For a Christmas/high school graduation gift we gave Debbie an American History trip. She and I were able to go May 4 – 11. It was so much fun! Day 1 was spent walking all over the National Mall seeing all the memorials and monuments. We walked about 12 miles that day! We could have rented bikes or scooters but we didn’t want to miss anything by going by too fast.

We parked our rental car at an all day parking garage and walked about five minutes to the National Mall. We walked by the Department of Agriculture Building (it takes up an entire block!) and, of course, had to get a picture. Who else but farmers would be excited about seeing it?

We were worried about crowds. As you can see from the pictures, we were practically the only ones there all morning! It was a slightly drizzly day ( you can tell by our frizzy hair) but a perfect temperature.

Would you look at the crowd? Ha! Some teenage girls were taking graduation photos.

One of my favorite memorials was the Korean War Memorial. The images etched on the wall and the statues coming out of the evergreens were very neat.

One of Debbie’s favorites was the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. The roof was being repaired so we didn’t get good pictures of the outside.

We did see the other memorials – WW II, Martin Luther King Jr., Vietnam, Constitution Garden, etc. but for some reason I didn’t take pictures of those. Oops!

Sometime in the afternoon we drove to Arlington National Cemetery. It is sobering yet beautiful to walk through.

If you don’t know the history of Arlington House and Arlington National Cemetery go read this article from the Smithsonian Magazine.

It was a long day but so great to see all these sites. Traffic wasn’t too terrible this first day. We stayed in an Airbnb in Ellicott City, MD because it was central to most of the places we planned on seeing. And it was out of a city which was a plus for us country bumpkins. 🙂