Half the time I write this blog, I don't really think that many people read it. It's more of a documentation of the boys childhood, and our adventures, so someday if the boys want to look back on it (or if I do!), it's all right here! Sometimes we talk about something and can't remember the details, and up comes the blog. It's a good thing to have, it's like our own little family scrapbook. But, I am aware that this blog in particular, will draw some extra readers. I've had multiple people tell me they can't wait to read this one, so I sure hope I don't let you all down! There's a lot of pictures and a lot to get to, so I'm making this a two-parter. This one will cover our first day and half, so except for a few tid-bits here and there, it's mostly our visits to museums and monuments and such, but obviously we were there for the inauguration, so I tried to make observations to file them away to share with you all (full disclosure: I even sent myself emails along the way so I would remember the things that I heard and saw).
Most of you, if not all of you, are fully aware of the fact that we home school, and that a lot of our home school over the years has focused quite a bit on history, government, and politics. Through it all, it is very important to us that we teach the boys that no person is all good, or all bad, that different viewpoints are a good thing as long as you are respectful, that no one party is all right or all wrong, that you have to consider other perspectives, that you can't just dismiss someone because you disagree.
Just like I wrote in my rally blog (which, if you haven't read, there's the link back to it for reference), I will try and be as unbiased as I can, but know that you are reading a blog from a Liberal Independent, who does their very best to consider all the angles I can, and more importantly to teach my kids to do the same. I say all the time, I don't care if I'm raising Democrats, Republicans, Independents or any other party members, as long as I'm raising them to be informed and respectful, I've done my job.
It was maybe a year and a half ago, in the midst of the president's project, we decided it would just be the coolest thing to go see a presidential inauguration. To us, it is all a part of history, seeing it in person would just be the cherry on top of an already awesome project. I talked to my mom about it, and she was on board too. She had never gone to one, and thought it sounded like a great experience. We decided no matter who got elected, we were going. Now, this was a year and a half ago, and despite everything that happened in this election cycle, we never wavered. We said 'no matter what', we meant 'no matter what'. We booked our airline tickets and our hotel room back in September. We were in this, again, no matter what, because Democracy should always be celebrated, and the Office of the Presidency should always be given some level of respect.
I cannot say I was not disappointed on election night. Besides my own personal views, it would have been even more awesome to be at the inauguration for the first woman president, if for nothing else, for the history of it all. It's why 1.8 million people turned out to see our first African American president be inaugurated. Of course, every one is historic, but even the boys mentioned how cool that would have been. (Side note: I have promised Peyton no matter when the first woman is elected president, if I'm still living, I'll take him, and my mom got in on that as well). I'd also be lying if I didn't say going to the inauguration lost some enthusiasm for me when the person I voted for had lost. But, I've spent years now teaching the boys to always be open to hearing other people out, to accepting things that don't go your way, to making the best of your situations, and to keeping your word. If I backpedaled on this one, I would have been a huge hypocrite. There was never a discussion about not going. That decision was made a year and a half ago.
All of that all being said, on to it, I go.
We headed for the airport on Wednesday morning. (A big shout out to Tracy who watched our furry family members while we were gone, awesome job as usual, Tracy! You guys, she even caught that I had left the meat in the fridge for Austria day and it would need to be frozen to still be good when we got back and put it in the freezer. My house/pet sitter is the most amazing!) Anyway, It was very apparent at the gate we were headed to Trump's inauguration, as there were a number of 'Make America Great Again' hats boarding the plane.
We flew Southwest, and ended up in the very last row, thanks to me forgetting to log in to get our boarding passes at the 24 hour mark, but as I was in the aisle seat, I could hear the flight attendants in the back talking to each other, complaining about 'Trump supporters' on the plane saying things like 'God help us all', and whispering about racists and making comments about how the plane was pretty much all white men (I would say it was the least diverse flight I've probably ever been on, but then my flight back might have even been less diverse, just an observation I would carry with me for the next few days). The three of them in the back were all happy they weren't staying in Washington D.C. for the festivities (or what they called 'the end of the world'). Look, I don't think this is the end of the world. And I don't want to stereotype all Trump supporters into some bad experiences. Every party has some serious bad apples. And I can see how people who have felt personally discriminated against would have a hard time with this. But, I wanted to tell you about over-hearing the Flight Attendants, because I want report everything I heard, not just what I heard from people on the Trump bandwagon, but from everyone. Plus, that kept me aware to keep my ears open to conversations around me for the next couple days. I'd also like to note we had a lot of law enforcement on our flight, going to D.C. to help with the gigantic task of keeping everyone safe. Thanks, guys. Spectacular job!
