DC Part 3 - our final day

Yesterday was our last day in DC.  We started at the Iwo Jima Memorial, which is just north of Arlington Cemetery.  I haven’t been there in years and I forgot how huge it is – it’s seriously larger than life.  While we were driving towards Iwo Jima, I started reading about the battle.  It lasted for more than a month and even though the Japanese never had a chance of winning the battle, they refused to surrender and literally fought to the death.  Of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers on the island, nearly 19,000 were killed before the battle was over.

The Marines raised the flag on Iwo Jima 5 days into the battle at one of the highest points on the island.  The battle lasted for a month longer and 3 of the 6 soldiers depicted were killed on Iwo Jima.  There were heavy casualties for the Americans during this battle.  One of my favorite parts of the memorial is a saying “uncommon valor was a common virtue” on the side.  I absolutely love this.  I have nothing but respect for our armed forces.

After Iwo Jima, we headed over towards Ford’s Theater for a tour.  We had originally scheduled this for Tuesday, but the Forest Service runs Ford’s Theater (figure out how that works) and so it was closed due to the shutdown.  We rescheduled for this morning.  The theater was really cool.  There is a Lincoln memorial that documents his entire presidency up until the night he was killed.  You only can spend 45 minutes in the museum before going into the theater, and it was hard to see everything in the allotted time.  They have the clothes Lincoln was wearing the night he was shot.  It was a really cool museum.

After the museum, we headed into the theater where a Forest Ranger talks about the shooting in the theater.  Lincoln, his wife, and their other two guests showed up at the theater after the first act was over and got to their seats.  Everyone in the theater knew they were there because the orchestra played “Hail to the Chief” as he walked in.  John Wilkes Booth used a broken orchestra stand to jam the door and then shot Lincoln from about 7 inches away.  There was a Major from the Civil War who was with Lincoln that night and tried to catch Booth, but Booth stabbed the Major and got away. There was a doctor in the theater that immediately came to Lincoln’s aid, but Lincoln was unconscious and his pupils were dilated signaling massive brain damage. 

They couldn’t leave him in the theater but the infrastructure in Washington DC at the time didn’t allow them to move him to a hospital or back to the White House.  They instead moved him to a boarding house across the street where he ultimately died the next morning.  We went to the boarding house after the theater and saw the room where he died.  It was very somber.

After the house, there is another museum that outlines everything that happened after the assassination where they chased Booth and the other conspirators.  Booth was ultimately killed in Virginia about 2 weeks after the assassination.  Lincoln’s body was laid in State at the White House and the Capital before moving to Springfield Illinois where he was ultimately laid to rest.  I have so much respect for President Lincoln – it was nice to learn more about him.

After Ford’s Theater, we wanted to go to the DC Temple, but we didn’t have enough time so we headed to the airport.  DC has 3 airports and I was sure our return flight was at Dulles.  So sure in fact that months ago when I booked our rental car I had it returning to Dulles.  To our surprise, we showed up at Dulles to check our bags and our flight was actually out of Reagan.  I could have died.  For a frequent traveler, I couldn’t believe I made such a rookie mistake.  Delta is amazing though so they fixed our flights so we could fly out of Dulles and arrive in SLC about 2 hours after our original time.  Since I was a medallion, they waived my change fee and we just had to pay $100 for Eric’s flight.  That kind of sucked, but since the flights were free, to begin with, we couldn’t be too upset.

Overall, we had a great trip to DC and Boston.  It was a bummer the Government was shut down at the beginning of the trip, but going to Boston was so much fun and we wouldn’t have done it if the Government wasn’t shut down.  After a week away though, it will be great to be home again with our little cat.