Washington DC Trip: Part 2

After a long day of riding roller coasters we ate at a quaint little restaurant called the Smokey Pig. It was a delicious BBQ place, complete with complimentary hush puppies. The next morning we got up and drove to the DC area with a short detour through Bowling Green, VA. Our first stop was the National Air and Space Museum. It is unbelievable how much stuff they have in each of the museums that we visited. We could have spent a whole day in each museum and still not have seen everything. We saw some very interesting stuff though and were also in awe at the largest McDonald's we had ever seen that was inside the Air and Space Museum.

Huge McDonalds

That afternoon we visited the American History Museum. This was my favorite of all of the museums we saw. It has all kinds of artifacts from American History. I wish that our feet weren't so tired from the previous two days. It would have made walking around museums all day a lot more comfortable.

A "hero in a half shell"

A car from the Dumbo ride at Disneyland

Dorothy's ruby slippers

After our visit to the two museums it was time to meet at City Segway Tours for our tour of the city via segway. I absolutely LOVED this part of the trip. I was a little leery at first when Dave signed us up for this tour because I was afraid of wrecking my segway. Then I figured that is couldn't be too hard if they were letting just anybody ride one. Turns out that I love to ride segways! It started out with a 30 minute instruction on how to ride then the first stretch was a straight shot with our speed regulators set a 6 miles per hour so you really got a chance to get comfortable with it. There were 8 of us on the tour plus our tour guide. You should have seen some of the stares we got from people when they got passed by a gang of segways. We got to see all of the sites of the city and hear a little information from our tour guide at each one. We all got off the segways at the Lincoln Memorial and spent about 1/2 hour looking around there. We also saw the White House, the National Archives, the capital building, the FBI building and Ford's Theatre just to name a few. We also rode past a newer museum called the Newseum. It has artifacts from major news stories inside. Outside have a display case that has that day's newspaper from a city or town in every state. The one from Wyoming was the Laramie Daily Boomerang for the day we were there! Pretty cool! It sure looks different from the days of helping collate it with Mom and Dad. It was a great tour and after we got done we walked a couple of blocks (we did a LOT of walking) and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe before catching the Metro back to our hotel. We knew we were too late to catch the shuttle from the Metro station to our hotel but the hotel boasted being 1 mile from the Metro station so we figured hey, what's another mile, right? Well, it turns out it might be a mile away if we could have flown over buildings and stuff, but it was quite a bit farther (yipee! more walking!). We made it to the hotel and I could barely stand long enough for a shower before I collapsed into bed. This is certainly not the vacation to take if you are looking for some relaxation. Lots of fun and interesting things to see though. Next up, Cheesesteaks and Ford's Theatre!

Dave wanting to be an agent

My first time on the segway

Visiting the Obamas

Waiting to shoot you if you act up

Washington Monument

Lincoln Memorial

Cruising--I think they had turned the speed regulator up to 10 MPH!

Capitol Building

The Boomerang

Washington DC Trip: Part 1

In celebration of our 10 year wedding anniversary Dave and I went on a trip to Washington DC. We left Haylie and Zander with my mom and dad on Monday evening, July 19th (I will post some of their adventures when I get pictures from my mom.) We decided to save ourselves a hotel night stay while getting an extra day in the area by sleeping on the plane on the way over. We had to switch planes in Phoenix and Philadelphia before we landed in Baltimore. Needless to say that it was not a very restful night especially with a few children behind us on the Phoenix-Philly flight that took turns screaming for most of the night. I was very glad for my MP3 player to drown out most of it. We took a short flight into Baltimore, but not before I drank a giant swallow of sour milk in the Philly airport...yummy.

Once in Baltimore we rented a car and took off down I95 towards Doswell, VA where King's Dominion Amusement Park is located. We were both impressed by the trees everywhere in that area, especially since we live in the desert here in Price. Once we got to the amusement park we ate a Chic-fil-A (one of my favorites) and then, since we had slept on an airplane and hadn't had a chance to freshen up, we decided that the water park portion of the park might be a good idea. We had lots of fun riding the water slides and finally had to call it quits for the day when a HUGE rainstorm rolled in. It was fun too since I was already wet and still in my swimsuit. We just splashed through the puddles and ran through the rain not worried about getting wet.

The next morning we headed back to King's Dominion to tackle the roller coasters. There were lots of fun ones and since it was a weekday there weren't very many people there. It was very hot there though and I remembered that I am not the biggest fan of humidity. I was sweating like crazy! It was a really fun place but by the end of the day our feet were killing us after running around the day before on hot sidewalks in bare feet and then walking and standing in line all day the next. In fact, sore feet turned out to be the recurring theme of our vacation. There sure is a lot of walking involved in a vacation like this. We spent the next 3 days in the DC area taking in all the sites and museums. That will be part 2. I am too impatient to wait for all the pictures to upload at once.

Ready to ride!

King's Dominion from their "Eiffel Tower"

A fun water slide

This was their new roller coaster for this year, both times we rode it I blacked out for a couple of seconds. We heard several others saying they did too. I will claim that is why I look the way I do in this picture. I have no excuse for all the other pictures though, maybe humidity and TONS of walking??

Dave didn't black out! He was feeling great!