Historic Trip Day 6

September 17th
Today is our first day in Washington DC.  We woke up and had the breakfast buffet at the hotel.  They had a great selection and then we were ready to walk down 6 to 7 blocks to the Washington Mall.  The Mall consists of all the monuments and the Smithsonian Museums.  We found out that everything is free and only a dollar to ride on the circular mall bus.  We also found out the Smithsonian museums don't open until 10:00 a.m.  so we had two hours to go to all the monuments.  We went to the Washington Monument first and also got tickets to ride to the top at around 3:00 p.m. today.  The tickets go fast for this event.  Here are some of the monuments we went to:

At around 10:00 a.m. we started touring the Smithsonian museums.  We started at the art museums and also an outdoor art exhibit where we also had lunch.  There was so much to see and you seriously could spend all day in just one museum.  I took a lot of pictures at the museums but I will just put some of my favorite pictures from the museums.  We did not get to see all of the art museum due to time. 

Here are pictures from the outside Art exhibit and also where we ate lunch.

After the Art exhibit we headed to the earth history museum.  We only had a little time because we would be going to the top of the Washington Memorial for our tour at 3:00 p.m.  I really liked the mineral and gems part in the museum.  The animals were pretty cool also.  Favorite pictures from this musuem:

Hope Diamond

 We made it to our tour at the Washington Monument at 3:00 p.m.  It was fantastic to see the view of Washington from the top.  I took a lot of pictures from the top.

Our last museum of the day was the Holocaust museum.  It was so sad but the museum was really well done.  I learned a lot about Hitler that actually was new on how he gained his power in the beginning.  He promised the people a lot of things and told them he would make it so they would never starve again.  He offered a lot of free things and got people hooked.  Those who opposed him were put to death.  It really showed how things can get bad quickly if you have the wrong person in charge. I did not really take many pictures due to tenderness of this museum.

We walked back the 6 to 7 blocks to our hotel and ended up eating at a Mcdonalds because it was on the way back.  We went to the hot tub and relaxed that evening.

Historic Trip continued Day 5

September 16th--Wednesday
Today was another full day of events.  We started out and did an inside tour of Gettysburg museum and then we went to see the movie and then the full size diorama painting.  It was well done.  It was so sad to hear about the war.  There were so many that died in this war. 

When we finished Gettysburg then we drove to our next destination which was visiting Hershey Pennsylvanian. This was such a fun and delicious!

After Hershey we were on the road again to the Lancaster Pennsylvania  to eat lunch at a Amish type lunch that is served family style.  The restaurant is called Good N Plenty. The meal was delicious but expensive. After lunch we drove around to see some of the Amish people. 

After our tour of the Amish village then will be headed to go see the Washington DC temple.  I put the coordinates in for the temple and we followed the directions but when we came to our final destination it ended up being an LDS Chapel not the temple.  We had to try again and Gary had to make sure it was the right place.  We finally made it to the temple. 

 We drove to McLean VA to see Dave and Melissa Mayhew and their two daughter Evalee and Kaylie.  Janice had sent clothing for both girls.  It was fun to see where they are living with Dave's parents.  We took them to dinner with us and ate at McLean family dining.  After dinner we went to our hotel Hampton Inn in Washington DC.