On Wednesday, June 4, we departed for our first trip of the summer season. We had been looking forward to this trip for the longest time! After church Wednesday night, we changed the children into their PJs and hit the road. Now our plan (David's plan because I like more of a plan than this, but I'm learning to roll with it) was to drive as far as we could with the hope of making it to Gadsden, AL for the night. Because we weren't sure how far we would feel like driving, we (David) did not get a hotel reservation for the first night. Sigh. At about 11:30PM, we did in fact arrive in Gadsden AL, but would you know it that every hotel room was booked in the whole city?!? What are the odds!
So, we had to hop back on the interstate and continue to drive. Forty-five minutes later, we made it to Fort Payne, AL, and found a hotel, which was more of a motel and definitely shady! Days Inn was our home for the night, and that's all I'm going to say about that ;) The next morning, we got up and headed north with Washington, DC being our final destination for this leg of the trip.
At the recommendation of Coach Tyndall, who used to coach basketball at USM and now coaches in Knoxville at UT, we ended up at Calhoun's on the River. The view wasn't too bad, actually it blinded my UGA loving eyes.
You'll notice Neyland Stadium in the background, gasp! Sadly, we would get even closer, as you will see in the following pictures.
Our kind waiter at Calhoun's told us to go to Gate 7 in order to see inside the stadium. Not only did we get to see inside the stadium, we got to walk inside!
All hate for the yucky orange aside, it was pretty cool to go inside the stadium!
I went to a game in Neyland Stadium during my senior year of college. That would be the very first time I smelled pot. I know, I know. After leaving Knoxville, we made it to VA to our hotel for the night. We opted to get some good sleep rather than hitting up Washington, DC, that first night. After a delicious supper at Welcome to Moe's, we were out like a light!
After a good night's sleep, we were up and at 'em early hitting the metro for Washington, DC. I have never been to DC before, so this was like a dream come true for me. And who better to experience this with than my 5 favorites?
Up first on our agenda was a tour of the capitol building.
Isn't it grand?
So, our tour ended up being not at all what we thought, so we kind of ditched it and did our own thing! And then we took pictures out in front!
One of our favorite things about traveling is eating at places we cannot eat anywhere else, except for Moe's and Panera, and those don't count because we love them so! We ate some pretty awesome burgers at the Good Stuff Eatery.
Just the girls.
Family picture in front of the capitol.
I adore this picture of these two girls. After lunch, we wandered around walking in and out of museums.
The Air and Science Museum was by far Carter's favorite. He loves loves loves things that fly! He was in heaven. In fact, we had a hard time keeping up with him inside the museum!
These four were troopers during our entire travels; David and I were so amazed and proud!
Our airplane-lovin' boy!
After the museums, we hit up an ice cream truck for a treat. Those treats ended up being a hot mess, ha!
And then we walked over to see the White House. This was our first view, and I was so disappointed. I didn't realize that we were going to be so far away from it. Our family applied for a tour of the White House, but sadly we were denied. I'm not sure if it had something to do with David being a Baptist Preacher or our littles all between the ages of 4-7 or our conservative nature. At any rate, we were bummed not to go inside!
My cute family! After we took this picture, David told me that we could walk around to the other side of the White House to get a closer view. Whew!
That's much better! So pretty, isn't it!
The weather could not have been better. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the temperatures didn't get out of the 80s.
And yes, we definitely took a selfie in front of the White House. Not everyday you get to do that! Day 1 in DC in the books. My Upband clocked us at 17,000+ steps for that first day, whew!
After paying $60 for our family to ride the metro and seeing that traffic was not so bad, we opted to drive the second and third days. DC traffic doesn't have anything on ATL or NOLA. We parked on the street right across from the Washington Monument. There is a cool app that we downloaded where we could add money to our parking meter every two hours, so we never had to return to our car until we were ready to leave! So cool!
We didn't get to the monument in time to get tickets up to the top, but I am not sure that this claustrophobic girl could've handled it anyway!
Us at the base of the monument.
By far, my favorite memorial was the WWII memorial. My Papa fought in the Navy during WWII and was in Japan. In fact, our family has a flag taken from a Japanese battleship that my grandfather's crew captured.
I am pretty sure he would love that I went to this memorial and took my children. It was pretty special.
We took pictures in front of our special states. Georgia, for our four Georgia peaches.
Mississippi, for our current state.
And Arkansas, for Daddy's family. Story was over the states at this point. Good thing, we only had to do three!
The children are really too young to fully appreciate the importance of this memorial, but we wanted them to know nonetheless. It was really neat because we were at the Memorial the day after D-Day, so there were Veterans everywhere. It was really emotional!
I had also just finished reading Laura Hillenbrand's novel, Unbroken telling the story of Louis Zamperini, a WWII POW. It's such a powerful story of courage and redemption.
On our way to the Lincoln Memorial, we walked through the Korean and Vietnam Memorials.
The Lincoln Memorial was stunning! It sits up on top of the hill, and you can see so much!
Breath-taking isn't it? And please notice the sky. This picture was taken with my phone, with no filter!
I love this picture! I feel like I need to brag on these two again. The youngest two spent most of their time in the double stroller, but Carter and Summer walked and ran everywhere we went! It was amazing!
Our family at the Lincoln Memorial.
This was taken from the top of the Lincoln Memorial looking back at the Washington Monument.
One of our favorite museums was the Natural Science Museums. Pretty cool to see all of these animals!
They were huge!
I snapped some pictures of our favorites.
So incredible!
After we left the museums, we headed over to Arlington Cemetery. At this point, we had no idea what we were getting into.
The trek to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is straight uphill, and my sweet husband pushed Story and Tilly in the double stroller up that hill! Mercy!
On the way, we stopped by the tomb of JFK and saw the eternal flame.
And we arrived just in time to witness the changing of the guard, very sobering.
I am so thankful that we were able to witness this powerful ceremony.
That night, we ate supper at a neat restaurant in Georgetown, where they make homemade poptarts, awesome. Then, we headed back to walk around and see some more sights. David really wanted to view the White House at night, so we really just wasted time until dark.
I love this! The weather was just perfect for our visit.
Our sweet troopers! The two days we were in DC, we skipped naptimes, and they didn't seem to miss a beat. So proud!
There was quite a line at the National Archives Museum every time we walked past, so we missed out on it this time.
The sun finally set, and we made our way over to the White House once more. Can you spy the snipers on the top of the building? My conspiracy theorist husband was loving it!
There, she is! So beautiful. So much history. I absolutely loved DC. It's no secret at our house that I love the big city. I cannot wait for our family to go back! Next up, Maryland!
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