Reflections On My Independence Day Trip To Washington DC

This trip was planned nearly one year ago.  As many of my friends and family know, I am a huge U2 fan.  I saw the band in concert twice in 2009 and had plans to see them three times in 2010.  The original plan for taking a trip at this time was to see U2 in concert in Chicago on July 6^th.  I started thinking that if I was already going to be out of town, why not just go to DC first for the Independence Day festivities?  I had always wanted to go, why not do both in one trip I thought.  I invited my friends Dain and Tom to join me and they agreed.  I purchased a plane ticket from Salt Lake City to DC.  I was about to purchase a ticket from DC to Chicago and another back to Salt Lake City when I decided to take a train back from Chicago.  One of the items on my bucket list is to take a long haul train so I figured this would be a perfect opportunity.  I went ahead and purchased a plane ticket from DC to Chicago and then bought a ticket on Amtrak’s California Zephyr train from Chicago to Salt Lake City, a trip lasting just shy of two days.  Hotel rooms were reserved, a Hyatt in Arlington near DC, and a Hilton in downtown Chicago.  All was meticulously planned out and I thought it would all work out when tragedy struck.  The lead singer for U2, Bono, hurt his back whilst practicing in Munich and the entire North American leg of this year’s tour was rescheduled for 2011.  Now I’m stuck in a kind of tricky situation.  I thought about going to Chicago anyway and playing tourist for a couple of days but then I decided to just hang on to my ticket, it will still be valid next year when U2 reschedules, I’ll play tourist then.  I wouldn’t be able to cancel the entire trip without losing my money on airfare and the train so I just decided to go to DC anyway.  My train fare was non-refundable but I was able to move my departure up two days.  So, here is what all I did during the trip:

Had an early flight to DC on July 2nd, connecting in Chicago where I would be returning in a few days…  My flight got in early evening so I went to dinner at a pizza place in Arlington and then went back to the hotel to rest up for my busy day to follow.  I had a really nice hotel room on the 14^th floor, got a free upgrade because the original room they gave me wasn’t clean.  I got up around 8 on July 3^rd and first went to Arlington National Cemetery which was close to the hotel.  The cemetery was a very emotional experience; I went to the grave of President John F Kennedy, the Tomb of the Unknowns, and various other memorials and grave sites.  I got to the Tomb of the Unknowns right at the end of the changing of the honor guard so I got to see part of it but I didn’t have my camera ready in time to record the ceremony.  I did get some pictures of the new guard after he posted.  I was very unimpressed with the state of the grounds at the cemetery.  Frankly, the grass looked like crap.  Those of you who have been with me to DC will recall me being equally unimpressed with the state of the grounds at the National Mall.  I don’t understand why we can spend 600 billion dollars on war when we can’t even turn on a sprinkler at a national cemetery.

After the cemetery, I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial.  I had been told by others that this is a very moving exhibit.  What I didn’t know is that you have to have tickets to see the permanent exhibit.  Having no ticket, I was able to see a display they had on Nazi propaganda but that was all.  As with many other places around DC, there were protestors out front speaking out against Israel’s incursions into Palestine.  The police at the museum seemed very on edge, likely from the shooting last year that led to a dead cop in the lobby.  The strictly forbade photos, even of the exterior of the building.  I saw them make one woman remove a picture file from her camera.

From there, I went to the Newseum.  I have wanted to visit the Newseum for a long long time but never seemed to get the chance.  In case your intuition skills aren’t up to the task, the Newseum is a museum dedicated to the news.  Being a news junkie, this was a fun place for me.  Rather than go into specifics of what was there, I’ll just reference my pictures on Facebook.

At this point, it was the evening so most other tourist spots were closed so I decided to walk around downtown DC and take pictures of various sites.  I went by the American Red Cross national headquarters which was kind of cool since I’m a volunteer with the Red Cross.  I also stopped by the Canadian Embassy to take some pictures for a Canadian friend of mine.  I then went by the White House.  I have been here several times before but some of those pictures were lost in a hard drive meltdown so I wanted to replace them.  I stopped and chatted with Conception Picciotto at her eternal protest in front of the White House.  If you have been to DC, you will likely remember her from her tent with the large yellow signs up on Pennsylvania Avenue.  She has been protesting on that spot continuously since 1981, sleeping there and all.  She is a little odd but surprisingly articulate for someone who wears a foil hat on her head to ward off government brainwashing.

