Us, the Cats and Brother Brigham

The US Capitol building is chuck-full of historic and artistic splendor. I never knew there were so many murals and carvings and statues everywhere. Fortunately, we had Mike to show us where all the good stuff was. His tour featured the Senate side of the Capitol building, and actually included our viewing of the Senators in action in their chamber. It was really neat!

Here's the four of us standing next to the statue of Brigham Young. Every state in the US donated 2 statues of their own home-grown heroes. These 100 statues are dispersed throughout the building, including Utah's Brigham Young. Utah also donated a statue of Philo T. Farnseworth, who is famous for being the first man to have a name as cool as Philo. He also invented the first completely electronic television. Rock on Utah! Any thoughts on why it is that Utah claims Philo, but he actually invented his TV in Idaho?

I absolutely loved standing below the building's rotunda and looking at all the art work. You've gotta see it, the place is decked out with giant, famous paintings and statues, and according to Mike, a hidden hommage to George Washington. If you stand directly below the dome and look up you will see a painting of President Washington in heaven, where you stand there was originally meant to be a statue of George as he was in mortality. Below George, in the basement of the building lies the actual platform used when Lincoln was laid in state. Mike actually took us down there to see the platform, and it was WAY cool. Original plans were to have Washington buried there, but instead he has been interred at Mount Vernon. It would have been really cool if the statue would have worked out too. I guess it's the thought that counts.

Its sorta hard to tell in the picture, but Sara is squatting in the temporary hall built for the senate's use while their chamber was being built. There's just enough room in there for all the senators at the time to stand and conduct business. Story has it that at this same time the country was storing grain in the basement of the Capitol building. This attracted rats, so the government set cats loose in the building to catch the rats. These cats left paw prints in the newly laid cement floor of this temporary Senate hall. You really could see the paw prints in there, it was pretty cool. Anyone whose been through the capitol building knows that the place is haunted, according to the internet accounts, some of the resident spirits include these cats. Sadly, we got no picture of the phantom felines, if only we'd have had a digital camara at the time.

Mike and the Senate Tubes

This here is my bff Mike, we were inseparable all the way from Kindergarten to BYU. Much to our good fortune, he was spending the semester of our Washington DC trip hard at work as an intern in Utah Senator Orrin Hatch's office in the Hart Senate Office Building. Part of his many duties as a Senatorial intern was to conduct tours of the Capitol Building for curious tourists such as ourselves. I knew Mike would give us a great tour, but I had no idea it would be as unforgettable as it was. Surely the building itself is quite the canvas on which to paint a good tour, but Mike the artist made the tour a true work of art. Man, that's really poetic! A thousand thanks go to Mike for his tour! If you would like to learn more about the life and times of Mike, there's a link to his blog, The Foggy Bottom Tribune, over yonder to your right (my left).

I've got a bunch to say about the innards of the Capitol building, but I'll save that for the next posting. I do, however, feel that I must tell you about the secret tunnels that link the Senate Office Buildings (SOB's hee hee hee) to the Capitol building. Alright, so they're not so secret, but I had never heard of them. The United States Capitol Subway System was built way back in 1909 to link the Russell SOB to the Capitol, and has been added upon over the years. Currently the tunnels link all three SOBs and the House of Reps offices as well. Our little entourage got to take a ride in the little cars all the way from the Hart building and back, and I gotta tell ya, it was a ball!! The cars are so cute and little, and decked out in Senate logos. It was our electromagnetic chariot to the great collosieum. See the picture of Mike up above, which was taken in one of the cars. Mike told us about all the cool senator people he'd seen in these tunnels, and we immediately wished that we could be the little guy that runs the trains back and forth. Whodda thunk? Senate tubes. Pretty cool stuff.

We'll be back after this message...

We now pause in our travelogue to bring you the world's all time best commercial ever!! I saw this on tv not too long ago and there's been a piece of me laughing ever since. The finder's fee goes to my mother-in-law...perhaps I'll make her some spaghetti. Enjoy:

The Capitol Building - exterior

Here we are headed out toward the US Capiol building. On the family season of the Amazing Race, there was a clue hidden somewhere by the reflecting pool in the National Mall. Many of the families were searching everywhere by the Lincoln Memorial, not knowing that there is also a reflecting pool in fron of the capitol building. Youl'll see that I did find the correct pool, and was very excited to go to the building and get a nice tour of the joint. You'll also see the picture of Sara on the way to the capitol building.

We sat next to the building waiting for Jennifer and Nathen, who were also going on the tour with us. We got there early so we could take some pictures and stuff. While we were waiting there was a group of non-American tourists who must've been on their way to their hotels because they each had luggage with them. Any how, at one point they left all their luggage next to the steps of the capitol building and headed out a few yards to take a picture. Before a blink of the eye, the men were surrounded by four gun dudes. I don't even know where most of them had come from. It was pretty cool stuff. From that point on I was always careful not to leave Sara too far behind me in fear of her getting surrounded by gun dudes.

