Friday, November 29th

Well our last day in DC!  Wow are we on brain overload or what!?!  We really had hoped to not have to cram it all into a week's time, but it's so cold we just want to get it done and move SOUTH! So first today we went to the Iwo Jima Memorial.  This was the best statue we saw.  Much much bigger than we all thought.  It is the Marines' heroic struggle during World War II to reclaim the Philippines island for the Allies.  Iwo Jima is a tiny island south of Tokyo.  It was a main objective to capture the island from the Japanese. Once accomplished, five Marines and a Navy corpsman raised a large American flag on the mountain top.  Fortunately, the raising was witnessed by news photographer Joe Rosenthal whose pulitzer prize winning picture of the flag raising would become a symbol of the war in the Pacific.  Awesome site!

So after leaving the memorial, we ended up on a wrong road.  Well we went all the way around the Pentagon trying to find our way back to the cemetery to park.  We were just afraid we'd end up in downtown DC traffic before we got turned around or on the right road.  Garrett to the rescue once again in the GPS world.  Anyway, we had been seeing the Pentagon everyday on our drive into the city, but today we got to see the other side too!  :)

Took the subway a different route to go over the Potomac River even though we had walked over it on Day 1 (boy that was a long time ago!)  Went to a couple of Smithsonians today and saw some cool things.  The flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 when Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the song that became the Star-Spangled Banner.  Pretty incredible.  Then on to some lighter things like:   Archie Bunker's chair,  Apolo Ohno's speed skates, and Children's Little Golden Books.  We saw the fancy First Ladies' dresses. More history and more history.  Even a very early camper.  

Well that about concluded our time in DC.  It is amazing to get to spend time walking where some of our nation's greatest influencial people walked.  

**Sara