Tues. 9/25/07 ~ Washington, DC at Last!

We caught the shuttle bus to town at 6:45 AM along with a bus full of other campers from the campground. The couple camped next to us, Fred and Patty, were very nice and we had breakfast with them at Union Station before starting our tour for the day. We boarded the open top double deck tour bus and took it to the second stop which was the Capitol. We walked over and got a free tour ticket for 9:45 and waited in line for the tour. The entrance process was our first taste of how much the security measures have changed since we were last here over 15 years ago. We were scanned and our bags x-rayed and you were not allowed to stray from the tour guide at all even to hang back and take photographs. Since we did not have special passed from our senator, the tour was very short and only included the rotunda and hall of statues. As we were leaving we stopped and talked to a Capitol Policeman who was armed with an M-16 rifle. He told us that there are many, many security incidents but most are kept quiet and the public doesn’t hear about them. From the Capitol we walked a few blocks over to the Air and Space Museum. We spend a couple of hours there seeing the original Wright Brothers’ place and Charles Lindberg’s Spirit of St. Louis. We also saw a small selection of exhibits from the Museum of American History that is closed for renovations until summer 2008. From the Air and Space Museum we walked across the Mall to the Museum of Natural History. We didn’t go through the whole museum but the dinosaur section that we covered is pretty impressive. Our next stop was the National Archives and that turned out to be a pretty big disappointment compared with our last visit there. You no longer enter up the front steps and through the big double doors but rather through a side entrance and through security. We saw the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution but the way there are displayed is very different than on our last visit. We also did not see any of the archive areas where the documents are actually stored. We left the National Archives and headed for the FBI Building to hopefully take a tour there. When we got there we found that since 9/11 they also no longer give tours. We walked around the block to the International Spy Museum. It was a little expensive and I found it pretty interesting while Bill was not impressed. This by the way is a perfect example of one of my trademark sayings, “that’s why they make chocolate and vanilla!” As we waited at the bus stop to Hop On the bus we realized we were right in front of the Petersen House where President Lincoln died after he was shot at Ford’s Theatre. We went through the house quickly and finished just as the bus arrived. We got on and finished the entire narrated tour route before returning to Union Station. We arrived too late for the free shuttle back to the campground so we navigated the very efficient metro-rail and metro-bus system to get home. By the time we got back it was past 8:00 PM and we were tired, thirsty, and hungry. We stopped at the Cherry Hill Café and ordered a couple of hamburgers that were actually surprisingly good. Tomorrow we will return to Washington, DC and continue our tour.