The 4th of July. What a great day for picnics, parades, and fireworks. Well, does one out of three count? Which of the three did we get? Fireworks!! And where, do you ask? The National Mall in Washington, D.C.!! Although we technically lived in DC last 4th of July, that was the day Susan's dad and his friend, Peter, rolled into town with the UHaul to take all of our stuff to NY. In the interest of beating traffic, we left DC around 3pm, made it to Claire's house in NJ (she was gone camping with friends, so good thing Dad had a key). And on the 5th we made it to NY and unloaded all our stuff. That means no fantastic 4th of July show last year and we wanted to get a chance to see the celebration in the nation's capital while we're still living on the LEast Coast (no, that's not a typo - that's intentional... as opposed to the BEST Coast AKA West Coast - at least if you believe my sister...)

So, our holiday weekend began a bit early as Ivan got Thursday and Friday off. Thursday morning we got ready for the trip and drove down to NJ to pick up our friend Kristen. We spent the night at her house and headed for DC around noonish. Traffic was significantly better than we had expected, so we took a detour through Annapolis. We had never been there before, so we went to the Capitol building and walked to the pier. It's a quaint little tourist town. If we had more time we would have liked to visit the Naval Academy, but that will have to wait for another trip.

We stayed with friends from our church down there and had a nice time visiting with them in the evening. On Saturday, we packed some PBJs and water and headed downtown with the purpose of seeing the parade and going paddleboating (or peddleboating, if you prefer) on the Tidal Basin. "But I thought you said you didn't see a parade?" you ask in confusion. Quite right. Although technically we did see the last float of the parade. Twice.

It took longer than we expected to get going in the morning (hey, we were on vacation - prime time to sleep in!), so we didn't get to downtown until about an hour after the parade started. We decided paddleboating was more important than the parade and thought we still might have time to catch part of the parade after we were done. While walking to the Tidal Basin, we passed the starting point for the parade and there were the Hare Krishna's congratulating our country on it's birthday. Or at least that's what the float said. (Here's a photo of the float - the words were on the back).

We made it to the Tidal Basin and rented a 4-seater (although only two can peddle at a time). We got some nice photos of the Jefferson Memorial and enjoyed the sunny, while not too hot weather. We ate some sandwiches, reminisced about many of the important lessons Ivan and I have learned during our marriage, and talked to Kristen about life in general. It was a great time. Eventually we got tired of peddling and we returned to the dock. It felt like forever, but was really just over an hour later.

We then headed to the Old Postal Tower to get a nice view of the city. Our path took us across the parade route and what did we see but the last float bouncing along (yes, the Hare Krishna float again). So I don't think that counts as having actually watched the parade. When we made it to the Postal Tower there was quite a line, but it moved quickly and we enjoyed a brief look at the skyline and the crowds below. We were somewhat surprised that there wasn't more decorating done to commemorate the occasion and apart from the crowds (and the garbage left behind) it could have been your average Saturday in DC.

We went back to our friends' house to cool off and recuperate before heading back to the National Mall for the evening fireworks display. The show was set for around 9:30pm and we got there about 2 hours in advance. We had prepared ourselves for the prospect of standing room only on the Mall, but brought a blanket to sit on just in case we found a square of grass. Surprisingly, although it was crowded, it wasn't as bad as we had expected. Not knowing the best place from which to watch the show, we approached the Washington Monument from the East and got a front row seat along Independence Ave. There was a tree blocking the bottom two-thirds of the monument, but from what we read on the internet the fireworks would be exploding above the monument, so we figured we would be all right. Well, you know what they say: "Don't believe everything you read." Sure enough, that lone tree was blocking 95% of the show, so we (along with a hundred other people sitting in the same vicinity) quickly jumped to our feet and skedaddled to a spot on the sidewalk with an unobstructed view. It wasn't too bad standing for the show, but now we know that the fireworks actually explode on the north west side of the monument and you're better off approaching the Mall from the Lincoln Memorial side than the Capitol side.

Apart from a strange malfunction to the screen on our camera, we enjoyed the show and got a few photos and a video to boot. Perhaps I'll post some of them when I get them on my computer.

One of the benefits of vacating our spot on the ground and heading for the sidewalk was that we were about 200 people closer to the metro and we didn't have to waste time gathering our belongings after the show. Instead, we high-tailed it out of there and made it to the Federal Triangle station with the first thousand people. The station was a madhouse, but the federal employees did a remarkable job at keeping everything running smoothly. We had opted for the Federal Triangle station over the Smithsonian station because for the direction we were headed we thought the metro cars would fill up before even getting to the Smithsonian. However, the Metro employees were on the ball and sent completely empty trains to the Smithsonian station every now and again to keep things moving.

We had prepared ourselves for an hour long wait for a train, but it was really more like 20 minutes. Once on the train, us gals had a seat the whole way while Ivan gave his up to an older woman (like the gentleman that he is). Once the train left DC and ran above ground, we could see some of the locals making their own fireworks displays (highly illegal in LA county, but apparently not so in MD). We had a few scares as the train stopped on the tracks waiting for the platform to clear and some locals seemingly intentionally aimed their bottle rockets in our direction. We thought we were in for a direct hit, but there were just a few near-misses, instead.

On Sunday we got an early start back home (we were planning on staying for church, but since Kristen and Ivan had to be back at work on Monday we didn't want to risk the afternoon traffic). It started out as smooth sailing, but we were glad we left when we did because by the end things were quite congested.

And now we can say we saw 4th of July fireworks in our nation's capital. And it was so worth it :)

Labels: NY, Quick Trip