The End of an Adventure

28 days in the District have come and gone, and what a special time it was. We read a lot of articles, shook hands with congresspeople and took many a tour. One of the last things we got to do was take a Moonlight Monument Tour on Wednesday night. Around 8:00 a woman named Wanda picked us up in a "party bus," a bus decked out on the inside with lots of lights, loud speakers and seats lining the walls. We picked up Jack, our professor, in Georgetown and we headed west across the Potomac into Arlington, where we stopped at the Marine Corps War Memorial. We got off the bus and sang the Marines' Hymn because Jack is a proud Marine veteran and he felt compelled to get us to do so.

After we left Arlington we went back into Washington and visited the US Capitol where Jack talked about the Statue of Freedom which stands atop the Capitol Dome. Thomas Crawford sculpted it out of bronze in 1863. Following our final visit to the Capitol, we rode two miles down Independence Avenue to see the Washington Monument in all its obelisk glory. Then we ventured over to the World War II Memorial, an especially picturesque sight under the moonlight. The last of four landmarks that line up directly with each other in Central Washington, we stopped at the Lincoln Memorial and spent a few minutes there, admiring Daniel Chester French's beautiful sculpture of Lincoln as well as his second inaugural address and the Gettysburg Address, carved on the north and south walls of the memorial chamber, respectively. Dr. Martin Luther King's magnificent memorial was next on our list and all of his quotes that line the walls surrounding his likeness really add to his calming effect. Across the Tidal Basin from the MLK Memorial is the iconic Thomas Jefferson Memorial, which was our next stop and the second-to-last on our list. With our Moonlight Monument Tour winding down, a few of us got off the bus to take one last look at Thomas Jefferson's enormous and dramatic representation before our time in Washington came to a close. The Jefferson Memorial is a sacred place, and with only a few visitors there at that hour, it was also a tranquil place. The steps of the Jefferson also offer one of the best views of the Washington Monument that the area has to offer, so we took that in for the final time as well. We rode back into town and over to Lafayette Square to exit the bus for our final stop: The White House. We walked through the Square and took a short look at the President's home before the police told us the Avenue (Pennsylvania Avenue) was closed for the night. From there we headed back over to George Washington University's Mount Vernon Campus, and called it a night. The Moonlight Monument Tour was very special.
It was a nice end to an amazing adventure.