The Early Arrivals
Above are the early arrivals and below, the whole gang gathered for first night greetings. My flight went well including an empty middle seat, ahhh, the joy of an empty middle seat. Per and Marita are in from Sweden, Rick and Jim from Long Beach, and Tony and Lill from Culver City.
Jim, Tony, Per, Marita, Lill, Rick waiting for the streetcar.
What we did: Air and Space Museum, Museum Cafe, Hirshhorn Museum, National Museum of African American History, NASA Headquarters, MatchBox Pizza.
Everyone gathers their own breakfast from the cabinets and refrigerator full of food.
And then we were off! We took the free streetcar that takes you to Union Station.
The rest of the group walked from Union Station to the Air and Space Museum but I decided to ‘shepherd’ my steps from the start so Rick went with me in a Lyft. We got there before the others and my heart got stolen by the smells of a grilled hot dog. It wasn’t very good, I don’t need another one, but oh yes I was very happy to have this one.
Here’s the thing about our visit to the Air and Space Museum, most people’s favorite Smithsonian – more than half the exhibits were gone!
But they had a Millennium Falcon and other planes to admire.
I was going to take this guy’s tour but a few minutes in I saw there was a movie playing narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson about the Dark Universe so I decided to do that instead, cute as this guy was, the movie was in a theater with cushy seats.
Between Air and Space and the Hirshhorn was this thing that screamed my name. Stop! Look at me! Take my picture!!
sigh… and now on to the Hirshhorn Museum that we all adored and intend to visit again.
Oh goodie, two of my favorites! From their website: “Basquiat × Banksy is an exhibition of two major paintings, one by Jean-Michel Basquiat (b. Brooklyn, New York, 1960–1988) and the other by Banksy (anonymous; b. near Bristol, England). Placed in dialogue, Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (1982) and Banksy’s response, Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search (2018), reveal throughlines among street art, contemporary art, and the popular imagination.”
We just got stuck in this room which is why we missed so much. Laurie Anderson: Four Talks.
Only a buzz through the rest of the second floor.
And the entire third floor was dedicated to this guy where I could poke my head out of the elevator and go back down to meet the group on time.
Along the walk to our next destination.
The National Museum of African American History. Sure, you know, but it never hurts to be reminded, and important for those who don’t know. Let’s hope we don’t try to pretend otherwise.
I picked a couple easy images, and below is a woman I sat with for 30 minutes and we chatted about this and that, it was her birthday, it was lovely, and all this reminds me again and again how we did not overcome.
More walking.
From Tony: “Here at NASA Earth Information Center getting info from the Director of NASA Earth Satellite program, my friend Dr. Karen St. Germain.”
They call this the Immersive Room. It’s small but we could all fit in and get these shadow pictures. Interesting images are projected on all four walls, ceiling, and floor. We expressed all the ooows and aaahs.
Then we all went for dinner at MatchBox Pizza. The Pizza was fantastic. We all agreed, worth going out of your way.
Our waitress was a delight and took the above picture then she said sure take my picture too. Thank you sweetie!
Great Falls Park is part of the National Park System but from all the lists I can find, it is not a named National Park. What other areas have this designation, I don’t know! But the Senior Lifetime National Park Service pass worked perfectly. The National Park Service protected the land in 1960 and Great Falls Park opened to the public in 1966.
The NPS website is not very informative but wikipedia of course will tell you everything starting from 1785.
Rick and Jim rented us quite the machine, the Ford Expedition, and we 7 traveled in comfort and style.
Great Falls Park is 45 minutes or so, totally depending on traffic, from DC. It’s very very lovely. I was planning to go as far as I could with enough umph left to get back, and that worked great thanks to everyone else who helped me over the hump of the first view point and at the end too. Boulders! Ankle grabbing rocks! Roots! But mostly it was groomed trails. I turned back at the place where there would be extended scrambling required while the gang moved on.
Welcome to Great Falls Park
Rick took this near the end of the trail, where the old canal bed would flow into the Potomac.
Ice CREAM!
Since we were driving around in what could be mistaken for a pope-mobile, we decided to swing by the “The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Episcopal Diocese of Washington, commonly known as Washington National Cathedral or National Cathedral.” There was scaffolding around one side and it was very expensive to get in, so we enjoyed the grounds and headed back into the soul-crushing DC traffic.
Some snaps out the window on the way home.
The only info I could find on this guy: “Mother, a mural at 37 New York Avenue NE, was painted by Philadelphia-based artist NOSÉGO in 2019.”
We got home on the late side after having gone for a big grocery run, and omg there were 7 bags of groceries from Whole Foods on the porch. After calls made and emails exchanged it turned out to be the previous tenant who forgot to change their delivery address. The store and the property manager said ‘it’s yours now’. Unfortunately it had been on the porch for at least 5 hours so we had to pitch a lot of it. Still, it was like Grocery Christmas.
The above map is pretty good, the best I could find anyway despite that it’s missing a few favorite spots such as the Hirshhorn and the Postal Museum.
Along the way, in Mount Vernon Triangle, this tells all about the mural “Zero Hunger“.
We lyfted ourselves to the Jefferson Memorial with the intention of visiting the monuments and walking *all* the way to the end of the Mall.
Soooo many kids everywhere.
Below, from Rick, we all were hot for Delila, complements of the National Park Service. Lill fed Delila her lunch apple and made a new best friend.
Across from Jefferson.
