Epic DC Trip Day 1

This August one of my dearest friends, DeAnna Ray, was married in the Washington, D.C. temple, and I was able to go! DeAnna and I go way back to freshmen year in the dorms at BYU, and then we lived together in a "house of 6 girls" two years later. She is an amazing person, and everyone who meets her thinks so. She was one of my bridesmaids, and a keeper of secrets of mine. I am so happy that she met a wonderful man, Tim, and they choose to be married in the temple. Of course when I found out, I really wanted to go. I had a lot of Southwest Airlines points, so I was able to get a ticket. I emailed many of our old friends, and our RA from freshmen year, and my room roommate from "the house", Kristen, was able to go with. She was a fantastic traveling buddy. Even though we hadn't seen each other in a few years, we were able to pick up right where we left off, and had a grand adventure. The first day we traveled in and got to DC around 5pm EST. After some negotiating of our rental car (we almost ended up with this little clown car thing), we decided to see some sights before heading to where we were staying.
Driving around DC.
People were actually really considerate drivers, the highways all seem to go through forests, and without our neverlost GPS system that we nicknames Maggie, we would have always been lost :)
She would "ding" right before a turn we needed to take, and it was great

Also, with the time change, we weren't tired yet, and all the monuments are free, and open all night too. Check out what we got to see the first night:

Around the Washington Mall, and all that is there to see, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the World War Two Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Vietnam War Memorial. There was the huge reflection pool, but they were doing some maintenance on it.

Kristen and I at the Lincoln Memorial

Vietnam War Memorial, there are a lot of names there. We were on the tail end of a tour there, and the tour guide made one of those names come to life.

View of the Washington Monument from the WWII memorial.
My two grandfathers, William Aderman (Navy, on the ship USS Warren), and John Grazulis (Navy in Phillipines) and my great uncle George Croker (USAF pilot in Europe), all served our country in that war.This memorial made the sacrifice that so many gave real.

We decided after seeing all these things we should head to where we were staying, and see more the next day.

That was all just day one! (really just a night, but it was like being back to my single days, and it was different not having to worry about kids schedules while on vacation)