Washington, DC (USA)

Mollie woke up at 0830 and ate breakfast.  We got ready and drove to Alexandria, where we stopped at Sabrina's to drop off the cake we'd made for her.  After that, we drove to Arlington National Cemetery, where (after we went through the new security process) we got another stamp for Mollie's NPS Passport book and walked over to visit the grave of my Uncle Bill (my mom's brother).  We then drove to Theodore Roosevelt Island for a special event (Teddy's 159th birthday and 50th anniversary of the park).  We ate a lunch (bologna and cheese sandwich, candy) in the car before we started hiking around the island.  It was misty and cool on the island and we enjoyed ourselves a lot.  When we arrived at the Memorial, we found out that we could shake hands with a man dressed as our 26th President! Mollie impressed him with her Yellowstone sweatshirt - he told us about his vacation there over 100 years ago. We got pictures of us shaking hands with "TR" and then visited an exhibit about the Civil War Defenses of Washington, where we learned about the first Colored Regiment.  At around 1200, we headed into D.C. and parked at L'Enfant.  We walked all around the area near the FAA and Smithsonian and even checked out the new (not yet opened) Museum of the Bible.  We stopped at our favorite Smithsonian building, the Freer-Sackler Art Museum,  Like always, the display (on Egyptian veneration of cats) was good.  Mollie commented that there were a lot of feline deities that protected women who were expecting babies. Our love of the house cat doesn't come close to how the Egyptians saw them! There were two other interesting exhibits in the Gallery: one on Chinese bells (which have two primary tones, unlike western bells) and one on art related to Buddha. By 1400, we headed home so Mollie could study.