4 July. Five pictures from my Washington DC trip.

We (that would be Shawn, Sara and myself) started today with the parade. Always a good start to a day, in my opinion. In the parade there were many different people of many different ethnicities in many different traditional costumes as below. There were marching bands. See Sara's write up of the day to hear about our favorite marching band which we also ran across later in the evening enjoying the fireworks on the mall. You can also see them at the parade in this link. They were great!

The parade itself was interesting, but the spectators were very silent. It was kind of weird.
After the parade, we walked back to St. Paul's K Street, where we had parked and picked up our picnic lunch. We walked over to the Kennedy Center, where they have nice picnic tables that anyone can sit at, and had our 4th of July feast. You are looking at a BLT, beet and goat cheese salad, potato salad and a delicious broccoli walnut salad. Dessert was blueberry peach cobbler and whipped cream. Yummy! Sara and Shawn need to move to Portland so Sara and I can cook for each other.
We wandered down through the Folklife Festival towards the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and arrived just at closing time. We wandered back toward the Washington Monument. I took this picture, because in DC, they cleverly use buses to block off roads during events. Then, when the event is over, they can just put the buses into circulation. Genius.
We got to the Monument pretty early and just sat and chilled out for awhile. There were naps taken by some of us, and a lot of people watching happened. Sara and I went to find food at some point, but the lines were very, very long so we abstained. We took this picture of me in front of the monument. We heard an awful band play a concert. I noticed that certain "I'm a patriot sacrificing for my country" songs are a bit whiny. They seem like they are all proud, but underneath you can hear the whine.
Eventually darkness fell and I got this picture of the monument. The fireworks started. We were dazzled. Then came the walk back to the car and the very tricky maneuver that bypassed the traffic and got us home in minutes instead of hours.
It was a lovely fourth!