When Joe was here earlier this week, he only had one full day here. He’d only been to D.C. once before and had not really done many touristy things when he was here, so we decided to try to make the most of that one day by walking around the Tidal Basin and hitting some of the major monuments and memorials around it. We took about 500 photos between us, so I’m just gonna throw a bunch of ‘em at you in this post. Consider yourself warned.

Finding a parking space was an adventure. There are a couple of areas where we can usually find parking when we go downtown, but that day all the usual spots were full, probably because it was such a gorgeous day. I knew there were parking lots somewhere by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, so we headed that way. We managed to make a couple of wrong turns and unintentionally drove across the Arlington Memorial Bridge twice. Eventually we got to the free parking lot and felt quite victorious.

As we headed out, we came across the George Mason memorial, which included a garden and a pond with a fountain. Apparently Mason was a good friend of George Washington’s, a source of inspiration for Thomas Jefferson, and is considered the “Father of the Bill of Rights.” I suppose I must’ve learned about him at some point, but when we first saw the monument I had no idea who he was. Living in D.C. is going to be educational for us all, I suspect.

Joe took this photo of me. I always laugh when I see photos of myself with a camera, my pinky sticking up like that. How fancy am I?

We wandered through the FDR Memorial, with its many fountains, in the wrong direction. It was still pretty neat, though. It’s more of a memorial to FDR’s presidency and the various world-changing events that happened during his four terms as President, with statues commemorating Eleanor Roosevelt, the Works Progress Administration, Fireside Chats, the Great Depression, and World War II. My favorite part was a modest, life-size statue of FDR sitting in the wheelchair he designed out of a kitchen chair and some bicycle and wheelbarrow wheels. Annalie thought it was pretty interesting that a guy in a wheelchair was President.

We pretended not to see the signs asking us to keep off the grass and jumped a low fence to get to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. It has a fountain, and fountains are to Annalie as catnip is to cats. The wall with FREEDOM IS NOT FREE engraved on it is my favorite part.

By the time we walked from the Korean Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial, Annalie was in full-on hungry mode. Our plan for lunch was to grab a hot dog from one of the carts, but we didn’t see any of those.

What we did see was an ice-cream cart. Annalie got frozen lemonade, and Joe and I split an ice cream sandwich. My theory is, if you want to keep the 5-year-old happy on your 3-hour, 3-mile sightseeing hike, you feed her when she gets hungry. Even if the only food around is ice cream.

Annalie, running up to see “the big guy in the chair,” as she called him.

Waiting for Joe to finish taking photos so we could continue walking.

There is a carving marking the spot where Martin Luther King, Jr., stood to give his famous “I have a dream” speech at the March on Washington. I pointed it out to Annalie, and in briefly explaining about MLK’s speech and the civil rights movement, I said that a long time ago people used to not be allowed to have certain jobs or eat at certain restaurants or even use certain bathrooms because of the color of their skin or where they were from. Annalie’s reply to that was, “Well, that’s silly! Good thing they changed that, huh?”

We walked by the Vietnam Wall, where we saw a couple of people making rubbings of names, and Annalie gathered dandelions by the armful from the field next to the pathway.

More walking, from the Vietnam Wall across the street to eat a lunch of hot dogs and chips, which tasted delicious after all that walking. And then…more walking! Back across the street, down the pathways, through Constitution Gardens, to the World War II Memorial.

A teachable moment, grasped by Joe. He was explaining parts of the memorial to Annalie, specifically the Pacific and Atlantic pavilions.

At this point in the walk, Annalie was seriously fading, and I couldn’t really blame her. I was fading too. Joe commented that we probably wouldn’t be able to do this same walk a month from now, when it’s hotter and more humid.

Luckily, we kept managing to find fun things to distract us from our tiredness. Like the Tulip Library! I guess this is just a small garden, planted with samples of all the varieties of tulips you’ll find all over D.C. in the spring. It definitely raised our spirits a bit, walking around and picking out our favorite varieties.

The rest of the long walk around the Tidal Basin, we saw fish under a bridge, paddleboats, a huge uprooted tree trunk that had a sign on it explaining the tree was damaged in the blizzard of February 2010, but they couldn’t remove the trunk completely till they got all the power lines and such sorted out.

And finally we made it to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. I’d never been there before, though I’ve driven past it dozens of times. It was lovely and cool inside, and provided a brief rest before we had to hike the remaining half-mile back to the car.

We counted later, and realized we’d seen something like nine or ten memorials, monuments, and gardens in the span of three hours. It was fun, but no wonder we were tired when we were done!

I should note that a few of the photos in this post were taken by Joe Sands. Check out his Flickr set DC Tidal Basin Photowalk! for more photos.