DC Parks

Yesterday was our first day of Spring Break and we don't leave for Utah until tomorrow.  We figured out a couple days ago that if we were able to sneak in 4 park sites before Utah, then Capitol Reef will be park #200.  It just so happened that between DC and Virginia, we had 4 parks left before we were completely finished with those areas.  So we did it!  They were all very quick stops, so we were able to get everything done in a very short amount of time.

We started with LBJ Memorial Grove which is where President Johnson would come to sit and look at the Potomac River as a way to relax and get rid of some stress.  LBJ also had a ranch in Texas that is a National Park unit as well, and that ranch was right on the Pedernales River.  The spot in the Memorial Grove reminded him of home.  If you look very closely in the picture below, there are a few blooming cherry blossoms.

Our next stop was to Theodore Roosevelt Island.  Now that we know what this is, we will likely be making another visit in the summer.  This was a huge memorial to Teddy Roosevelt (who was a major player in forming the National Park Service, so thank you Teddy!!), and had a lot of water features that had they been on, would have made this even more beautiful.  Instead, the huge T.R. statue will have to do.

After seeing Teddy, we headed to Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts.  We're huge fans of Straight No Chaser (an a capella group and they are awesome!) and they were at this theater a few years ago.  I asked Steve if he wanted to go to the concert thinking he wouldn't turn this opportunity down, but he did!  After seeing how cool the area is and how neat the theater looked, I made sure to rub this in to him a lot yesterday since we didn't see a show of any kind.  We will be going back someday to see something/someone perform there.

And our last stop of the day was to Pershing Park to see the World War I Memorial.  Living in Maryland means Steve and I took many trips to DC while we were growing up.  We must have passed this memorial a thousand times because it's only a block away from the White House, but we couldn't check it off the list until we made sure we saw it, so we finally did yesterday.

We ended the outing to DC with lunch at Capitol City Brewing Company.  Another thing we do on our travels is try local breweries.  Steve's uncle thinks we like to drink beer in small glasses, so you'll see me reference this phrase often (shout out to Uncle Mark!).  All-in-all it was a great preview for the bigger trip that starts tomorrow (well, technically Monday since we get in pretty late to Utah)!