, but I am highly considering it!! But if you visit D.C. send yourself a postcard from this box for sure.
In front of the Castle is the Kathrine Dulin Folger Rose garden. It is beautiful.
I loved this photo of Jeff putting on Caroline's helmet. The red, blue and green seem so vivid.
There is a Memorial Day parade and we saw the whole thing. Only it was not moving. We rode our bikes along all the floats and bands waiting to march on the way to the Capitol. It was the best way to see a parade, it took about 10 minutes.

We then came back down to the Lincoln Memorial and then went across the Memorial Bridge. The Memorial Bridge is kind of symbolic in linking the north (Lincoln Memorial) to the south (the Arlington House, which belonged to Robert E. Lee and now where the Lee Memorial is)
I have wanted to walk, run or bike across this bridge since we moved here, so I was thrilled. It is a bridge that goes across the Potomac.
We had parked close to the Albert Einstein memorial and finally got a chance to stop and let the girls climb on. We were the only ones wanting a photo, which was nice, usually it is so crowded and busy. This memorial is directly across the street from the Vietnam War Memorial.

The Rolling Thunder Alley was where our car was parked and I had to snap a shot. All the Harley's were parked out front and walking by it smelled like leather. It had a bunch of booths selling Harley/biker items.It was just another great D.C. day. And to think we were going to just sit by the pool. (which we did do later in the day)
I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day!
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