Foto Friday

Diana is hosting a Foto Friday, and I thought it would be fun to participate. She will post a theme each week to post about. This week it is Veterans. At first I thought how am I going to do that one, I don't have many close relatives that were in the military, my grandfathers were, but I have no pictures from that. Then I remembered I had pictures from my trip to Washington DC, in March of 2005. We had just moved back from CA and I had a conference in DC the week after our move. I went by myself and it was the most liberating trip of my life. One day I will tell you about the time I ended up in a alley in the middle of the night in my pjs but I that will be another post.

I had never been to DC before and I was busy at the conference all week long but there was one day where I did not have a class that I was interested in and I had already been to the show floor so I decided to play hookie and I caught a cab. I told the Cab Driver I had one afternoon and I wanted to at least see the Lincoln Memorial. He was the greatest, he told me exactly how to get the biggest bang out of my one afternoon. He even told me where to go to get a cab to get back to the hotel. Now you must know I am not a city girl. The only other time I had been in a taxi was with my boss and I felt a little lost in a taxi. I don't even remember if I tipped him very good for his great advice, I suck I know. So back to the story he dropped me off at Lincoln Memorial, it was awesome. I have only one picture to prove that these are my pictures and it is not a very good one but they are mine.

I walked to all the memmorials I could and I called Jim from each one. It was a wonderful experiance. But I got something I never expected out of it. I was shocked at how moving the Vietnam Memorial was. I am not one to cry at memorials; I have just never really felt them, but as you walk down and the wall gets bigger and bigger and the enormity of the loss hits you. It was so quiet, there were probably 100 people there with children within ear shot and yet it was extremely quiet. I found myself in tears and just staring at this very simply designed, very beautiful and very sad memorial for a very long time. Words and pictures can not properly discribe how this affected me, I have no good pictures of this monument but I included one just because it meant so much to me.

Although,I felt liberated being there by myself, I wish that I could have experienced it with someone else. I hope to go back there one day with Jim because I know he really wished he could have been there but at that time we just could not afford the extra travel. Here are a couple more pictures that took on my trip, that I thought I could not leave out.

Thank you to all that serve our country present, past, and future.

(Sorry Diana I was not clear on the rules I hope that I was not only supposed to post one "foto" there was no way I could choose)