Episode #43: Brad And I Take On D.C. - 2nd Of 2 Dad And Son Solo Trips

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 Brad and I finally take a trip that I have wanted to take for a couple of years but my work schedule at Gibson Energy and Brad finishing up college and working in Lubbock it was difficult to coordinate our schedule but we finally get the opportunity in June of 2014. This will be my third trip to Washington D.C. so I was familiar with the area well enough to plan this trip to hit most of the locations on my list and since his college major was history, I was sure this would be a vacation he would enjoy and remember.

We fly out of Oklahoma City rather than Dallas, the airfare was cheaper, the traffic was not near as bad and was only a little bit longer of a drive. We arrive in Richmond Virginia in mid afternoon and rent a car and drive up to Alexandria and stay at the same Holiday Inn that Carol and I stayed at during our trip here a couple of years earlier. One of the reasons I liked this hotel was the subway stop was just beyond the hotel parking lot and was very convenient.


The subway system here is pretty easy to understand and is a very efficient method of travel and is really the only way to go due to parking issues and the never ending traffic problems just getting in and out the District.


Our first stop after we check in the hotel and drop off the luggage was to take the subway into D.C. and look around and go inside the National Cathedral. It is a beautiful facility and the acoustics are amazing as we listen to the choir rehearse. We went to church there a couple of days later on Sunday morning. 



Over the next several days we get up and hit the ground running everyday, taking in as many sites as we can squeeze in, both during day and going back at night to see some of the memorials as they were all lit up and that added a whole different kind of magnificence.





One of our unplanned stops was at the National Spy Museum which was not only interesting and informative but also a lot of fun too. The picture below is the one I published of us in Episode #4 of this blog when I lost my cell phone here at this store during the visit. Here we were just trying on one the spy disguises to see how well they worked. 


When Carol Ann and I were here a couple of years earlier there was some repair work being done on the Washington Monument and we could not go up to the top like we did on this trip. I will publish the story about that trip in an upcoming episode. Here are two pictures of the visit to the top of that monument. The first one below is looking down the mall to the Capitol building and the second is a view of the World War ll Monument. Beyond that is the reflection pool with the Lincoln Memorial immediately behind it. From this vantage point of the memorial you also can see The Arlington Memorial Bridge as it crosses the Potomac River in the distance which takes you to the Arlington National Cemetery.  



During our trip we drove out to Monticello to visit the homeplace of Thomas Jefferson. It was an interesting and educational and glad I took the time to get a pose with old TJ himself.


We saw all of the monuments that Carol and I visited plus a few that we missed while we were there in 2012. The trip was a lot of fun and a huge success and even though this was my third visit here in the last seven years, it was special because it was probably the last trip he and I will take together.

Epilog-
We did plan another trip together six years later that fell apart and never happened. We had planned a trip to France to watch a few of stages of the Tour de France in 2020, but due to the stupid Covid scare of that year, the tour was canceled and the next year Theo was born. That was a trip that would have been a great one for sure. So now we watch it on TV every year and every year we remember the trip that never was.😩. The image below was our flight reservation on American Airlines.




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