The building is pretty much the coolest building in Washington DC. I don't want to give a long and drawn out history of it, but lets just say it was built in and around 1850, mostly by Africans, both free and slave. You'll notice the statue on the top of the dome (as seen in the picture below). That's "The Statue of Freedom", which is 19 and a half feet tall!! A full-sized replica of the statue can be found at the underground entrance to the building (or was it actually in the building? Fill me in Mike). You'll notice that there is no flag flying on the building on the day we took these pictures. A flag is flown over the right side of the building if and only if the House of Representatives is in session, and over the left side of the building when the Senate meets. Seeing how these pictures were taken in the middle of a standard work day, it makes sense that neither legislative body
was actually hard at work. I've got a lot more to say about our tour of the Capitol Building, but it definitely won't fit in this post, so on we go to the next one.

Pierre Goes to the Mall

Here is my darling bride and I sitting on a wall in front of the United States Capitol Building. Behind us you can see the National Mall. The Washington Monument is 1.1 miles behind us, and the Lincoln Memorial is .8 miles behind that. Any of my avid blog readers will know that I got pretty excited when I discovered that many of the notable buildings and monuments in Paris are arranged in a straight line known as "Le Axe Historique". The same can be said for the buildings in Washington DC. This is most likely because at the same time some French guy was planning out the streets of Paris, some other French guy was planning out the streets of Washington DC. The French guy in Washington was named Pierre Charles L'Enfant, who earned himself enough of a bookmark in US history to merit lying in state under the rotunda of the capitol building after his death. Pierre was born in France and actually studied at the Royal Acadamy (located in the Louvre) before enlisting in the French navy and coming across the Atlantic to aid the Americans during our revolution. He decided to stick around and served as Major of Engineers for General George Washington. Washington asked him to lay out a plan for the new capitol city in 1791 (during the French Revolution), which he did. Later, L'enfant got all upset with the civil leaders, who ended up not paying him for his work, and dismissed him from the project. Washington kept a copy of the plans, and they were later brought to life in the form of what we now call the National Mall.

It might have been the time of year we were there, but I was surprised to see that the place wasn't all that well landscaped, especially in contrast to the beauty of the buildings that surround the open grass...if you can even call it grass. Don't get me wrong though, we loved the Mall, and can't wait to get back. I really could have spent a few more days just going to the museums. Make it a point not to die before you've toured our nation's capitol.

Ford's Theatre and the Hard Rock Cafe

Call us uncultured if you want, but Jennifer, Nathen, Sara and I sort of stumbled upon Ford's Theatre while we were on our way to the Hard Rock Cafe, which by some happy coincidance are across the street from one another. Its not like we didn't know Ford's Theatre was there, we just figured that with our limited amount of time, we would only enter the theatre if it happened to still be open on our way to dinner. It was, and I am so glad, because it ended up being an amazing experience.

We sat in the seats of the theatre and listened to a man give a very thorough and emotional account of the night that President Lincoln was assassinated. I remember being very moved by what was said, and I gained a great respect for President Lincoln. I remember the same solemn feeling when we toured Carthage Jail and sat in the room where Joseph Smith Jr. was killed. It is very sad that such terrible things have happened in the history of this country, but the spirit felt in these locations leads one to partially understand the true meaning of the institutions these great men represented. This picture is of the box seats where he was shot. Sorry the quality ain't that great. Its hard to take a good picture in a dark room. I thought it was very neat that they actually allow you to walk up there and look into the box seats.

By the way, we had a lot of fun at the Hard Rock Cafe. Why do I love eating there so much? Because it rocks!

Sara and Fala Roosevelt

Fraklin D Roosevelt asked that if a monument were to be erected in his honour, that it be no larger than the desk he was seated at. Sure enough, his memorial is the exact size of his desk...that is, until they built the 7.5 acre memorial in 1997. That's okay though, he deserved it.

Sara is talking to FDR's little Scottish Terrier, Fala. Actually, FDR named him Murray the Outlaw of Falahill, but the nickname seemed to roll off the tongue a little better. Fala was with FDR all the time, sleeping on the floor in the Oval Office, and taking flights on FDR's plane, the Sacred Cow. Republican opponents at one time accused President Roosevelt of having sent a US Navy destroyer to the Aleutian islands with the sole purpose of retrieving Fala who had been accidentally left there. FDR vehemently denied this having ocurred and gave an irate speech saying that people are welcome to insult him and his wife, but have gone too far when they take jabs at his dog, who's tender Scottish feelings had been hurt. Little Fala outlived President Roosevelt, but when Fala died, Eleanor saw to it that he was buried next to President Roosevelt.

