Day Fifteen - Williamsburg, Virginia

Last night was a very late night, which made getting up this morning particularly miserable. However, we packed up all of our stuff, and made it out to the car only a few minutes behind schedule. We headed back down to Union Station to park in the garage before heading down to the Metro. Our first stop was the Navy Memorial. Each of the bronze renderings show a particular part of the Navy; for instance there is a scene depicting Marines, Corpsmen, the Navy Family...and so on. Then it was back underground to catch another Metro.

Our next stop was Federal Triangle, which is about as close to the monuments on the Capitol Mall as you can get. Still, it is a very long walk to the Lincoln Memorial, which is where we were headed. We stopped to see the WWII Memorial in the daylight...

"Here we mark the price of freedom"

And the Korean Memorial...

And the Lincoln Memorial...

At the Lincoln Memorial, we tracked down a guide and asked for a tour. He pointed out some of the details and some of the urban legends of the Memorial. If you look at the Memorial from the left side (as you enter the building) you can see what looks like the profile of Robert E. Lee's face. The park service claim that it is an urban legend, but some people believe that it is his face, looking towards his home, now encased within Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The park ranger did note an interesting fact; Lincoln is facing away from Virginia (the Confederacy). On the opposite side of the Mall, in front of the Capital, stands a statue of Ulysses S. Grant on horseback, facing Lincoln. Lincoln sits in the middle of the two regions that he divided and then reunited.

Legend has it that Lincoln's hands in the statue represent his initials in American Sign Language. The park ranger explained that the architect designed the hands (one clenched, one relaxed) to represent Lincoln's determination and his compassion. In the same way, the stance of his legs (one drawn in and tense, one stepping forward) further represent these two sides of Lincoln. At the front of the arms of the chair are two bundles of wood called fasces. They represent strength through unity. The Memorial is surrounded by 36 pillars, one for each of the reunited states at the time of Lincoln's death. The names of the 48 states at the time of the building's completion were engraved around the top of the Memorial. A plaque at the base of the Memorial includes Hawaii and Alaska, the final two states. Hard to see unless you know where to look, Martin Luther King Jr.'s name and the date of his I Have A Dream speech are engraved on the steps of the Memorial where he stood to give that famous address.

And the Vietnam Memorial...

And in case anyone was wondering what the Metro stations in DC look like...

From there, we walked (slowly) back to the Metro station. We had planned on taking a cab, since it is actually pretty far and Jess' foot was not getting any better, but she toughed it out. From there, we headed back to Union Station and tried to reload the car a little bit better. When we first got here we had moved any shopping bags from our souvenir shopping to the trunk to deter any potential thieves. From there, we braved city driving (with me still driving since Jess needed to elevate her ankle) and headed down to Alexandria - where we were meeting Jake, Claire and baby Raleigh for lunch. We wandered around Old Town for a little while, the city is just beautiful, before we met up with them and headed to Austin Grill for lunch. The queso was a little spicy, but delicious, and the chicken I stole from Jess' quesadilla was pretty tasty too. It was nice to catch up with Jake and Claire, and we devised a plan to bring Bryce to Washington DC. Now all he has to do is come home. :)

We ended up leaving Alexandria at around 4:30, right as rush hour was getting into full swing (which we obviously didn't think about at the time). It was frustrating and added a hour plus to our drive, but eventually we made it to Williamsburg, Virginia. This portion of the trip was improvised, as we had originally planned on staying in DC for the night. We traded our campsite in for a cabin again, because we are exhausted / lazy, and sore / whiny from doing so much walking over the past few days. We checked out the game room and discovered the largest spider I have EVER seen (and I have seen a lot of them). It was big enough that it could hop. Literally...the sucker could jump. To say we hastened out of there would be putting it mildly, I ran screaming from there like one of my sisters running from a snake (love you guys. :) ) and then proceeded to search our cabin for any signs that similar monsters were inhabitants.

And with that, our adventure for the day concluded. I ate my last packet of raw top ramen, Jess fell asleep before she got hungry and we are snugly settled in a (so far) insect-free cabin. Tomorrow is the day we see the sunrise on the east coast, so wake-up time is 5:45. Ugh!

Oh, and I should mention, for the first time thus far on the trip, I am in the big bed and Jess is up on the top bunk. She may have just been being nice, but I suspect that she plans on the spiders eating me first and being too full to crawl up the posts to her bed.

I had to recount my days (anyone notice there were two Day Thirteens?). Originally we were thinking that today was our halfway point, but it would seem that today is one day past that. Halfway of the road trip portion anyways, Jess has a few days in Cali with me before she heads back up north. :)


Again, we have some of the most atrocious internet that I have experienced. Joy. The pictures are currently taking twenty minutes to load and then not showing up later. I will do my best to fix it later, but it is almost 1:00 am and the alarm is set for 5:30.