We landed in D.C. and caught a cab to our hotel. We stayed across the river in Crystal City, Virginia, because the hotel prices were not astronomical over there. It was right off the metro, so while I was concerned about metro crowds, I figured it was just something we would deal with. We were ready for a late lunch, so we walked over to 'We, The Pizza' for a couple of slices. (It was delicious, and a really good price point for the 5 of us to have lunch for under $25)
After lunch we took the metro into D.C., as soon as you got over to D.C. on Wednesday afternoon, it became obvious something big was just a few days away. The streets on Pennsylvania Ave were full of stands for the parade, and port a potties (Oh my goodness, the port-a-potties, they are EVERYWHERE) But with two days still to go, they were all locked up. The poor people tasked with unlocking all those things on the early morning hours Friday deserve some thanks too.
We made our way down Pennsylvania Ave, with Trump's new hotel behind us, and past the Newseum. Given some controversies surrounding Trump, and his treatment of certain groups, I found their sign interesting.
But below that, there it was for all of us to see: 'President Trump'. Here's the thing, part of the reason I'm glad I went, is it does make this whole thing easier to swallow. I remember when George W. was inaugurated (a guy I thought I despised, but have since realized I simply disagreed with, and should respect for his service to the country---- see, I wasn't always this way, I'm learning too!), I kind of stuck my head in the sand. I didn't watch his inauguration, I tried to just tune him out. But, now I think it's important to know what's going on around you, to stay informed, and even when it's hard, to show up. I showed up this time. This is happening, whether we like it or not.
The Newseum is kind of cool. I've never been inside (it is a bit pricey, especially compared to most places in DC that are free), but everyday, outside, they display front pages of newspapers from around the world, and various states. Not surprisingly, most of them were about Obama's final days, and Trump's upcoming inaugural. And as you might expect, papers from state's where a Republican candidate nearly always wins, was a lot more favorable than the blue states. To be clear, I don't think any of it was 'Fake News', it was just what they chose to cover, the positive or the negative, because remember there's always a little of both.
We made our way down to the Capitol Building just to check it out. My mom had gotten tickets from her Representative's Office for all of us, so we knew we were going to be the 'West Standing' Blue area. When we found the spot, we were pretty pleased. Our section started right behind all those chairs!
You'll notice behind the boys, there's a fence. So much of D.C. was already fenced off when we got there on Wednesday. It was nearly impossible to get up to the other side of the Capitol (it may in fact have been impossible, we just knew from where we were at the bottom of the hill, getting up there was not feasible). So this time around there were no visits to the Library of Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the Capitol Building itself. Also closed, some of the Smithsonian museums closest to the Capitol like the Botanical Gardens, and the National Museum of the American Indian.
Some signs of resistance to the upcoming inauguration were already showing up, and I'll admit, while totally unnecessary, it earned a chuckle.
Oh, and the tops of buildings were lined with News tents, we even spotted CNN!
I admittedly had lost some enthusiasm for the trip after the election, so I hadn't really looked into booking a tour to the capitol, or tickets for anything. I checked Monday and there were still a few time slots available to go to the National Archives to see the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. I thought that would be a great. You know, get some wisdom from our Founding Fathers, remember that this is bigger than a party, or a movement, or really, any of us; this is about Democracy, and the fact that we are lucky enough to be born in a country where we get a say, and a have a right to protest, and can peacefully transition from one leader to the next. It's something we often take for granted, but it isn't to be overlooked.
