The Capitol

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Mark Kirk and some of his favorite constituants This was our day for our US Capitol tour. We started knocking off Gretchen's Mt. Rushmore item - the Lincoln Memorial. After trekking 117 miles over the three days, we were a bit wiser today. Metro to "close" and then a cab to complete the job. We started at 10 and had plenty of bounce in our step. We followed Lincoln with a number of other monuments around the reflecting pool. I liked WWII; the girls liked chasing squirrels.

Following the monuments (holy cow was the Washington Monument big) we Metroed over to the House for lunch.

To sum up our house tour, it was LONG. We probably waited two hours at various times throughout the tour. Very cool building though. Over our 3 day tour, we got a number of juicy pieces of House trivia including a chandelier that came from the Titanic, paw prints that appeared in granite after JFK's death and an overly punctual chief justice. I jest (of course). The tour was long, but it was cool to see the building and we got to sit in on Congress in session. End of the day, so we heard several Congressmen speak to an empty room about things that were important to them - Nuclear energy in one case and High School Softball in another.

One of our biggest surprises was to find that a woman working at our Congressman's office not only went to Gretchen's and Melinda's grade school, she actually had the same teachers that they had from 3rd - 6th grade. We of course got a photo of the three of them together.
To top off our House visit, the terrible weather in Chicago today meant that our Congressman couldn't get out of town this afternoon - so he was stuck in Washington and topped off the end of our tour (see photo).

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