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FDR’s memorial especially touched me this time. Talk about quotable quotes: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” FDR January 20, 1937
Here are “six columns wrapped in bronze bas-reliefs depicting scenes from the New Deal. On a nearby wall are these same images on sheets of bronze. The idea is that the columns are the rollers of a printing press, while the wall is the paper. Notice that the images on the columns are sunken in—negatives—and those on the wall protrude from the metal—positives.” from npplan.com.
Next came MLK. We entered on the river side seeing the carving first but the design is for you to come through the split rock first and slowly come around to see the carving. The rock says: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”
You could spend a lot of time thinking about the quotes along the walls. I keep coming back to this one: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Washington National Cathedral, March 31, 1968. Remember when we all thought that we would overcome?
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These names were added to the Korean War Memorial in 2022. This isn’t my picture, I instead went looking for a bench in the shade and ended up with a group of Vietnam Vets. I was standing under a tree when one of them came across the path to offer me his seat and a cookie. It was a welcome rest and a memorable 20 minutes.
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I didn’t attempt the Lincoln steps either, but here’s the view from the plaza.
The Washington Memorial is a dominant feature of the skyline, peeking its way into so many views.
Vietnam.
Below is the clock tower of the Old Post Office building that was a Trump hotel for a few years and in 2022 sold to the Waldorf Astoria group.
This article, written in February 2018, is great in talking about Robert Irwin’s piece “48 Shadow Planes” and it’s place in the space. At least the Waldorf Astoria made it “great again”. The picture on the right is from the top of the clock tower.
This is my last picture. Was this the day we went to the White House and I couldn’t bear it? I even forget how we got home!
That’s our place with the red door. The front garden was lovely and there was a table and patio seats out back.
It’s Jim’s birthday, tomorrow, but a friend from back in LA ordered these two cakes knowing there were seven people here, and goodness we ate on those cakes for days. Between the cakes, the grocery shopping, and all our porch food from the wayward delivery, we had plenty to eat.
I stayed home for most of the day, resting, reading, and messing with my pictures. Then around four, Rick and Jim were home and we walked together to meet the rest of us at the restaurant where we would celebrate Jim’s birthday. “We” (read me) were walking slowly and the rest of them caught up with us a block before our arrival.
Here are some pictures from that walk.
We gathered at Belga Café..
..for Jim’s birthday fete and everyone was pleased with their beverage and their meal.
Christopher from Perfect Private Tours picked us up at the restaurant in a comfy 10 passenger Sprinter van to take us around the Monuments At Night.
He told us interesting and entertaining stories for 3 hours!
Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park
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Here come several from the WWII Memorial.
Jefferson.
Martin Luther King Jr, “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”
A wall of fabulous MLK quotes and yet another view of the Washington Monument.
Small part of the Korean War Memorial.
Lincoln, a favorite of most visitors.
It takes a village.
Raising the flag at Iwo Jima located in Arlington Ridge Park in Virginia, near the Arlington National Cemetery.
We got home late, snacks were procured, and for the first evening since our arrival, no games were played.
On Friday we split up into three different activities, all of us visiting friends and relatives in opposite directions. I got to go see Caleb and Hannah and ELLIOT! Caleb is my sister Lona’s son Trevor’s son, and Hannah and Caleb got married here in the DC area in July 2023. Caleb and Hannah got married!
And then along came Elliot in 2024 on June 19th, My Birthday! WOW!! I always enjoyed sharing a birthday with Christa who was born on the 20th and now we can make it a trio of birthdays:):):)! Christa is Caleb’s older sister. The youngest sibling, Charis, is pregnant now so More Babies on the way, we love the babies. The moms and dads are cool too, of course…
I’m going to try to put more pictures together since the ones I took are not worthy, but here’s one from WhatsApp that is adorable. We were eating dinner (thanks Hannah!) and Elliot was so enthused to eat everything too. Like fists of food from plate to mouth, entirely avoiding ears and hair. Caleb and Hannah were pretty amazed because it was the first time he had fed himself his entire meal, and a big pile of seconds too.
Above is the free H Street Streetcar that we used every day to get into town. It’s a straight shot to Union Station and from there a long-ish walk to the Mall. I walked it once and then I chose lyft. Most of the time everyone else, with their average 17,000 steps per day, took that walk.
From unionstationdc.com, look at all these words: “Union Station D.C. is a superbly restored, historic, mixed-use, intermodal transportation and shopping center located just blocks ((many blocks!)) from the U.S. capitol Building. .. Washington Union Station is one of the country’s first great union railroad terminals. Designed by renowned architect, Daniel Burnham, the station opened on October 27, 1907 and was completed in April 1908.”
Rick and Jim took me out for a last day excursion while the others went to Georgetown and ‘a nice walk’ in that they walked back from Georgetown via the Mall and a museum or two. So many steps. We covered our longest distances by Metro and the H Street Streetcar.
From outside the front door of Union Station you’ll find the Postal Museum. I like it!
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Rick had identified the Phillip’s Collection (founded in 1921) as something to look at, and indeed it was something. It’s one of those places I’d never heard of but was fantastic.
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And lastly, SAAM, the Smithsonian American Art Museum which includes the National Portrait Gallery.
We popped off the Streetcar a stop early so we could enjoy this street of murals.
Back home we scavenged the refrigerator and freezer for dinner which was fun. And we don’t have game night, we have game week! Rick brings a bag of options and it’s totally fun although I’d give up after a few rounds (or before they even got started!?) and head up to bed while play extends into the early hours. Ah, the theme, everyone had fun, just the way I like it.
