After we visited the National Archives, we headed to the National Mall and toward the U.S. Capitol. We had tried unsuccessfully to get tour reservations, but we did enjoy the walk around the building, except when Karen tripped on a pothole and twisted her ankle a bit. She was still willing to keep walking around all day. To the northwest of the Capitol we found this cute little open air brick building that had water fountains and benches.
On Friday, August 7, we caught the "M" from our hotel in College Park, Maryland to downtown Washington DC. Our first stop was at the National Archives, where we got to see the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and other cool stuff. I was confused to find the First Amendment (freedom of religion and speech) as the THIRD article in the original document. The answer to this confusion is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights
Monday we had a long drive from Virginia Beach to Indianapolis. We drove through at least 3 thunderstorms and again listened to Harry Potter. (Last night I wound up dreaming of people using wands to try to make a tornado go away.) We stayed at the house of Karen's high school friend Jenny (her youngest son is in the picture, too). We got back to Peoria this afternoon.
I will skip the details and pix of our whirlwind trip to Washington DC for now (LOTS of pix to sort through) and skip to the next part for now. After leaving the Pentagon on Saturday, we arrived in Virginia Beach last night to stay with Karen's sister's family. Today we went to church, Golden Corral, Sandbridge beach (some of the hottest sand I ever recall walking on), and finally a sort sort of mini-family reunion hosted by Karen's aunt Cathy. She had an open pool in the hot weather today, and had a birthday cake for four people celebrating birthdays: one on Aug. 18, the other 3 on Aug. 21. I've seen LOTS of relatives since about December - feels kind of strange - like a farewell tour (farewell to WHAT I do not know).
On Tuesday we drove from Peoria, IL, to Radford, VA, so I could attend and present at ChemEd 2009, a chemistry education conference primarily directed at high school teachers. It was rainy from Illinois to West Virginia. We saw lots of lightning around Indianapolis, and in southwest Indiana we had to crawl along the interstate for nearly an hour as we waited to take our turn to cross where floodwaters were crossing the highway. Can you see the car in the flooded ditch in the picture? Wednesday, I attended the conference while Karen and Kris hung out with Karen's relatives in the region. That evening I met up with them for dinner in Roanoke, VA (and encountered the rain that had caught up with us from the previous day). Today (Thursday) I gave my presentation, which went pretty well. After the conference was done we visited Karen's stepdad and his girlfriend in the hills of western Virginia. He is extremely talented with his hands and loves making (among many things) miniature train stuff. After that we drove up to (or rather through...my GPS birthday present gives interesting directions sometimes)...Washington DC. Tomorrow (Friday) we plan to visit DC a bit...I was last there in 1986. To keep ourselves entertained on the long drives in our rental car, we have been listening to Harry Potter books on CD, but they seem to be creeping into all three of our dreams at night.
The sunflower pic was shot through the living room window.
