8hunters Tour the USA: May 6-8 – Washington DC

We’ve been anticipating a visit to Washington DC since we left home. There’s so much to see and do here and a lot of it ties directly to the kid’s studies. We stayed at a great campground with bus service to the subway so we could get our gang of nine back and forth to the city with ease. In addition, we arranged to have a dog sitter stop by the RV and walk the dogs twice a day. Believe it or not our new dog, Buddy, has proven to be very well mannered. We can leave both dogs in the RV for several hours with no problems at all. This was one of my primary concerns when we “adopted” him a few weeks back.

We spent 2 long days in the city. We visited the Capitol Building and got the guided tour. We also got a chance to set in on the House while they were in session. I was excited to see some lawmaking first hand. We were there for about 30 minutes and almost the entire time was spent introducing and then discussing a bill to allow soapbox derby racing in the Capitol city. Yep – you read that right. Evidently these races have happened for 72 years in a row which means, presumably, that there has been 72 times that congress has “approved” it. What a joke… To say that it was a disappointment seeing our elected representatives spend their time and our money dealing with such nonsense is an understatement. It left me to wonder how much time they spend on pointless legislation. I was not impressed. Another thing that struck me is the amount of public works projects going on around the city. There was construction everywhere. Almost the entire National Mall from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial was under construction as where many of the buildings that lined the mall. Part of this work involved digging up huge swaths of lawn to install a new “green” drainage system to reduce the amount of irrigation required. There were huge piles of dirt and pipe everywhere and tons of heavy equipment. The costs for this project alone had to be astronomical – I bet the payback is measured in millennia. Of course there were American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signs up on all the projects. Again – not impressed. The good news is that should be very easy for Congress to identify some discretionary spending that can be cut from the budget because they see it on a daily basis!!

We visited the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of American History. The kids enjoyed the animals and Jim, Nancy and I enjoyed the pop-culture memorabilia. We also visited Arlington National Cemetery and saw the eternal flame at JFK’s grave, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Robert E Lee House that sits atop the hill there. The Lee house has always been my favorite spot in DC. The history of the site and how it came to be a national cemetery is fascinating and the view overlooking the city is amazing. Incidentally and not surprisingly, the Lee house is also undergoing renovations. We also visited the Lincoln Memorial which ties in nicely with some of the Civil War history we’ve been learning about. Our two days in DC left us feeling like we barely scratched the surface of all the history here. We definitely left plenty to see and do the next time we’re in town.