Pedroza's Place

(HINT: Click on the pictures to enlarge them)

As the southern bookend to the National Mall, the Jefferson Memorial shows me the southern nature of Washington DC. The original plan for the Capitol was to include parts of Virginia, but that was not to be. If Virginia had been included I think that the Jefferson Memorial would of made for an appropriate gateway. Due to our travel plans we got to see this monument both early in the morning and right before dusk:

The view at dusk is remarkably more dramatic, but as you can see there were a lot more people there at dusk than dawn.
Almost like all US Capitol monuments you will be immediately struck by the size.

Cast in bronze the Jefferson Memorial towers above you. Construction began in 1939, but because of the shortages of World War II, there wasn’t a bronze statue built until 1947 (in the interim they used a plaster statue).
Besides it’s enormity, I really enjoyed looking at the columns.

One thing you may or may not notice is that Jefferson is pointed to the White House:

I asked the Tour Guide about that and he said it was done that way by the designer so that the current President would always know someone was looking over his shoulder. Don’t know if it is true, but it sounded cool.
I don’t think we think of Jefferson so much as a architect, but his design influence is definately felt within every Federal building in existance.
The last thing I think about when I think about Jefferson is his words. Inside you will find excerpts from the Declaration of Independence and from A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1777.

Admission to the Jefferson Memorial is free and there is no screening, but there are plenty of armed park rangers standing by so I wouldn’t act too crazy if I were you!

Someone get a curator quick! Something weird is starting to grow on Mrs. Johnson’s hat:

What do you mean it supposed to look like that?!
Oh well, I guess there was no crisis after all. I guess I will just have to show you random pictures of AJ now.
This is a picture of AJ at the Reagan Center. I will talk more about this place later, but for now, you can know AJ was eating a chocolate ice cream sundae:

You gotta love the expression on the guy behind AJ. It kind of has a “what the heck are they doing here” look to it (you have to understand that the Reagan Center is not really a place where tourists go, but we figured since we were from California it was OK).
This picture is of AJ’s toy of the day. We bought it for him and he did not let go of it until he fell asleep:

Kind of looks like he is doing an Elvis impression to me.

Well, I don’t really have the time to write now, but I wanted to at least share some pictures with you.

Our last day in camp was a rainy day. We had scheduled to stay longer and maybe do some more fishing, but with the rain everyone just wanted to pack up and go. So after a quick breakfast that is exactly what we did. The only thing that was interesting was the night before one of the leader’s tents was attacked by an army of red ants. We tried everything we could to keep them away from the tent. In the end the only thing that worked was drenching the area around the tent with lots of water.
On the morning of our last day it was interesting to see the pollen pool. It was kind of like a river of yellow fuzzy things:

Day Four saw us back on the trail. This time we were camped out at the Clyde group campground in Big Pine Canyon. Working on our 10 mile hike we had two goals: see First and Second Falls and Palisade Glacier.

For Palisade Glacier we didn’t climb all the way to the top but we got pretty close. Along the way we saw a bunch of trail workers:

It is amazing how strong they are, I was huffing and puffing my way up and they climbed that trail as if it were nothing. What is more is they had a lot of equipment with them.

After checking out the glacier we turned directions and went to look for the falls. The first one we saw was First Falls:

This was relatively easy to get to, it was fun to see it. It is amazing to think of how much water runs through that water fall.
(video here)

After staring at First Falls for a bit we went on to Second Falls. The idea was to hike up the trail and just see it from a distance. Which we did:

It was cool, but decided that we needed to get closer so up we went. The view from up close was amazing. It is fun to feel the power of the mist hitting against you. After climing up to the falls we had to make the descent down:

After getting down it was just a matter of following the creek back to camp:

On the way back we some interesting stuff.
A horse outfitter:

A old abandoned house:

And a Cottonwood tree:

After 10 miles it was another exhausting day, but it was very beautiful.