Originally posted on my MamaBugs' Blog

We decided to go to DC for the weekend. Well just overnight for one night. So I am about to do some searching for ideas for our trip. I am going to use this info to create a "scavenger hunt" of sorts for Bug. We plan to use the Metro as much as we can. I don't know how many things we will go inside to visit this time around. We need to remember to get our National Park Passport to take with us to get stamped and dated too. I plan to wear my pedometer so I can add all this walking to my www.homeschoolbloggers.com/blubberbloggers info!

The folks at http://gorp.away.com/gorp/publishers/menasha/60hikes_dc.htm recommend exploring downtown Washington by hiking from the Lincoln Memorial along the Mall (meaning the 2.2-mile stretch between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol vs the 8.6-mile loop around the Mall.) If this were the only thing we were going to do...okay...but we hoped to do more.

Like...roam the US National Arboretum ("an exotic and hidden floral treasure, with a strange architectural link to the Capitol").

So our hike will include: 

Statue of John Paul Jones ("I have not yet begun to fight")

National World War II Memorial. 

Korean War Veterans Memorial

Lincoln Memorial, and climb the 56 steps (Lincoln died at age 56).

An interesting fact...Lincoln's fingers, bent to form "A" and "L" in sign language (Lincoln supported education for the deaf; sculptor Daniel French had a deaf son).

(WAY COOL for our dds as 2 know sign)

Vietnam Veterans Memorial including the Three Servicemen sculpture, the Vietnam Women's Memorial, and a few specific names on the wall.

Constitution Gardens and the nearby boarded-up stone house.

 (An 1835 canal lock house, it's both the Mall's oldest building and a reminder that a canal once ran along what are now Constitution Avenue and 17th Street.)

Washington Monument...Did you know it's sinking at a rate of 5.64 inches a century and will disappear by the year 118,900? Who calculates these things?!?!?!

American history and natural history museums (not sure if we will go in)

The butterfly garden

National Sculpture Garden

Memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt that the president himself had requested; it's desk-sized, unlike the huge 1997 FDR memorial at the Tidal Basin.

Embassy of Canada to walk up the steps, stand in the small rotunda, sing, and listen to the acoustic effects.

John Marshall Park

Statue of Lincoln by Lot Flannery, who had known Lincoln.

On to a place of great personal interest to our family...the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism during World War II.  

Opened in 2001, the memorial, or Mahnmal, "recognizes the unjust wartime internment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans. It's the only memorial I know that's an apology, as affirmed by Ronald Reagan's inscribed words: "Here we admit a wrong." It also honors the Japanese-Americans who served in the armed forces. Designed by Davis Buckley, several powerful symbols: a sculpture of two cranes ensnared in barbed wire, a reflecting pool resembling a Zen garden, and a remarkable bell that, when sounded, emits a low and vibrant tone. "

Union Station Plaza

Sewall-Belmont House (In 1814, it was the only private building torched by the British invaders—after snipers in the house annoyed the British general by shooting his horse. Since 1929, it's been the Women's National Party headquarters.)

Lincoln Park to see Emancipation "a bronze monument paid for by emancipated blacks but designed by whites that depicts a magisterial Lincoln standing next to a crouching African-American man. At the 1876 dedication, the keynote speaker, abolitionist and local resident Frederick Douglass, chided sculptor Thomas Ball for the croucher's subservient posture."

Mary McLeod Bethune Monument..."and what difference a century can make. Created by Robert Berks in 1974, almost two decades after Bethune's death, the twice-life-size monument shows the educator, civil-rights leader, and National Council of Negro Women founder handing a young boy and girl a rolled document. Composed the year she died and as inscribed on the pedestal, it's her 68-word "Legacy": "I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you also a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow man. I leave you finally a responsibility to our young people." When the Bethune monument was finished, Emancipation was turned to face it."

Folger Shakespeare Library, the Library of Congress, and the Supreme Court building (just passing by)

Note that you can no longer go straight ahead to the Capitol since the way to the building is now "temporarily blocked by ongoing construction of a large underground visitor center (the largest addition since Lincoln pushed completion of the remodeled Capitol in the 1860s). And, alas, in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, the west terrace remains off-limits, perhaps permanently."

Peace Monument, erected in honor of the Union seamen who died in Civil War.

Ulysses S. Grant memorial.

Statue of President James Garfield

US Botanic Garden's "renovated and dazzling conservatory."

I wonder if the National Museum of the American Indian is opened yet? Anyone know?

Air and Space Museum...I wonder if this will be a required thing for the Sarge...

Smithsonian Castle and more Smithsonian museums

The antique carousel.

Note: All quotes are from the gorp article listed above.

Technorati Tags: homeschool, homeschooling, home school, Home Education, family, military, military homeschool, America, Air Force family, Army family, Marine family, Navy family, Coast Guard family, troops, prayer, deployment