Epic Knudson family trip: Day 2

Day two was packed with cool sights.  And a lot of walking!!  We attended  church that morning at a lovely ward in Chantilly, Virginia, and then we drove into DC and parked at the Union Station.  We figured that Sunday was the only day that the traffic would be ok to drive into the city.  We started walking around 11:30 am.  When we got back to the car it was about 5 or 6 pm.  On a normal day, we wouldn't be able to walk that long (especially the kids) but we were excited to be seeing all the history around us.  We brought a picnic lunch ( crossiants/ ham/ provolone) and ate it on one of the grassy stretches near the capitol. We also had to stop for hot chocolate once, and then had some chocolate dessert bread that we had brought with us near the Lincoln monument. .  It was bitterly cold out because of the wind, so we all had cute rosy wind burn on our cheeks by the end of the day.  We ate at the Shake Shack for dinner. 

 

 

 A quick stop to put some sunscreen on.  Can you imagine those trees with leaves on it? I'm sure it's gorgeous.

My one and only shot of the Capitol building that I took with my camera.  Fuzzy and all.  Sadly, the dome was under construction.  Still cool to see.

 The Washington Monument!  We asked our resident historian (John) all sorts of questions during the walk.  Why does the color change half way up? He would answer and always surprise me with the amount of historical knowledge he has in his head.  As we were standing here too, I was curious how the height compared to the Eiffel tower.  In my memories the tower was much larger, but you know that was 17 or so years ago. So we googled it, and the monument is about 1/2 the height of the Eiffel tower. 
So that was a cool visual for the kids.

 The White house!  I only had one lens on my camera so this was as close as I could get.  We could see guards walking across the top. 

 World War II memorial

 Lincoln Memorial

 The reflection pool was under construction, so we missed seeing that. 

 See those people with the segways? We were really wishing we had those about this time.

 The Lincoln memorial was cool, but it was packed shoulder to shoulder with people.  It was the only time I was afraid that we were going to lose someone.

 We took a (long) side detour to the Jefferson Memorial.  It also lended a beautiful view of the Washington Monument.

 Old bridge that we crossed over.  My historian didn't know anything about this...

Then we started the long walk back to the car....