Even though I hate where I am living right now, I am so glad to be back home! I am in need for a much needed rest for the next couple of days. That trip definitely took a lot out of me. I can finally catch up on my blog posts and do a little crafting while I'm at home doing a whole lot of nothing.
We started Saturday waking up and eating breakfast Dan's cousin, Riley, made. I had an open face egg, bacon, and tomato sandwich with freshly juiced carrot juice. I really want juicer. I know I don't get enough veggies a day, and neither does my daughter. That'd be a good way to hide some since she loves juice so much.
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| Dan and Riley |
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| Mt. Pleasant - Riley's neighborhood |
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| Store I really wanted to go in, and of course, never did. |
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| Freemason Building |
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| It had such awesome artwork! |
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| Cool liquor store. |
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| Really wish I could have been on this rooftop. There was a pool! |
Our first tourist activity for the day was going to Arlington Cemetery. I think everyone else in DC had that same idea. There were so many people there for Memorial Day. Especially bikers. We saw JFK and Robert Kennedy's graves. We also made it in time to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Those guys have amazing drill and ceremony skills. The rest of the time was spent with me about ten feet behind Dan and Riley waddling up all the massive hills trying to keep up. We did pass Robert E. Lee's house which had an amazing view of DC. You could see the Capital, the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument, and the Pentagon.
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| All the bikers in front of the entrance to Arlington Cemetery. |
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| Arlington Cemetery |
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| Tomb of the Unknown Soldier |
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| View from Robert E. Lee's Mansion |
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| Me, Dan, and my huge forehead |
For lunch we drove to a small hole-in-the-wall burger joint called Ray's Hell Burger. It smelled amazing even before we got there. The burgers were massive! I just got a regular with cheese, tomato, lettuce, pickles, onions and thousand island dressing. I say regular because most of the burgers had crazy ingredients. I guess I'm not that adventurous when it comes to them. Probably because I have not eaten red meat in awhile and did not want to screw the rest of my day up by my stomach feeling like crap. I ended up eating only half since it was so huge.
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| Dan eating his huge burger. |
After eating, we headed to Manassas battlefield, the setting of the first battle of the Civil War. I want to live there. The scenery was beautiful, and it was so quiet. We saw a reenactment of Union soldiers shooting some Civil War era muskets. Later, after we were done at the battlefield, we stopped by a grocery store to get food and beer, and one of the reenactors was shopping around the beer cooler, also, still in uniform. It was pretty funny. I would have gotten a picture, but I left my camera in the car. Lesson learned.
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| Manassas Battlefield |
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| Manassas Battlefield |
The last thing on the agenda for the day was seeing "A Prairie Home Companion" at the Wolf Trap, which is an outdoor venue in a national park. To say the least, it was awesome. I love anything on NPR, but hearing it in person is so much better! We had lawn seating so we set up a picnic. Riley's girlfriend made sandwiches, salad, pasta salad, and strawberry rhubarb pie. It was all so good, and might have also contributed to why the show was so amazing.
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| Audience at Wolf Trap. |
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| Wolf Trap stage |
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| We almost got rained out in the middle of the show! Luckily it just passed right around us. |
There was a little girl there about Maggie's age that was dancing around the whole show. It made me miss my little girl so bad! Its crazy how badly I miss her sometimes. I almost started crying at the show. Haha, damn emotions! There was also a man in front of us that kept taking pictures of his wife from behind who was laying on her side on their blanket. It sounds pretty innocent, well kind of, but if you saw it, you would have thought it was creepy, too. He was acting like he was on the set of a porno shoot or something. I'm pretty sure it was the actor from "Weekend at Bernie's" who was trying to kill Bernie. If it wasn't, the guy looked exactly like him.
After the show, I was beat so they took me back to the house. I needed to do some studying for school, and I was completely beat from the day. They went out and drank. Sigh. Three more months! Its so hard!
I ended up getting a really bad sunburn on my chest that day. I had even slathered on a ton of sunscreen. I need a huge floppy hat. If my husband had bought me one, like I hinted, that situation would have been totally avoided. Haha, I think I need to drop more hints.
Day three is all about the National Mall and Washington Memorial. Riley's friend hooked us up with tickets to go to the top of the memorial, so we don't have to wait in line. That would have sucked!
