5/14/18: Sunday night along the wharf was MUCH quieter than Saturday night! Sunday evening was pretty cool temperature wise – not as much fun at the wharf if you have to wear a fuzzy, compared to the summer hottie clothes all those young ladies were wearing on Saturday. 😉 We enjoyed a beverage up in the Yacht Club. Everyone is so nice here – not hoytie-toytie at all! And it is a beautiful club. It was all rebuilt in the last year when the entire wharf was rejuvenated. This yacht club is actually over 100 years old, and it has always been here in this location on Washington Channel.
The wharf has some fun features. Out on one pier there is a community fire teepee pyramid statue.
Here is the view of the marina including Island Girl (I.G.) Along the pier there are big arches with swings that everyone seems to enjoy.
Along the promenade, there is a community fire pit, complete with benches and rocking chairs! It was burning later in the evening. On Saturday night, this place was very busy with people!
The Wharf has been beautifully rebuilt.
This morning, we slept in a bit, then got ourselves rolling for our second day of our hop-on-hop-off tour. Much to captain’s dismay, we had to walk back over to the mall to catch a hop-on. We (actually I) wanted to see some of the buildings at the East end of the mall. Captain just tags along. We went past the White House. We didn’t hop-off for this one. It has been the residence of every president except for George Washington. It was built 1792-1800. A lot of it was burned in August 1814 when the British army burned much of Washington as part of the War of 1812. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and it has had additions, modifications, rebuilds and alterations over the years.
First hop-off was the Capitol building. Congress was not currently in session, so there wasn’t a lot of hustle bustle going on. Out front, at the end of the mall, is a statue memorial for Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War General, and 18th President.
This is the view from the Capitol, looking west. There is Ulysses on his horse – keeping watch, then the Washington Monument, then waaay off in the fog, the Lincoln Memorial. (It’s there, really!) This gives you a general idea of the “Mall” from this end. It was a foggy day, but I bet this is spectacular on a clear spring day!
The Capitol is an impressive building, and very hard to capture its size with a camera. This is the side that faces the mall, and the large front lawn. There is a huge lawn area which was being set up with a zillion chairs for an event. It has been “Police Week” here, so there have been a lot of events and law enforcement officers everywhere.
This is the other side.
This is another view of the opposite side. The wing on the left side of the picture is the House of Representatives. The wing on the opposite end is the Senate. Not long after the completion of both wings, it was partially burned by the British in August 1814. Reconstruction began in 1815, and was completed in 1819.
We went inside the Capitol to see what we could see. It was packed with school kids doing tours, so we decided not to try to wait for a tour. I did discover that the statue across the way is actually the plaster model for the bronze Statue of Freedom that sits on top of the Capitol Dome! It is over 19’ tall. The bronze piece was put in place on top of the dome in 1863.
We discovered a tunnel walkway over to the Library of Congress – a building I definitely wanted to see! It is beautiful! This is part of the “Great Hall”.
This building is actually now called the Thomas Jefferson building. The Library was originally established in 1800, and was housed in the Capitol Building. But when the British troops invaded the Capitol in 1814 (part of the War of 1812) and burned the building, the library was destroyed. The then retired President Jefferson offered his personal library as a replacement, and Congress appropriated funds to purchase it from him. This building was opened in 1897. In 1980 it was named after Jefferson in honor of his role in the Library’s history.
This is an overlook of “the Reading Room”. The ceiling is 160’ above the floor, and all of those alcoves are filled with books. The lights down on the floor are at desks for reading. Somewhere, there are more than 164 million items on 838 miles of bookshelves in this building.
Then we saw the Gutenberg Bible!! This was produced in Germany in the mid 1450’s – the first book printed using movable metal type. It is printed in Latin, and it is one of a handful of complete copies remaining in the world.
This is a beautiful glass, gold-leaf and marble mosaic of Minerva. I believe she is the Roman goddess guardian of civilization. The glass pieces just sparkled!
This is the collection of Thomas Jefferson’s books. It is actually a circular section, but the panoramic picture kind of flattens it out. He had books about everything! Politics, biology, medicine, art, music, language, philosophy, geology, astronomy… you name it!
This is the outside of the Thomas Jefferson Library of Congress building. There was a cool fountain at the bottom front where the three arches are, but I goofed up and didn’t get a close up of it.
Across the street is the U.S. Supreme Court building which was built between 1932-1935.
We had time to stop into one of the Smithsonian Museums. We picked the National Air & Space Museum. There is soooo much information in here – from the Wright Brothers to Mars exploration, and everything in between! This is the Gemini IV capsule. It is so small!!! It was the capsule used for the very first spacewalk!
There were some great models of the beginnings of flight.
This was cool. I should have got a little more of that Boeing 747 nose on the right of the picture! It is the cockpit and nose section from a Northwest Airlines 747, which is one of the aircraft that my dad flew for several years during his 30 year career as a pilot for Northwest Airlines (before they merged with Delta).
Kenny has always been fascinated with aircraft carriers since he worked a job that provided materials to the Naval Shipyard in Bremerton Washington. We watched a movie about launching aircraft from the deck of a carrier. I really never thought about all the different support aircraft that are launched – not just the fighter jets. This model was a carrier jet.
It was a really toasty afternoon, somewhere around 90 degrees. We came back to the boat and collapsed in the air conditioning for awhile. We knew there was a thunderstorm coming… and boy did it! The thunderousboomus storm hit, with pouring down rain, lightening, thunder, and wind. It’s sure good to be secure on a dock!
Captain checked his iphone to see how much we’ve walked. He says it is a bad trend… 6.6 miles yesterday, 6.6 miles today. Total number of steps today was 17,200 – within a hundred steps of yesterday. I’m pretty sure he won’t leave the boat with me tomorrow.
The wharf & marina here in Washington Channel is very close to Reagan International airport – it is maybe 1/2 mile as the crow flies to the west of us. And the helicopter base for Marine One, the Presidential helicopter, is just south of us. We hear airplanes take off all day long – except when the thunderstorm hits! And it seems like there are helicopters flying by all day long. I think the river is the ‘copter flight path to stay out of the path of the airport, because they just chop on by, right overhead. At least it settles down at night.