What greeted us was this view where we would be spending the next six days.
It was very hot for the first few days including the Annan family reunion day. This reunion actually included three family names that all descended from my father in-laws dad and siblings. It was held a Greenwell State Park in Maryland and was about an hour from where we were staying. I knew some of the family but others i met for the first time. It was a fun day with food and stories in abundance.
The rest of our week was spent relaxing. I got a couple of rounds of golf in with Steve which was fun although my golf was pretty bad. We really enjoyed sitting in the back yard watching the wildlife including a large umber of Ospreys. I tried to take pics of them but i don't think i had an adequate lens. You can see the one below has a fish in his claws.
On Thursday we drove to Washington DC for two nights. We met up with Dusti's cousins Lisa and Courtney. We spent the first day at the US National History Museum and the Holocaust Museum. We also walked checked out the Washington Memorial. It was extremely hot outside so being in the museums was a welcome break. The holocaust Museum was pretty amazing. They has one room filled with the shoes of victims of the Nazis it was this exhibit was the one that really struck me. The smell of the leather just made it so real compared to all the photos and video which i of course had seen over the years on TV etc. There was just something about those shoes. It was very sad.
DC was a very cool city. I was amazed on how clean it was. The only drawback was they were renovating the Mall and the reflecting pool was drained which hurt my photo ops.
On the Friday morning Dusti, Lisa and i took a cab to the Lincoln Memorial to catch the sunrise. I knew this was going to be special. We got some terrific shots of the light coming through the memorial on the statue of Lincoln. There were very few tourists around this early. A few joggers but that was it. We managed to shoot the Vietnam Memorial and and Korean War Memorial also.
After taking a short nap we spent the rest of the day at the Museum of Natural History. This was the highlight of the holiday for Dusti. She loved it. We saw all kinds if fossils, dinosaur bones, precious gems including the Hope Diamond which is apparently was formed 1.1 billion years ago and is worth 280 million dollars. It was really impressive and along with all the other museums we went to it was free.
After our long day we met up with my former high school friend Andy and his friend Emily at the Elephant and the Castle for a few pints of Guinness. It was a great way to round off our holiday. The next morning we left DC at 5AM and got back to our hour exactly 8 hours later!
