For anyone who noticed, we were only supposed to be in DC for 4 nights. Then we extended a night for yesterday and then yesterday we decided to extend another night for today. We could spend a ton of time here, there is so much to see and do!
Today we were better organized, we had a plan and maps and everything. We wanted to be well prepared as we traveled beyond our normal route. We were trying so hard to make our 9:15 bus, but John remembered we needed to drop something off in the office. He took the kids and I locked up the RV and headed that way myself. It was like 9:14:59 and the bus was there and I saw the door close and I was about 2 bus lengths behind it and no sign of John and the kids as I ran toward the bus, he opened the doors again and I jumped on and said, “…but my husband and kids…” and I kind of stood in the doorway (the bus was pretty full) and then I saw them coming and I ran to the back of the bus and yelled, “RUN!” and John, the kids and another couple ran across the street and jumped onto the bus. I thanked the bus driver profusely!
We took our bus to a train, transferred to another train and made our way to Arlington. The plan for the day was Arlington, Iwo Jima and the National Cathedral. We threatened the kids within an inch of their lives to be on their absolute BEST behavior through all of these things.
We walked the winding roads through Arlington and checked out the gravestones. We visited JFK’s grave and saw the eternal flame and then made our way over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at about 1120, knowing the Changing of the Guard would happen at 1130.
I feel like we sort of got the VIP experience at the tomb, partly by being in the right restroom at the right time. First, we watched the changing of the guard and then as the new guard took over, he walked about 2/3 of the way down the mat and stepped off at a 45-degree angle, held out his weapon and shouted, “Remove your articles from the plaza!” Everyone snapped to and started looking around. Apparently, some lady had a coffee cup and she set it down under the railing and evidently it had crossed the plane enough to be considered a touchdown and caught the guard’s attention. She finally bent down and picked it up – with bright red cheeks – and the guard went back to his routine. We have the whole thing on video. I have not yet had much luck posting videos to the blog, but we will try and get this one up!
Before this, as we were making our way up, in the middle of the cemetery, Levi says, “I have to go potty!” John and I looked at each other wide-eyed, we were a LONG way from the visitor center and of all of the places on this entire planet that you can’t exactly have him use a tree… Anyway, we discovered there was a bathroom at the tomb, but we were able to get him to wait until after the changing of the guard and now we were headed to the restroom. The restroom is located near the door to the quarters for the guard’s of the tomb. Right outside the door is a little display of their uniforms and stuff that you can look at. There were two men, one in uniform (with a Purple Heart), one in a nice suit, ringing the doorbell. We decided to hang a little and see what was going on. Long story short, these gentlemen were there to change out the wreath on the tomb. While we were standing there, a guy came out with a chart of the tomb area and briefed them on the ceremony. It sounded like it was about to happen so we made our way back to watch this ceremony!
An older lady asked something and I told her what I knew and she said, “I know, it’s my grandson!” After the ceremony, the men were with their families and the one in uniform was the woman’s grandson. She was standing right next to me and beaming. I smiled at her and said, “How proud you must be!” She grabbed me and gave me a squeeze and said, “I am SO proud of him!” It was a special moment and it reminded me of my Nana. She would have beamed with the same light in her smile and she would have squeezed a stranger in her excitement and above all of that, she was every bit that proud of her kids and grandkids!
Once we had experienced all of that, it was time to walk over to Iwo Jima. We were pretty tired and hungry, but I knew John would want to see it. The problem with these kinds of places is that they are sacred and even though we had a picnic lunch with us, it was challenging to find an appropriate place to eat it! From Arlinton, you follow a bike bath around to Iwo Jima. I was hungry, the kids were hungry, but there wasn’t a bench to be found! Finally, we were outside of Iwo Jima, we could see how much farther we had to walk but were completely out of gas. We finally sat on a curb, outside of a side entrance to Arlington, before the entrance to Iwo Jima and ate our lunch on the ground!
John was amazed by the size of Iwo Jima and I am impressed by the movement that you can almost feel when looking at it. You can feel the struggle of those men working to plant the flag.
From there, we made our way over to the National Cathedral via an unexpected trip down embassy row! The cathedral is really something to see. It is so ornate and SO BIG. Apparently, you could lay the Washington Monument down inside of the Cathedral. We were able to take the elevator up to the 7th floor where they have observation windows with amazing views all around DC.
Another funny note about the Washington Monument is that my kids immediately started calling it the ‘Giant Pencil’. Everytime we are near it, one of them will say, “I see the giant pencil again!” We have been correcting them and telling them that it is the Washington Monument and they should refer to it correctly. Every time we say something to Levi, EVERY. TIME. After we say what we have to say, he kind of mutters, quietly to himself, ‘But it looks like a giant pencil…’
Once we saw what we needed to see of the Cathedral, we made our way back to the metro station for the long trek home. This metro station had a very long, very steep escalator in a big concrete tunnel! We caught all of the right buses, going all of the right directions. Tomorrow we head to Williamsburg, but I know there is much left to see in DC another time!
Going down 
Looking back up