Road Trip To York PA. A Side Trip to Washington DC Day 2 Part 3 (AKA Hamilton Tour)

06-26-2021

Robbie and I had a great morning on our Washington DC/Hamilton tour. We saw lots of things and walked lots of miles. We were exhausted, but we still had lots more to see. We went back to the hotel to freshen up and rest for a while. We planned to take the car and park either by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial or the Jefferson Memorial. This would save us quite a bit of walking. First we drove to a Safeway to pick up a few supplies. From there we drove to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. The parking area there was full, so we drove to the Jefferson Memorial. The parking area there is larger and had lots of spaces left. Since it was after hours, we didn’t need pay the kiosk for parking! The Jefferson and MLK memorials are basically on opposite sides of the Tidal Basin. We walked all of the way around the Tidal Basin, we started with the MLK Memorial.

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Continuing around the Tidal Basin we came to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. This is a memorial that you don’t hear too much about. I was thinking that it must be fairly new, it’s actually been there since 1997. The memorial is really quite impressive. It covers a 7.5 acre area consisting of four sections, representing each of FDR’s four terms as president. Each area has lots of stone work and water features. There are statues depicting the depression and other prominent points of his presidency. There is a statue of FDR with his faithful companion Fala by his side.

Continuing around the Tidal Basin we arrived at a stop on our Hamilton tour, the Thomas Jefferson memorial. The memorial was undergoing a partial renovation but we were able to enter to see the Jefferson statue. We were able to get a nice sunset view of the Washington Monument from the portico, also on the Hamilton tour.

We had enough time to visit two more locations. We got back in the car and moved to the MLK parking area, everyone there had left by this time. We were heading to the Lincoln Memorial, on the way we wanted to stop at the Korean War Veterans memorial. Robbie’s father is a Korean War Veteran. It’s a pretty impressive memorial with a life size bronze platoon in formation crossing rice paddies. The lighting at night make the soldiers look pretty spooky. We were disappointed to see that the memorial was undergoing a total restoration; we were not able to see it in all of its glory. We did visit the memorial a few years ago on our last visit to DC. We continued on to the Lincoln Memorial, probably everyone’s favorite memorial. I always remember visiting it when I was a kid. We climbed the steps to see the huge statue of Lincoln. We like to walk around the to the back to view the Potomac River. There is always the awesome view of the National Mall and the Washington Monument. It is even better at night.

My little Fujifilm X100V was working out great! It was very easy to carry around and I was traveling much lighter. I normally only carry one camera and one lens anyway, but it was much lighter. I got some really nice twilight images. For the twilight images, I was using my monopod. With my big Nikon, I would have needed to use my tripod. In DC, you can’t use tripods in the monuments.

We made our way back to the car and then to the hotel. We had a very long day! We ended up logging 30,000 steps, over 13 miles!

The next morning we had a long 12 hour drive back to Florida. We took turns driving, had a nice lunch stop, and several stops for gas. We made it home around midnight.