Adventures in DC: Day One – Around Town

This truly was a year I won’t ever forget. One week after the reception in Lansing, Russ and I left for our trip to Washington, DC to participate in the 2008 Adventurer of the Year Gala for National Geographic ADVENTURE magazine. So many of you have asked about our trip details – that I’ve decided to write a trip summary here – rather than attempt to re-tell the story many times over.

The full stories and some photos will be posted here on my blog in four sections – one for each day of the trip:

• Day One – Around Town
• Day Two – Touring by Trolley
• Day Three – Museums
• the ADVENTURE Celebration
• Day Four – Breakfast at National Geographic

To recap, about a month ago – I learned I had won the Grand Prize in an email contest sponsored by National Geographic ADVENTURE Magazine. We received two all-access passes to their third annual Adventurer of the Year Celebration, to include our flight and accommodations. I was chosen after submitting a short email statement describing a favorite adventure destination in 150 words or less. Many of you have asked if it will be published – truth be told, I’m pretty sure this was random drawing. We were just plain fortunate enough to have been selected!

We left for the Grand Rapids airport about 3:30 am to catch a very early flight. By 9 am, we were already in DC. Russ had visited DC twice before – this was my first trip.  We took a cab to the hotel to unload our stuff, and decided to go exploring by foot. The weather was extremely cold and VERY windy. If we had been smarter – we would have figured out the Metro train or the bus system quicker – there’s a lot of territory to cover in DC by foot. After grabbing a nice lunch at an Au Bon Pain cafe, we walked along Pennsylvania Avenue beside the White House.

Much to our surprise, it wasn’t that easy to SEE the White House. There is a ton of construction going on in anticipation for the upcoming January 20, 2009 inauguration. There is a viewing platform being built right on Pennsylvania Avenue for the Inauguration Parade, and that makes for a less than decent photo opportunity from that side. So – we walked around to the other side. The Ellipse area where the National Christmas Tree is located was being prepared – it was half-decorated with ornaments and workers were busy readying the grounds. At this point, the sun at least came out for a few minutes, allowing for a few photographs.

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We then continued to walk across the National Mall to the Washington Monument. At this point, the weather really started to turn. Blasts of cold wind brought horizontal snowflakes – even blowing my baseball cap off my head across the base of the monument! All the flags were flying straight out! From the Monument, we could also catch a glimpse of the Capitol and the Jefferson Memorial. We did not go up in the Monument – we decided we’d better keep moving before the weather worsened.

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Our walk took us to the World War II Memorial. It is constructed of bronze and granite – and is just beautiful. Once side represents the Atlantic – one the Pacific. There are 24 bas-relief sculpture panels created by sculptor Ray Kaskey (12 for each side) depicting the mobilization of America as a whole. Taking photos of them doesn’t do the artwork justice – it’s something you have to see for yourself.

Russ noticed there was a field of sculpted gold stars on a back wall of the Memorial and counted them. We found out later the Freedom Wall has 4,000 stars – each one representing 100 soldiers – commemorating the more than 400,000 Americans who gave their lives.

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The next stop was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Someplace I read that 1 out of every 8 Americans have visited here. There is no way to visit this spot and not feel moved by it.

Earlier this year, I attended the Moving Wall event in Sparta and was surprised by its length, and it was only half of its true size. Currently there are 58,260 names on the Wall. Click here to visit The VietNam Veterans Memorial Wall Page.

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Our last stop for the day was the Lincoln Memorial. As we stood there gazing up at Mr. Lincoln, the experience felt a bit surreal. It is such an iconic location and it was hard to believe less than 12 hours ago we were in Grand Rapids. It was quite a sight to see the whole length of the Mall as the sun brought out the pretty colors in the winter clouds.

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The long, cold, windy walk back to our hotel (the Hotel Helix) wasn’t exactly the highlight of the day. At this point we were exhausted. We did manage to catch one glass of free wine the hotel provides nightly for their Happy Hour. The Helix is a trendy, funky hotel with interesting amenities like… an honor bar with items like Pez candy, wax lips, unusual drinks, and leopard-print bathrobes and footies!

However, we barely stayed awake long enough to wait for the delivery pizza to arrive. ZZzzzz.

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The highlight of the trip, of course – was meeting the Adventurers themselves. You can’t really appreciate the scope of why they were being honored unless you read their amazing stories in detail. I strongly encourage you to do so. You can pick up the December 2008/January 2009 issue of ADVENTURE (on news stands now), or see their stories online: Meet the 2008 Adventurers of the Year

We personally met the following Adventurers at the National Geographic Society headquarters:

• Rob Gauntlett and James Hooper
• Gretchen Bleiler
• François Bon
• Ashley Clements
• Deia Schlossberg & Gregg Treinish
• Pemba Gyalje Sherpa
• Ben Skinner
• Sam Stime and Maroy Correa Estenos

Some of the Adventurers could not attend:

• Kelly Slater
• George Steinmetz
• Emma Stokes

Other interesting folks we met included:

• 2008 Hall of Fame honoree Rick Ridgeway
• 2007 Adventurer of the Year honoree Andrew Skurka
• Boyd Matson – host of the National Geographic Explore TV series
• ADVENTURE’S Editor in Chief, John Rasmus
• and staff members of ADVENTURE and of National Geographic magazine

Over breakfast, one of the Adventurers commented how fortunate it was a photographer was chosen to receive the trip. Yes…very fortunate. We can’t thank all of the folks at ADVENTURE enough for their hospitality – but we’re trying!

Continue to next post…