While we had our timed entry for the National Archives, we actually didn't need them. We walked right up, there was hardly a line, and we were in and out of there quickly. The lack of crowds on Wednesday was a little shocking. Last time I was there, the place was super crowded (to be fair, it was Easter Weekend AND the Cherry Blossoms were in full bloom), and I had heard so much about how crazy it would be, I was definitely surprised at our ease of moving around D.C. (Crowd wise at least, fences were another story.)
It's always super cool to see those documents in person, but I swear the Declaration in particular seems even more faded than the last time I saw it.
Anyway, after that we went to the gift shop to browse around. The Archives has one of the best shops in D.C. If you're there, I highly recommend.
Of course, every gift shop we were in had all their brand new President Trump merchandise out.
We strolled through the Art Gallery's sculpture garden, and then over to the mall. Besides just the event, the weather was unseasonably nice for D.C. in January, so I figured lots of people would be out and about, but it just wasn't crowded at all. This isn't a knock on the crowds (I know it's been a source of contention), just an observation. I was prepared for it to be crazy. And it just wasn't, not on Wednesday anyway. (I mean, you can check out my pictures, 5 o'clock on Wednesday and the mall was empty).
You did have to be sort of careful where you walked though, you could get stuck on the wrong side of the fence, and then have to go way out of your way. On Wednesday you could still scoot the fences open and slide through, but by Thursday, that was no longer the case.
This year we're working on a new project: Celebrating every country in the world, at least by UN standards. Each country has a lesson and a meal, and some have field trips or activities. We had learned a bit about South Africa on Tuesday before we left, but waited on our meal until we got to D.C., where we could go to Nando's Peri-Peri, a restaurant chain started in South Africa.
There was Sangria, and spicy chicken, and macho peas, and Portuguese garlic bread. It was all delicious.
We walked back to the hotel, got ourselves some hot chocolate and headed back up to the room.
Like I said, my mom got tickets from her Congressman for the Inauguration. Now, anyone can go to the inauguration, but to get within half a mile, you'll need a ticket. If you don't have one, of course you can watch from the National Mall, and there are plenty of screens up to watch the action. But, if you contact your Congressman after the election, and are lucky enough to get some of the free tickets from them, you'll be assigned an area, and can be up much closer. I think every office has a different way of deciding who gets the tickets, but my mom was the first person who called about tickets- before the election even took place, so I suspect that might have had something to do with it.
She got six tickets, and a whole packet with a program and everything. The office of Jim Jordan was also nice enough to send along another copy of the program and such for me. Then, my Aunt Patti, who was staying with my grandma so mom could come on the trip, packaged them all up for us, so they wouldn't get rained on. She even packaged them for our 'moving buddy' duos. After how crowded it was at the Cherry Blossoms, each of us had a pair to stay in, in case we ever got separated.
The hotel had an indoor pool, so the boys hit that on Wednesday night.
Thursday morning there were quite a few hotel guests at breakfast. The place was buzzing a bit more than it had been the day before, so it seemed as though people had come in overnight (and more so on Thursday). It was clear most were there for the inauguration, and more specifically in support of Trump. There were hats, and shirts, and buttons. As I was waiting on my waffle to cook, I could hear three older gentlemen at a table right next to the waffle maker. They were talking about how Donald Trump doesn't have to tell everyone everything he's up to, because it's for our safety. I'm not sure what they were talking about in this instance, but then they went on to talk about how it's 'Not like the secrets Obama kept from us.' And there we had it, my first silent eye roll of the day.
After breakfast, we were off to the metro, and there were plenty of signs to let us know tomorrow was not going to be business as usual.
The mall was still pretty quiet at 10:30 on Thursday morning. I do want to point out the giant white plastic squares that interconnected on the mall. I'm not sure if they were there to protect the new sod and that project on the mall, but I know a lot has been made about them lately. They did cover basically the whole mall. There was more of a police presence the next day, and it seemed like even more fences had gone up overnight.
News trucks were also lining the streets in masses, and boy is there a serious collection of cables.
Our first stop Thursday was the Natural History Museum.
