Today is the first day of our Washington, DC rally. The day consists of an orientation meeting and a welcome dinner tonight. We have been here since last Friday, spent two days touring Washington, got tired of touring Washington, have spent two days in the campground doing exciting stuff like laundry, and now are ready to get back to touring Washington.

The campground is a great location. Metro buses as well as tour buses come by here to pick up folks wanting to travel to Washington. We attended an orientation the first evening we were here, and it was recommend that we drive several miles to a Metro parking area where we could catch the subway. We did and we did. The subway was relatively easy to master even with transfers and even for the Joneses who are noted for getting confused and ending up in Boston. So, we were able to explore on our own.

We tried to pick things that were not on our agenda even though there will be overlap. There is so much to see, and we have limited capacity for absorbing it all. To begin with, we did have to take a picture of this placid pool in front of the Capitol building as a metaphor for a do-nothing Congress. (I’ll try to limit my comments on this theme to the previous sentence.)

One objective on our pre-tour tours was to try to see some of the Smithsonian museums before the one day of our rally agenda we have to visit the Smithsonian museums. Since there are so many of them we were like kids in a candy store trying to figure out what to eat first. We chose the Museum of Natural History. After a day there, we realized we could easily spend a second day at the same museum. We will not, but at least the time spent there gave us a taste of the museum.

On our second day we decided to take a bus tour of the city. It was a hop on, hop off tour bus. We hopped off at the Museum of the American Indian. We spent more time in the cafeteria where they had native-inspired foods from different parts of the Americas. What a wonderful eating experience.

And, in Washington DC there are statues of dead white guys on horses all over the place. I’m sure we will see more during the week we spend exploring Washington. This time spent here is a great thing to do, and we are thankful that our schedule worked out that we could be here. I almost forgot we are retired. It’s the expected thing to do.