Washington DC - 4th of July

We were so happy to have Nancy arrive on Tuesday night to spend a few days with us. The Park we are staying at is actually located in Maryland but somehow they have made provisions with the Metro bus line to have us tourists picked up at regular intervals during the day and dropped off at the train station. This was great news for us since we didn't really want to face driving that big truck in downtown Washington DC. Overall, we were very impressed with the transit system in this city. The trains are fast, clean and on-time. Some of the tracks are above ground and some are below ground, but it is an easy way to get around the city and we used it for the entire 14 days we were here.
We decided that since we were in Washington DC over the 4th of July, that we all needed to go down to the National Mall for the fireworks. We headed out early that morning as Nancy only had four days with us and we wanted to try to see as much as possible.

George took a picture of Nancy and me as soon as we hit downtown. From there we wandered over to a couple of the Smithsonian Museums. They were expecting between 300,000 and 500,000 people for the fireworks so it was extremely crowded, but we got to see quite a bit at the Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Castle, and the Museum of Air & Space. There will be more about these museums in a later blog.
Of course, we can't talk about the 4th of July without mentioning the White House, so I wanted to include it in this blog, also.

About 7:00 p.m. our feet were screaming and we decided to stake out our spot on the lawn of the National Mall. We had brought a blanket and picked a spot about half way between the capitol building and the Washington Monument, which was where the fireworks would be set off.

While waiting for dark, Nancy disappeared and returned with each of us a Stawberry Shortcake dessert, which we thoroughly enjoyed while waiting for the fireworks. Once they started, we were dazzled for about 25 minutes as they shot beautiful fireworks all around the Washington Monument. Once it was over, we headed for the metro train as fast as our little feet would carry us, thinking that it would take hours for 300,000 + people to get out of downtown! To our surprise, we got right on the train, and once we found the right bus depot, we were home in about 1 1/2 hours. Seems out of the four of us who were at the orientation, none of us heard them say that special busses would be waiting at a different terminal than we normally come in to, but we all finally found the right place, got on the bus, and made it back to the park.

Unfortunately, the pictures didn't do the fireworks justice, but I did add one just to give you a little flavor. Wish you could have been enjoying these in person with us! Stay tuned for more adventures and misadventures in Washington DC.