The museums had just opened at 10, so I'm guessing that's why they were still so empty. Whatever the reason, we basically had the place to ourselves for a good hour. It got more crowded toward the end, but as you'll see in my pictures, there weren't too many people around. It was certainly a unique experience to get to go up to any display you wanted and have it all to yourself. Maybe we should always go to D.C. in January, especially if you can get some unseasonably warm weather like we got on Wednesday, Thursday (and sort of Friday).
I mean, we were the only people around the Hope Diamond. That was awesome.
And we got to touch Mars without any problems at all.
We did get to see a few displays that fit into our country project pretty well, especially since we had just dealt with South Africa and the 'Cradle of Humankind'.
At one point in the Human Origins section we were joined by a group of teenagers wearing 'Young Christian Republicans'. Look, I try and be respectful of people's views, especially when it comes to politics and religion. But, they were all standing around talking about how 'stupid people' are, who 'believe that we came from this'. They went on and on about it, taking selfies next to the different skulls showing how we evolved and mocking it. That just rubbed me the wrong way on so many levels.
Back outside, we decided to make our way to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (where they print our money!), we crossed the national mall once again and navigated our way through the fences. There were some more people out and about, and a few cheers could be heard every time someone waved a Trump flag or a car went by all decked out for Trump. This I took with a grain of salt. After my experiences at the Trump rally, this whole thing admittedly made me cringe a little, but they were just celebrating their candidate, something I'm sure happened for Obama in 2009 and 2013. And in all honesty, on Thursday it was much less rowdy than I had expected it to be. I thought it would be a street party in celebration (given what I had seen at the rallies), but it really wasn't at all. The mood was pretty quiet and subdued over all, and it just kind of added to the thought that we were all here just to see a peaceful transfer of power, an American tradition, and history together.
We found our way down to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and got in line. Usually, when we am there you have to have tickets to go on the tour and see money being printed. The tickets are free, but the only way to get them is to be there when the ticket window opens for the day, and then come back at your ticketed time. That's not awesome, because it's really kind of out of the way, and I've heard they usually they run out of tickets before they get through the whole line waiting. But, apparently, because of low crowd volumes, from the end of August to the very beginning of March you don't have to have tickets, you just show up. It's a tour I've always wanted to go on, and Peyton, Calib and I had just been to the mint in Denver to see coins being made, so I was excited to take advantage of the time of year.
You can't take pictures inside the tour, and sadly, the room for cutting and packaging the sheets of money was being redone, so we missed seeing that, but all in all, it's a tour I would recommend. We had a short (albeit out dated) video at the beginning, and then got to look in on the sheets of money being made. Like I said, I knew I was going to be around a lot of people who had proudly voted for Trump, that was fine. But, some things I heard on that tour blew my mind. These two guys, probably in their 50's, just kept talking about how they couldn't 'wait until tomorrow' when 'Trump gets rid of the Federal Reserve and starts a new one.' I mean, where in the world did they even get this from?
The tour drops you out into a gift shop, and then the other side of the Bureau.
It was at this point I noticed, the perimeter had expanded even further and more streets were blocked off. Snow plows were blocking the streets as far out as the Jefferson Memorial.
Luckily, it was still pretty easy to get around by foot, so we did the whole loop, going to the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR memorial and finishing up at the MLK memorial. All, again, not full of crowds, and pretty empty in comparison to the last time I was there, or really anytime I've been there. It just seemed weird to me, because it wasn't at all what I was expecting. I guess people don't really come in early for inaugurations for sight seeing. Am I harping on this? I don't know, I've been asked about the crowd size a lot, so I'm just making observations along the way.
Not only are the monuments amazing, but they offer some really great wisdom.
After we left the MLK memorial, we thought we could see some of the Lincoln Memorial. I was pretty sure we couldn't get up to it, with the 'Make America Great Again' Concert, but I didn't realize just how difficult it would to get anywhere near it. We walked along the fence that had been put up, past bands and performers there for the evening, waiting for an opening to stroll in. Perhaps that was naive of us. You had to walk all the way to the WWII memorial, to get in, and then you had to go through security. I wasn't super interested in the concert. I mean, lets face it, no matter what you think about it, or why you think it is, or if you even care, there wasn't really a headliner to grab our attention. I mean, I heard enough Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless the USA' for a lifetime working at Cedar Point. So we opted not to go in, especially knowing we couldn't get anywhere near the Lincoln Memorial.