The Lincoln Memorial

Sara's sister Jennifer and her husband Nathen came out to Washington DC to hang out with us, and we all went hopped on a bus to go on a twilight tour of the area. It was actually a really great way to see all the sites without having to do all that walking. Don't let Sara's hat fool you, though it was early February, the area was having an unseasonably warm winter. I was amazed at the grandeur and beauty of the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. I had no idea that the statues in these buildings were so huge and pretty! Honestly, I don't think most Americans even know that there's a statue of Jefferson in his memorial. Funny how I say that, and I never took a picture of him. Strange.


Urban legend states that sculptor Daniel Chester French molded Lincoln's hands to make the American Sign Language letters "A" and "L" for Abraham Lincoln (its quite clear in the picture).


On the walls to President Lincoln's right and left are inscribed the words to his Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address, in giant letters. It was really neat to look out at The Mall from Lincoln's perspective and see the Washington Monument and the Capital building all lined up. President Lincoln was an amazing man, and certainly worthy of the honor this building appropriately bestows upon him. Interesting how I can never look at the back of a penny the same way again. There are 36 columns on the memorial, each one representing one of the states at Lincoln's death. The names of these states are written at the tops of the columns. You can see those state names on the back of the $5 bill. The names of all 48 states at the time of the monument's completion are written in the exterior attic walls of the building, with a plaque later applied with the names of Alaska and Hawaii. I also thought it was pretty cool that they've placed a plaque on the floor on the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963. The reason the speech was given here is because Dr. King wanted to demonstrate at the feet of the man who put forth the Emancipation Proclamation 100 years earlier. This is an amazing building!

The Washington Monument

See Sara in front of the Washington monument, isn't she pretty! We learned on our way up to the top of the obelisk that during the construction, the Army Corps of Engineers asked all states and countries to donate a chunk of stone to the project with thoughts about George Washington inscribed upon them to be used as building materials. There was great response to the plea, and you can see the stones' inscriptions at certain points as you look out the elevator on the way to the top. In the pictues with Sara you can see that about a third of the way up the monument the color of the stone changes. This is because there was a 25 year halt to construction during the Civil War (and after due to lack of funds and disagreement about the ultimate design). When construction began again, a sufficient amount of the same stone couldn't be found, so a similar type of a slightly darker color was used instead. We loved seeing the Washington monument from the plane as we flew into the Reagan airport.

Yeah, so I'm a big fan of tall buildings, so I have to insert this little nugget of information: The Washington monument filled the position of world's tallest structure from 1884 until 1889, when the title was stolen by the Eiffel Tower. Just to put the difference of heights into perspective, the Eiffel tower is 300 meters, which is nearly double the height of the Washington Monument(169 meters). Any tall building fan is peeing his or her pants with excitement as we watch the Burj Dubai in construction, as it will top out as the world's tallest building at 605 meters - double the Eiffel Tower's height. Pretty darn cool!

Yeah, so the other picture is me next to the Smithsonian Castle. This bulding houses the administrative offices of the Smithsonian Institute. It was designed by the same architect who did St. Patrick's Catehdral in New York City.

Wouldn't Thomas Jefferson be proud?

On the second to last day of Sara's convention, we were able to participate in what might be the high-brow zentih of our lives! We had a "coctail" party in the Library of Congress. Given our moral persuasion, perhaps a more correct term would be a "coke-tail" party, but no matter what was in the glasses, it was certianly a very posh affair. We were allowed to roam about the building (at least the less-secure portions anyhow) throughout the night, and we certainly took advantage of our free reign. The Library of Congress actually consists of three buildings, which is a good thing, since there needs to be ample room for the 530 miles of bookshelves held within. A book shelf of that length would stretch from Idaho Falls to St. George. The building in which we hob-knobbed with the socialites is the Thomas Jefferson building. The building is aptly named since the collection itself has grown to its imensity due to the seed planted by Thomas Jefferson's donation of his 6,487 books in 1815. There are now 130 million items recorded and housed in these beautiful buildings.

The pictures on this post are of our beloved Thomas Jefferson building. You'll notice the ornate decoration on both the exterior and the interior. It was so cool to walk up and down those beautiful flights of stairs. You know that giant room of bookshelves with the red carpet on National Treasure? That room is just to the left from the picture to the right. Also, you'll notice the glass casing just inside the right archway in the same picture. That case is an original Gutenberg Bible which I oogled over for a very long time. There were only 45 Gutenberg bible printed on vellum, which is the thinned out hide of a kosher animal. Of these 45 copies, only 4 still exist in perfect condition, this one being one of them. The other 3 are in the British Library, Paris' Bibliotheque Nationale, and the Gottingen University in Germany. Pretty cool, eh? We loved our time at the Library of Congress, even if the hors d'oeuvres were tiny and scarce. I wanted to hide in one of the dark corners and make this building my home, but Sara thought the security guards would frown on this.

