Mike & Kris - Enjoying The Ride

We planned our trip over a year ago and, at the time, we weren’t really thinking about specific holidays and how it may coordinate with our destinations.  In typical Mike and Kris fashion our timing worked out again.  Hard to believe but we ended up in Washington DC over Memorial Day weekend.  Let me back up a bit…we arrived here on Wednesday and headed over to Nationals Park to watch the Nationals play the San Diego Padres.

It was their last game in town for a couple of weeks so we wanted to get this stadium crossed off our list.  And the Padres won–so yeah California.

The next day we headed into Washington DC and spent a marathon day visiting memorials and just soaking it all in.  We clocked over 8.5 miles on foot and not sure how many miles on bikes.

We saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial,

the Korean Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the World War II Memorial, the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, the FDR Memorial, and the Washington Memorial!

They are all amazing–hard to pick a favorite.

The next day it was on to the museums.  We stopped by the Air and Space museum and the American History museum.  We also went up to the top of Capital Hill and spent time enjoying the Capital and the building that houses the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress buildings.

While up here we noticed they were setting up a stage for an upcoming concert done by PBS.  We headed over in the evening and listened to the first rehearsal of the concert.

The actual concert was scheduled for Monday night but we were able to get a really good  sense of it.

So much to see and do and now its the weekend.  On Sunday we headed back to the Lincoln Memorial to watch Rolling Thunder.

This is a protest that has been happening for years over the Memorial Day weekend.  900,000 motorcycles ride through town protesting MIA, POW, and KIA military from the Vietnam War and all wars.

It’s an impressive sight without a doubt.  We stayed and listened to their rally and spent some more time in and around the memorials.  Next we headed up to the White House and enjoyed the beauty of it.

Of course watching all the people has been fun too.

On Memorial Day we headed out early for Arlington Cemetery but it ended up being not quite early enough.  We were going to watch the President place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but we were buried too deep in the crowd for me to see anything.  Mike was tall enough to get his camera up for a couple of shots.

It was still moving to hear and the crowd was silent which made it even cooler.  After the cemetery we headed back to Constitution Avenue and watched the parade.

Full of military personnel and high school bands, it was very festive and patriotic.

The perfect ending to the Memorial Day weekend.  And the best news of all…we still have almost another week of time here in Washington DC.