A Day in Washington DC

We have lived in Maryland for about 3 months so we were long due for a trip to our nation's capital.  This was the first weekend that Adam had off since we moved here so we figured it would be the perfect time to go.  We got there around 10:00 am which was the perfect time to go because there was ample parking.  We parked right in front of the Washington Monument.  We couldn't get very close to the monument though because it was closed due to damage from the earth quake.   

We headed toward the White House and saw several secret servicemen on top of buildings.  I was wondering if they do that all day and then we saw Marine One fly over us.  They were picking the president up from the White house, which explains why the secret service was hanging out on rooftops with guns. 

This is the back of the White house.  We couldn't get very close from this side but you can sort of see the helicopter that landed on the south lawn.  

I have no clue what this building is.  It was just a neat picture. 

Here is the White house from the front.  I had been told by many people that it is much smaller in person.  I would probably have to agree a little bit.

In front of the Treasury Department. 

Archives of the United States of America. 

We headed to Capitol Hill next.  This picture was taken in front of the capitol building looking back at the Washington Monument. 

We stopped in at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.  I love the fact that these museums are free!

Our last stop of the day was the Lincoln Memorial.  This was probably my favorite monument.  The statue of Lincoln was much larger than I expected.   

They are renovating the reflection pond. It's great that they are fixing it, but it made for an ugly picture. 

On our way back to the car we walked past the WWII and Vietnam Memorials. 

One more picture of the monument before we head to the car.   

I also took some really random pictures throughout the day.  I thought this tree looked pretty cool. 

These purple bushes were all over National Mall.  They are so beautiful.  I wish I had a garden so that I could grow my own. 

At the Department of Agriculture I found this plant.  It looks edible to me. 

THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS!

Overall it was a great day.  We walked for four hours straight and I can sure feel it now.  I might not be able to walk tomorrow.  We can't wait to go back.  There is still so much DC to explore.  We are lucky to live so close to all of the excitement. 

Earthquakes and Hurricanes

While I was in Maine the Baltimore area experienced a 5.9 earthquake.  Adam said that it was one of the scariest things that he has ever experienced.  Our condo is on the 3rd floor so I can only imagine the increase in intensity from being 3 stories in the air.  He said that he could hear things falling off of the wall in the condo upstairs and that water was sloshing out of our fish tank onto the floor.  One of my coworkers sent out this photo after it happened.  The subject in the email said earthquake devastation in Elkridge MD.  I thought it was pretty funny. 

Just when I thought that I had missed the natural disaster, hurricane Irene came through.  Adam and I went to the store to buy bananas the day before Irene was supposed to hit us and found the water aisles to be completely empty.  The bananas were also sold out. Check out some of the pictures we took from the grocery stores. 

This is where the bottled water normally is.

Store #2 looked just like the first one. 

The hurricane wasn't as bad as it could have been (at least where we live).  We had some high winds that uprooted trees and ended up losing power for a little over a day.  That wasn't a surprise to us though because we seem to lose power on a weekly basis for no reason.  The next day we decided to grill out at the park because we didn't have power to cook our food.  Once we found a store that hadn't lost power, we bought some bratwurst and headed to Centennial park in Columbia.  It ended up being a beautiful day.  You wouldn't believe that a hurricane had come through less than 24 hours ago. 

The grocery store lost power and moved all of the meat to the center coolers, surrounded it with dry ice and covered all of it with cardboard. 

Adam enjoyed grilling out. 



Maine

A few weeks ago I took a trip to Maine for work.  I went there to learn about my responsibilities in my territory which was previously run out of our office in Scarborough.  I learned a lot about the job and got to meet some of the people that I will be talking to on the phone everyday.  I would have to say that the best part of the trip was definitely the seafood.  I had mussels, haddock, shrimp, crab and LOBSTER!

This was taken from the plane when we were landing.  it is hard to see but there is a lighthouse on a tiny island.

This is the view from the Lobster Shack, where we went to lunch

This is the little restaurant.  I had the lobster roll and it was so delicious. 

The view from the restaurant we went to for dinner. 

Belated August Post

We started off the month by going to a new area of Patapsco State Park called the Hilton area. I could tell that the park ranger found it strange that we had bikes on the back of the car.  Apparently this area wasn't designed for mountain biking and we found out the hard way.  It was the most intense mountain biking that either of us have ever experienced.  We didn't get pictures of us riding down a cliff (mostly because we were exhausted from carrying our bikes) but we did snap a few shots throughout the day. 

The Patapsco river

This train tunnel was really neat.  Adam looks so small standing in front of it. 

I couldn't take the hills anymore.  This one was a baby hill compared to what we encountered at the beginning of the day.