DC: WWII, Korea, Lincoln

I just want to point out that 4 lengthy posts with 16 pictures about Washington DC has resulted in 4 comments. 2 lengthy posts about estimations and quick calculations garnered 18 comments. You people sure like strange things . . . .

From the Washington Monument, I went to the WWII Memorial. It's quite nice. There is a big nice pool/fountain. Also, all the fountains in DC (at least all the ones I saw) don't have money in them. They have signs asking you to keep your money out of them. Apparently they stain the pools, but more than that, it keeps them looking clean, so you can think about where you are, rather than thinking about how many half dollar coins you can spot in the memorial.


And, of course, the memorial was a nice place to take a few more pictures of the Washington Monument.

The National Mall and the area around the reflecting pool (which is very long, and has ducks!) is, in my experience, dominated by a few things: college students jogging, and college students playing sports. Maybe it was just the time of year, or the time of day, but there were joggers absolutely everywhere. I suppose there are always enough people there that they feel safe. And there were intramural sports. Softball mostly, with a little bit of soccer. There is a whole lot of grass around the different sights, and DC has lots of college students. I passed dozens of softball games, and it seemed to go on for hours. They were everywhere!

Amid the softball games, I found a small little WWI memorial. If I remember correctly, it is for people from DC who fought in the world war. It's kinda tucked away by itself on the side of the reflecting pool, and it was a place where I could (very briefly) be alone for a moment.

At the end of the reflecting pool I first came to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. It's a collection of statues of soldiers accompanied by a neat stone wall of images. The stone wall is quite glossy, except for where the surface has been removed to reveal the lighter stone underneath as a way to create pictures on it.

This also provided a bit of an answer to one of the problems of traveling by yourself: there is no one to take your picture. Sure, I could have asked someone, but then I would have been there standing by myself posing in front of something. Instead, I settled for this technique:

I'm a bit more visible in this shot:

Finally I made it all the way to ol' Lincoln himself. Looks just like the back of the $5 bill! The picture below is absolutely not a good representation of my time in the monument; I managed to get a shot without any people in it. It took a little bit of patience and some luck. A more representative shot would have included about 63 8th graders.