Now on to dinner with my friend Bonnie.   We met up at a place called Capitol City Brewery, right up the street from Harry’s.  Harry’s has special meaning to my friend Dain and IJ.  Dinner was good, the margherittas were really good!  I went back to the hotel at that point, it was only around 8 but I was pretty tired from walking around all day.  I had intended to go to bed early but I ended up watching Harold and Kumar go to White Castle on the teevee until 11…

Now I’m up to Independence Day.  The parade started at 1145 so I left at 9, got to Constitution Ave around 930 to stake out my spot.  Most of the people stayed near the beginning of the parade route at Constitution and 7^th, I went to the end of the route at Constitution and 17^th where there were not nearly as many people.  I had a great view of the Washington Monument which I was able to backdrop into several of my pictures.  The parade was really fun, lots of high school marching bands that were actually pretty good.  There were several bands and high schools from my home state of Kansas that were there which was pretty cool.  I didn’t see anyone from Utah thoughL.  I think the best part of the parade was seeing the look of pride on the high schoolers faces.  I think back to when I was in high school and I would be filled with a tremendous sense of accomplishment had I had the chance to march in this parade.  I’m just assuming it was pride; it could have been heat exhaustion as it was over 100 degrees out…  Speaking of heat exhaustion, when the parade was over with I went back to the hotel and spent three hours with my air conditioner turned to 50 degrees.  That freaking heat and humidity just sucked the life out of me.  With my body cooled off, a pizza in my belly, I went back downtown for a coffee with a cute cop I met earlier on the mall followed by the concert and fireworks.  At least I planned on seeing the concert.  Some idiot at the National Park Service didn’t bother to tell anyone that you had to be actually sitting on the capitol steps to see the concert; everyone was under the impression that you could see it from the mall.  Needless to say, a lot of people were pissed that they didn’t get to see it, myself included.  I was able to get a good spot for the fireworks; I put myself in a spot where the Washington Monument would be in front of them to accentuate the photos and videos.  It was really cool when a small child began a rendition of America the Beautiful which several of the crowd joined in to.  After the fireworks, the wonderful minds at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority decided NOT to let people into the Metro at the Smithsonian station.  Not wanting to have to maneuver my way through a crowd of 1 million people to get to another station, I walked back to Arlington, a trip that took just over two hours.  Walking back that far was probably a pretty stupid decision as I really needed to get some sleep because I had to get up at 3 for my flight but I thought, screw it I’ll sleep when I’m dead.  I got back to the hotel around midnight, was able to squeeze in 3 hours of sleep before arising for my flight to Chicago.

Upon arriving in Chicago, I boarded a CTA train to Union Station.  I’m trying to keep an open mind and realize that I only saw a small swath of Chicago on my route to downtown but I was left with a rather unfavorable impression of the city.  The parts I saw were really run down.  The ‘L’ system was very old, the stations dank and dirty.  One thing that struck me was that I saw a lot of people who looked a lot like me in both age and socio economic status.  I felt sad that fate has brought them to live in such a crappy hell hole.  I got to Union Station around 7 am and had a 7 hour wait until my Amtrak train left.  Chicago’s Union station is a very nice station, but it is far too small for its needs.  I talked to a couple of gentlemen at the station who were on the very same train on the very same day one year prior.  They said that the train last year had hit a car, killing 3 people.  They had to wait 6 hours until Amtrak sent some busses for them.  The train ride was a very interesting experience.  For the first 18 hours I was sitting next to an elderly lady named Kris who was on her way home to Denver after visiting family in Chicago.  She was not impolite but neither was she very friendly.  She finally got off in Denver so I had two seats to myself for the duration of the trip.  Across the aisle was an Amish couple on their way to Utah for a conference.  They were very nice people; they surprised me in that they had phones and cameras.  Apparently they are from a sect of Amish that uses technology to a certain extent but still doesn’t drive.  The husband was a construction worker in northern Kentucky and the wife was a homemaker (albeit with no children).  The train was very full of Amish, supposedly Amtrak frequently is.  One item of note is that I thought many of the Amish women were very beautiful.  I don’t like makeup on women, so the Amish were right up my alley (except for their boring clothing).  The ride was very long and the seat grew uncomfortable after a time but the train had a dining car and a lounge on it so I could move around a bit.  There was a snack bar with sandwiches, candy and soda.  The little bald man running the snack bar was funny as hell, very feisty.  The ride was very scenic; I got a few nice pictures going through Colorado.  I think though that if I ever ride Amtrak again I will get a sleeper room so I don’t have to try to sleep in a coach seat.  I met some interesting people in the lounge.  One, an elderly gentleman from Chicago had never been outside the city in his 70 years so he was fascinated with the farms and open fields of the Midwest.  Another guy was a DJ from LA who was kind of the same way although he seemed to have traveled around at least a bit.  I got back to town and had to convince the Amish couple to take a taxi to their hotel, they wanted to walk but the train station is in a kind of bad part of Salt Lake City.  From there, it was off to bed where I slept for 11 hours…