We drove off to see D.C. as our planned next stop, Cape Hatteras, was about to get hit by Maria in a couple of days. We camped at Cherry Hill Park in College Park, Maryland. It turned out to be another really nice park. We ended up 
staying 5 nights. Originally I had only booked for 2. We drove into D.C the first morning as I wanted to visit Arlington National Cemetery, but when we drove up the guards said no dogs. What a bummer. I then drove 
over to the Lincoln Memorial, but there isn’t any parking near it. We then drove up along the Mall for a bit and found some parking fairly close (relative term) to the Capitol building and took some pics, walked the pups. And Kathy wanted to walk to the Washington Monument, but I balked as it looked pretty far and it was already very hot and humid, and my knee wasn’t that good yet. As we drove down there, she exclaimed that it hadn’t looked so far,
It was the first hot, humid day we experienced on the east coast for some odd reason. We found 
a spot to park not too far from the monument and hiked over. It was closed till 2019. Seems it needs a new elevator. Took a few pics and headed back to the car before the parking time ran out. We then headed back 
out to College Park.
The next day we attended a meeting where they explained how to get around in DC and tours that are available. It was a pretty informative meeting where they fully explained how to use the public transportation (buses and subways) where to get off, etc. They also talked about guided tours, and we decided to take one of the night tours thinking it might be a bit cooler then. It was actually fun and we got to see a lot of things I didn’t even know were there.
First stop on the night tour was back to the exact same 
place we had parked to get some pics, just as the sun was going down. It was pretty cool as the capitol building looked golden in the setting sun.
After that we went to the White House to see if we could see Mr. Combover in a window. There were a lot of armed guards there, all carrying machine guns. I will have to look up what they were from this picture. The guide explained that recently they added more spikes to the top of the fence around the White House lawn. You might be able to see what looks like sharpened pencils between the big arrowheads.
We then headed over to the WW II memorial which was 
a very impressive place I didn’t know existed. Afterward they drove us to the Jefferson memorial. Not sure why they parked so far away, but it was quite a walk to the entrance by the road, and then we needed to hike 3/4ths the way 
around to the front. It was another nice spot and lots 
of steps to test my knee on this beautiful, warm, humid evening.
From there we went to the FDR memorial and walked 
along the Tidal Basin to the Martin Luther King memorial. Both of those were also impressive in their complete difference to the grandeur of the Jefferson memorial.
We then got bused over to the Korean War memorial, which was kind of a haunting place with all the faces of the solders carved into the walls, and the center has sporadically placed solders on patrol sculptures.
Then a short walk from the Korean memorial, and 87 steps up the front of the Lincoln memorial (4 score and 7) Those really tested the ole knee, was wondering 
what it would be like going down them. After getting a bunch of pics there, I decided to find a railing for the hike down them. By the time I was at the bottom, my knee was fully “done”. Luckily we only had to stroll over to the 
Vietnam memorial and then a short walk to the bus for the ride home to be back by 11:25.
I had installed an inside camera so Kathy could watch the dogs while we were gone. It has a mic and speaker so we can hear them if they are barking. We couldn’t see them most of the times we looked as I think they were sitting in the stairwell looking out that little window on the bottom of the door. [Not fun to know they were crying and howling while we were gone 🙁 ]
