Washington DC -- Day 6

This retirement trip is beginning to remind me of work. We have been getting up early, leaving for downtown, and not getting home until after dark........... and we are very tired when we get home!!! However, we are still enjoying ourselves.


Today, we took the car with a plan to visit the National Cathedral and the National Zoo. We got to the church just in time to get a guided tour. The church is very large, and we found out more facts than I could remember...... so some of my information may be a little off! The church looks like the old Gothic churches that Patsy and I saw in Europe. It is all stone, and construction began in about 1907, and did not finish until about 1970. They said there were several interferences like all the wars and funding was sporadic. Funding is all by public donations. Here are some pictures..........



After the cathedral, we went to the zoo. It was free, but parking was $20 and food & drink was very expensive. We saw some neat animals, and here are the best 7 shots that we got on film (and in the last one, they are not feeding the little girl to the hippo, but attempting to let her feed the hippo!!)..........

Note: The zoo pictures are mainly for our grand kids!!

When we left the zoo, it was 4:15pm (rush hour beginning), so we decided to stay downtown rather than fight the traffic back out to the campground. Since we had not seen the memorials on the south end of the mall, we decided to drive over there. We had a successful evening, in that we saw all of them. Here are a few pictures............

The Lincoln Memorial..........





At the Viet Nam Memorial, and checked and found that a solder with my exact name had been killed in the war. He was 13 months older, and was from Ohio. Oddly, they only put his middle initial on the wall (the same way I do my name!!). We stopped for a while and paid our respects.............

The Korean War Memorial was unusual and a pleasant surprise. The last two pictures below were etchings in the stone........... probably with a laser. The effect was very interesting and different:

The FDR Memorial was another very nicely done memorial. We thoroughly enjoyed it. There were several water fountains and falls in the memorial. There was also a statue depicting the bread lines, and I decided that the way things are going, I might as well get in it!!

Our last stop was the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. The sun was setting, and the sunset was very colorful. You can see it in some of the pictures. We even got some 'nighttime' shots of this memorial. Before we leave, we intend to go down to the area and take a lot of night time photos. More to come..............