There was a steady stream of people heading into the concert, though. It was pretty obvious where they were all going decked out in their Trump hats and gear. But, it wasn't impossible, or really even difficult to walk against the crowd. It was an hour and half before the concert, and there were plenty of people. But no build up at security, and no huge line to get in.
We walked up to the Washington Monument, and I snapped a few pictures back at the Lincoln Memorial getting ready for the concert.
It seemed since our last walk across the mall just a few hours ago, things had picked up, there were more people, and vendors selling everything Trump. At one point, someone asked if I'd like to buy a Trump scarf. I thought to myself 'in no world am I your demographic for that, not the scarf or the Trump merchandise.'
That was my last look at the Obama White House too. I took a second to take that in. Look, I said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm proving a point. I'm proving that I would show up to a White House Easter Egg Roll in a Trump presidency. But, that doesn't mean I won't take a second to reflect on the last eight years, and just how much I did like Obama as president. His rhetoric and his message resonates with me, I know it doesn't with everyone, and that's ok. But it does with me. And I will miss him. I'll miss how charismatic and warm he and Michelle were, I'll miss the speeches that are made to inspire, and I'll miss the example his actions set for my kids. That's just my two cents there.
And of course, the presidents! 'The Glorious Burden', oh I couldn't agree more. Of course we saw our favorites: Lincolns hat, the writing desk Thomas Jefferson used, and various other presidential odds and ends.
To my surprise, a day before the inauguration, it had already been updated. I wonder when that happened!
Also, in the gift shop, there was the book we used for our project, complete with the new president right on the front.
Of course, there was other fun stuff: Fraggles & Muppets!
Back across the mall to head to the metro, we passed the huge tent for the media. Outside, a couple of reports were either on air, or about to go on, when a man screamed at them 'You're normalizing a monster!' He was causing a scene, and having watched what I did at the Trump rally, and seeing first hand the terrible treatment of the media, I felt horrible. They're getting this no matter what they do. They report facts, because that's what they do, and they're accused of 'spreading lies'. They report more facts, because that's still what they do, and they're accused of 'normalizing Trump.' These people are just trying to do their jobs. I think it's dangerous to label anything you don't seem to agree with as 'Fake News'. Look, I don't love everything Fox News puts out there, but I would never call them 'fake news'. I mean, I get it, Donald Trump does not like bad press, who does? But to label the things that he doesn't like as fake? it's just irresponsible, and frankly, I believe unAmerican. Did Obama do some things to the press that I didn't love? Yes, and I'm willing to admit that. But I am so over this cycle of 'well, they did it, so we'll do it', over and over again. I heard things resembling that SO. MANY. TIMES. in the last two days.
Ok, enough of that rant. So, check out the empty streets. It's kind of fun to be able to walk around D.C. and not worry about cars. On Thursday, every time we left somewhere, it seemed like the perimeter had gotten bigger and more streets were closed off, and more giant trucks (and even buses) had been moved in to block off streets. There were also more and more people selling Trump merchandise.
That was it for our day Thursday, we didn't stay on the mall to see the fireworks or the concert, but you could hear them from our hotel window, and we did watch it on TV. Our goal was to be back to the room and tucked in early, because on Friday we were going to be up and on the metro before daylight.
We set out our stuff the night before. Peyton and I had quite the collection to wear to the inauguration. While most of it wasn't visible, I knew I was wearing Alexander Hamilton socks to the event, and that made me happy. Also, in my silent 'protest' (although I hate to call it that, it's more of a silent statement if there is such a thing), I wore a 'Love Trumps Hate' button. Because, no matter what you think about Trump, we should all agree that the world needs a little more love, and a little less hate.
In case you're wondering, I did buy a Trump button for my collection.
Next Up: The 58th Inaugural
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