Washington Monument(s)

After staying up until almost 1 AM visiting Jim Nedland (see below), Rachel and I overslept a little and were late for our 10:30 AM tickets to visit the Washington Monument. That turned out to be a good thing, because they were running late and when we arrived on line at 11 we joined our group and went in after a 10-minute wait. The monument itself is great, and they've upgraded the systems so that on the elevator ride down they slow and you can see some of the 199 memorial stones donated by various states and foreign governments during the construction.

Here's an exterior shot and one from the observation deck (through a window):

We then visited the World War II Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, and Korean War Memorial, in that order. In won't put up pictures of each other than the WWII memorial, since that's relatively new:

As a colleague said, it's a very fitting memorial and you can tell which war we won (as opposed to the subdued by yet more moving Vietnam memorial).

I had to make a couple of calls for work and it was as hot as Hades, so we worked our way back to the hotel by about 3 this afternoon. I went for a dip in the pool but Rachel showered and fell asleep for about 5 hours. I've worn the poor girl out.

I think we'll try Mount Vernon and the Marine Corps museum tomorrow, since it's supposed to be the hottest day of the week.