Visiting DC - Day 1

Lindsay came into town to visit Chris and I and we all decided a spur of the moment trip to DC would be really fun.  We left early one morning and drove the four hours to our hotel right outside of the DC area.  We dropped off our things, had a quick snack and were off!  First thing we hit up was the national mall.  The mall is about 2 miles long one way so we started on one end with the state capitol and worked our way to the other end where the Lincoln Memorial was awaiting.  The weather was GORGEOUS and couldn't have been better.  Since it was a weekday, there were crowds but not the usual weekend crowds to deal with.

   
We got a chance to stop in at the Botanical Garden Conservatory which was having an orchid show.  So many beautiful flowers.  I'll try to only pick a few pictures out of the many that were taken there.

They also had a tulip garden outside with a pumphouse that we had to take some pics with. 

We walked past many of the big buildings downtown like the FBI building, the Canadian embassy, IRS building and many, many more. (There were blocks and blocks of HUGE buildings)  Plus you had all your museums interwoven in there which made for a lot of things to look at.  One of the favorite things about the museums is they're free...so in we went!  First was the Smithsonian National History museum. 

                                                               Easter Island Statue

                                                        This is for the Bello boys!

                                                 The Hope diamond is 45.52 carats total

                                                                    Meteorite

                                                Egyptian mummy.....ummm....wait......


After that we headed on up the mall to the washington monument.  Unfortunately it was closed due to some construction from an earlier earthquake so we couldn't go up to the top of it, but it was still pretty spectacular to look at. 

We kept walking till we found one of the war memorials (sorry, cant remember which one)  and by now the sun was starting to set. 

We made it to the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool.  Unfortunately the reflecting pool was drained due to some more construction which we were pretty bummed about, but we did get to see the Lincoln Memorial. 

 I'm not a huge history buff or anything but it was very humbling to walk around and see all of these historical buildings in person and see the immense work and thought that went into them.  We left the Lincoln Memorial and rode the subway back to our hotel for the night. 

Spring is here a bit early!

Sunday for one of Chris' days off we decided since it was going to be such a nice day, up near 70, that we would go on a short road trip to Akron, Ohio where the closest White Castle restaurant is.  I have never been and have been wanting to go so we did!  An hour and a half later we got there and oredered. 

It was VERY yummy!  I got 2 chicken sandwich sliders, onion straws and a drink and Chris got a 12 pack of regular sliders and a drink.  I think we polished off the food within 15 minutes. 

 Afterwards we didn't want to just get back in the car and leave so we found a geocache within the vicinity and conquered that.  I got my geocaching badge for Ohio and we got to enjoy some sunshine all at the same time.

Well, now we were in the geocaching mood so as we drove back we found about 6 geocaches along the road.  The one below was supposed to be super easy but it had us stopped at this rest stop for about 15 minutes looking for it.  We found it on the ground a ways from where it was supposed to be.  It had fallen out of the tree where the coordinates said it was so Chris fashioned a holder for it out of bark and put it back in the tree.

The other one that got our blood pumping was actually across the street from our place in Pittsburgh in the woods behind the Holiday Inn.  We started out going down this STEEP embankment filled with fallen trees, thorns and mud and then figured out to get to the cache we needed to go all the way back up to the top of the hill.  Instead of retracing our steps we decided to hoof it up the hill where we were.  The hill was almost straight up and we needed to grab onto trees and push off in order to get there.  Needless to say Chris made it up the hill first and I had to go up and down in about 5 different places to find a place I could FINALLY get up the hill. (and Chris still had to help me by throwing me a branch and pulling me up)  We finally found the cache as seen below.

 

 After all this hiking we were starving so we decided to go to the strip district and get ingredients for dinner.  We got stuff to make fettuccini alfredo, grilled chicken and brocolli.  While at the Penn Macaroni store we found the biggest jar of Nutella ever! (it was $87!)  Thats a years supply of Nutella right there!

 

Days like these will be coming more plentiful and I am so excited for that!

A Nice Surprise

After running errands almost all day, Chris told me he had a surprise for me.  At 8 pm and under a crisp, clear night sky we took off.  I had no idea where we were going and after a 20 minute drive I wound up seeing this ahead.

The Hartwood celebration of lights is a 3 1/2 mile drive thru of all these different scenes set up with Christmas Lights.  Hartwood is also a huge mansion (much like Pittock) where they do up the house in Christmas garb and you can tour it during the day. 
Some of the pictures I got are blurry because we weren't allowed to stop the car as there were a steady stream of cars throughtout the drive. (Chris stopped the car when he could but I still managed to blur some of them with the low light condition)  Enjoy!

There were lots of cool drive through arches (some pictured above) but the coolest one was at the end where there were tons of colors running so it made it look like you were moving even when you weren't.  I left the shutter open on my camera and got the picture below.  Pretty cool!