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As you probably know, the wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in Washington DC, last week. It was a great trip that gave us a good amount of time, without the kids.

My parents took our 4 beasts, for the whole week.

I had planned and hoped to blog each day’s activities. However, by the end of the trip, I had only blogged once. So, I’ll recap the whole trip here.

We flew out on Tuesday, arriving at Dulles International Airport in the evening. With the bus ride, then taxi ride to our historic hotel, we arrived kinda late. Today, the airlines are looking to save every little penny, so we had no real meal on the flight. By the time we arrived at the Morrison Clark Inn, we were starving. The wife had done a nice job of scouting out some good eats, before the trip. I pulled out the old Powerbook and quickly found the closest eatery, Capitol City Brewery. We shot down 11th Street and caught a great late meal. A pint of their Prohibition Porter hit the spot! Day one.

We were very tired, and decided to get a little extra sleep the next day. Up quite late, we had planned on taking a bus tour, throughout the city. The Gray Line, double-decker bus tours are pretty good. We could hop on and off at each of the typical stops, here’s a good list of all the stops. (Union Station, Supreme Court, Library of Congress, Jefferson Memorial, National Museum of Natural History, Ford’s Theater, The White House, Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, Washington Monument, Smithsonian, National Air & Space Museum, and the National Gallery of Art)

After the bus tour, we had a good idea what sights we wanted to hit over the next few days. And with some time left in our day, we took the bus back around to the Jefferson Memorial. We wanted to rent a paddle boat, and enjoy the sunset from the bay adjacent to the Jefferson Memorial. Unfortunately, they close down way before sunset. Oh well. We did walk around to the memorial, and enjoyed sitting under the dome. After a couple of self portraits, we headed back to the closest Metro station and found our way back to the Inn. This was the first evening we began to realize that Washington is not a late night city. No doubt, the majority of that city are safely tucked in bed by 9pm, every night.

Come back for Part II…

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So, we’re having a blast here in Washington! We arrived on Tuesday evening, and pretty much only had time to get to our hotel, and go to bed. With a bit of a sleep in on Wednesday, we hit the double-decker bus for a good overall view of the main sights.

We finished up at the Jefferson Memorial on Wednesday. Off to bed for an early morning on Thursday.

We were up by 0600, for enough time to eat and get in line for our tickets into the Washington Memorial. Plenty of time! We had just enough time to see the whole city from way up there. At the last minute, our Congressman’s office contacted us to let us know we had addmission to The White House, but we had just 30 minutes to finish our Washington Memorial visit, and run over to The White House. Ah!

We made it, and boy are we glad. Deanna was really looking forward to visiting The White House, and it was a nice visit. George says hi! (No photos allowed in The White House. Bummer.) Of course, we didn’t get to see much the real important stuff, but we did head over to the WH Visitor Center afterwards.

We finished up the day with a look from the top of the Old Post Office, and a wonderful visit to the National Archives. The Archives was terrific! There’s something so powerful about seeing the real Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of The United States of America! After we picked up a few souveneirs, Benjamin Gates would have been proud of, we headed back to the hotel.

Wow! We’re tired!

**You may be asking yourself, “Self…What happened to Days 1 & 2?” Nothing. I haven’t written them yet.**

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For the few of you who read this blog, you were advised of our 10th anniversary celebration trip, this August. We had planned on taking a huge trip to the UK and Ireland. Well, due to some unforeseen circumstances, we had to change that trip a bit.

We swapped the green, rolling hills of my ancestors for the history-making monuments of my forefathers. We’ll be enjoying the wonderful Washington DC area. I’ve been there a couple of times, and loved it. Deanna will be visiting DC for the first time.

We’re both lovers of American History, and the building blocks of our republic. We’re planning on hitting all the major locations, right in DC, off the National Mall. If we have time I want to travel just outside the city and see a few more locations, like Ford Theater.

Do you have any suggestions? Have you been there and seen some off-the-beaten-path locations? Suggest away!

Oh, and we’ll be photowalking with the local photowalkers too! I’ve helped organize a fun dusk to evening photowalk, on the Mall. My hope is to be able to capture a beautiful sunset, then wander around and shoot all the well lit highlights. How can I leave DC, without a night shot of the Capitol?

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You may already be aware of this, but last week we took the family to Zion National Park, in southern Utah. Man, it was awesome!

We hit the road quite early on Tuesday morning, with the goal of being near Las Vegas by lunchtime. We stayed on schedule all the way to St. George, Utah. That’s where we hit the local Wal-Mart Supercenter, to collect all the groceries we’d need for our short week.

Behind our family mini-van we towed our family’s pop-tent trailer. Once there, it was a bit small for our family of 6, but we made it work. On Wednesday we even got to celebrate The Wookie’s 4th birthday. I spent part of the afternoon baking him a chocolate cake in our dutch oven. It even turned out!

The gorgeous scenery in Zion National Park is amazing. All around you are the most wonderful red-striped rock mountains. The US Park Service does a fine job keeping the park flowing and active. They have a 5-minutes-apart shuttle service that runs from the early morning hours until 11pm. This makes it quite easy to visit the park without having to deal with parking.

We stayed in a private campground, just outside the gates. Since the shuttle runs in the small town outside the park, Springdale, UT, we were able to catch the shuttle and get to anywhere we needed. The main canyon has multiple hikes for all levels, including our 4 small kids. We were able to spend a nice day walking along the Virgin River, at the north end of Zion Canyon.

Overall, we had a wonderful time, and hope to get back there next year. In fact, we might even hit Bryce Canyon, just up the road, in the early fall.

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This past weekend we shot up to Mammoth Lakes, CA for a quick family trip. We planned on hiking a bit, and having some general fun as a family. On the drive up, we discovered that it was indeed snowing on us, and would continue on and off for the majority of the weekend. Snowing in May!

So, we changed gears and took to the mountain for some skiing. Here’s a couple shots of the fun times.

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So, I was blessed with the chance to visit the old Folsom State Prison today. It is an awesome place! Being built in the mid-1800’s makes it quite a great structure, with tons of great history and intrigue. If ever you have a chance to take a tour, do it. Because of my day job, I was given a nice view and an insider’s tour. The Lieutenant who showed me around knows the history and oddities of FSP quite well. I learned some pretty cool things and was able to see how prisoners have been locked up for over a century and a half.

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