...as we celebrate our independence day...

We woke up late on the 4th and to avoid the incredible crowds downtown DC, we left. We drove down south into Virginia to see Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. We parked in a overflow lot and walked to the gate. Once we entered, the line for the mansion tour was about an hour long, and we only had four hours until closing. We stood in line and did some people watching as well as got to witness a reenactment of taking a prison in for questioning. We walked into the mansion, and the line moved slowly through each room as an interpreter spoke about what we were looking at and its place in history. The tour was good and the house was interesting. On the backside of the house, there was a rolling green that leads down to the wide Potomac river. Most of the visitors to Mount Vernon were out on the lawn with their families enjoying the day, and a George Washington character paraded the grounds and posed with tourists for pictures. We moved on (without our photo with a fake founding father) and walked toward the other buildings on the property. There were big stables with a horse and mule. There were houses for buggies, a smoke house, wash house, etc. At the bottom of the hill, there was a small working farm and a barn of Washington's invention, made with 16 walls and two stories. It was used to seperate the grain from stalk during wheat harvest by way of having horses trod upon the whole stalk, and the grain would fall between cracks in the floor to the downstairs. Workers would then collect the grain and clean it using a cleaner not to different from the one I used last summer on our Montana farm. The farm had examples of tobacco, wheat, and corn. There was also a replica slave quarters. One of the most interesting subject to me was the different type of fences that were used on Washington's farm. After the farm we walked to the burial and memorial area. There is a shrine to Washington and his family and a nice memorial for the slaves that were buried on the property.
At that time, we were slowly getting moved back to the entrance as the grounds were closing. We walked through the two museums at the entrance to the grounds which had on collection many dishes, paintings, letters, swords, as well as Washington's famous dentures.
We then drove through Alexandria and stopped for delicious fish and chips. We walked down to the riverfront for some ice cream and then headed back to DC. We arrived in the city looking for a most precious commodity, parking. After about a half an hour we found a parking spot, and took the metro to one of Daimon and Kirsten's friends apartment. The apartment is right above the Iwo Jima Memorial and from his window, we were gifted a view of the Lincoln and Washington Memorial as well as the Capitol. We all had a drink in hand as fireworks went off above the Capitol and ten minutes later were filled up with National Pride and the fact that things blew up for ten minutes. The fireworks were very impressive even while put to a soundtrack of what sounded like British 80's punk. We stayed at the party for a while and then retreated back to Daimon and Kirsten's for the night.