And by the way, the Library of Congress does not use the Dewey Decimal System. That's right, stick it to the man Uncle Sam!

Some UnConventional Wreaths

The Washington DC Convention Center is ginormous! Hidden away on a side of the building that no one ever went to are a bunch of huge wreaths, each made with some very unlikely and very large materials. Our two favorites were the bicycles and the guitars. I'm pretty sure we have a picture of me with the guitar wreath, but it will probably be buried away deep in the annals of history for ever because I can't find it. The reason I can't find it is that I'm pretty sure it is in the photo album in the other room, and there's no way on earth I'm gonna walk that far to look for it.
You can see part of the tennis racket wreath in the picture to the left, it would have merited a picture of its own, but we were short on film, and everyone knows that bike circles are the cadillacs of giant wreaths.

Party Animals

Sara was not as brave as I, and decided to pose in front of the donkey and the elephant. The window on the right of the picture looks out towards the National Mall, though it is far away, you can see the Washington Monument poking up above the adjacent hotel. It was neat to study under such a monumental back drop.

I asked myself why it is that our country's most prestigious political parties are known by the donkey and the elephant, and as I expected, it came from those old timey political cartoons. I would paste the actual cartoons on here, but I just don't think there's room. The Republican elephant showed up for the first time in 1874, and the Democratic donkey in 1837. Here's something we learned while touring the United States Capitol Building, the Republicans are considered the "right" side, because they sit on the right side of the House chamber, as viewed from the audience. The Democrats, of course, sit on the left. Party on!

Party Animals

Look! Another of Sara's GIS conferences! This time we were off to our nation's capitol so that she could participate in the federal, state and local GIS gathering. It was such an amazing experience, and we've got about a million pictures all about it, so hold on tight!

Fist up, I've got to post a bunch of the pictures we took inside the conference center. Since I spent the majority of my time sitting in the lobby studying, I was able to become one with the building. This isn't such a bad thing, because nestled away in the corners of this massive building are the most interesting and gigantic works of art. Some of our favorites are these severely bipartisan quadrapeds. You'll notice that all the political campaign buttons and stickers on the donkey are for democratic presidents and presidential hopefuls. All the republicans are pasted on the pachyderm. In the picture below I took my life into my own hands standing behind a kicking donkey and a pooping elephant. This is the sort of sacrifice I am willing to make for the sake of a snappy snapshot.

To grandmother's house we go.

Tradition dictates that somewhere in the week between Christmas and New Years, we pack up the sleigh and make our way over the river and through the woods to the annual Christmas Party in Southeastern Idaho. The picture above is of Sara and I sitting next to Sara's sister Jennifer and her husband Nathen as we recover from the festive feast we just gluttoned upon. If I'm not mistaken, I ate so much that I had to store a bit of it in my mouth to await room in my stomach. I believe we are about to have the gift exchange, this is the year that I got a box full of car washing supplies, which actually froze in the car on the way home. I like Christmas a lot.

The Great Philiminator

Anyone who can tell me who this guy is with my wife and mother-in-law is allowed to be my friend. Okay, so the massive sign with his name in foot-tall letters gives it away a little bit. That's right, this is none other than the great Phil Keoghan, host of the world's greatest reality television series of all time, The Amazing Race. You'll also notice from the big sign that this choice meeting took place on Sara's birthday. Imagine my worry when Sara told me that all she wanted for her birthday was Phil Keoghan. But look how I delivered! In truth though, he was in town promoting the release of Season 1 on DVD, an opportunity that Race fans such as ourselves wouldn't dream to miss.


And now a bit of an expose on Phil. He's a New Zealander by birth, but lived most of his life in Canada and Antigua. He's got the best job in the world, that of TV guru, working as camera man, director, producer, and personality. He's worked in over 70 countries and gets paid a bundle just to look so international. He has, however, seen his fair share of the action that he is so willing to force his contestants into. He actually holds a bungee cord jumping world record and renewed his vows underwater. How cool is that!! And to think that my wife has actually shaken his hand.


If you haven't already, you must check out the Amazing Race. The contestants for Season 13 are being chosen and interviewed even as I write here today. Originally there was only going to be one Season aired this year, but the Writers Guild Strike forced Bernstram Van Munster to put forth an extra season. Any travel buff must, by definition, be a fan of the Amazing Race. Please refer to the map below to see the countries our racers have traveled to over the years: