Day Two
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2011
1
3
8
Trip End
Aug 31, 2011
What I did
Visited George's House
Mount Vernon, Virginia
Friday, August 26, 2011
We got tickets to tour the mansion, but it included a large museum and the rest of the grounds which had the smokehouse, the washroom, the gardens, and George and Martha's tombs. The whole place was quite impressive. They've really preserved it well and everything was well done and maintained very nicely. While we were there, they were starting to board up the windows and wrap certain artifacts that they were a little nervous about, but it didn't affect our tour of it. I really didn't know much about GW when we got there, but he was quite a man.
After Mount Vernon, we drove back onto George Washington Parkway to Old Town Alexandria. We found a parking space on the street and while we were at the parking machine to buy a ticket, a parking enforcement car was already starting to write us a ticket! He drove off after seeing us put our ticket on the dashboard. We walked around a little and made our way to the wharf where there was a cool art studio where artists have their own personal studios where they sell and work on their art. We enjoyed ice cream and a cup of iced coffee before heading out. We saw some cobblestoned streets that William thought were pretty cool. Old Town Alexandria had some cool little shops and eateries, but William didn't seem to be too interested and he was hot (so he was starting to complain).
We left Alexandria and, at the last minute, took the turnoff for Theodore Roosevelt Island which has a large statue of Theodore Roosevelt. William wasn't too happy with another walk, but oh well... We walked over a bridge to the island and the statue wasn't too far off the trail. From the bridge, we had a beautiful view of Georgetown University.
We left the Island and headed back to Cheryl's for dinner. Since Saturday was going to be iffy for sightseeing, we decided to go see some of the monuments at night. We got back on the GW Parkway and headed back towards DC. We found easy parking on the street and walked over to the Lincoln Memorial. There were a LOT of people out doing the same thing probably with the same idea. William was impressed with the monument. He didn't realize it was so large. We sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and enjoyed the night view of the Washington Monument and the US Capitol way in the background.
From the Lincoln Memorial, we walked over to see the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. I was hoping William would see the reflecting pool (like in Forrest Gump is what I told him), but unfortunately, it's all torn up because they're trying to fix a leak. It's probably going to be a two year repair job. We then decided to try and go see the Jefferson Memorial and we got really lost and almost ended up back in McClean, but we turned around and went back to DC. We figured that it might be the best time we would have in a while to be able to see it. William really learned how to be a good navigator by this time and he got us to the Jefferson Memorial. There's not a lot of easy parking around the memorials so we had a little hike to get to the Memorial. Surprisingly, there were a lot of people at the Jefferson Memorial as well. By the time we were done with the Memorial, it was around 11:00pm so we didn't have anymore energy to try and see the new Martin Luther King Memorial. We were both really tired and, unfortunately, we got lost AGAIN trying to get back onto the parkway. We finally found that and then I got lost finding Cheryl's house and my navigator fell asleep. We pulled up to Cheryl's house at 11:50, took our showers, and went to bed.
