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!