Inauguration Pictures

Here is a slide show of the pictures we took on the way to DC, while we were there and on the way home.

The Infamous Purple Ticket

As I started my count down to the Inauguration, many of you saw that we had received purple tickets. If you have seen on the news, searched YouTube, CNN iReport or just done a google search, you will see what we were doing and going through! Here are our pictures and video from the Purple Gate. I missed a great picture where everyone was holding up their purple tickets.

I am putting our whole story together to put up so that it can be read as a whole. Overall, it was an experience of a lifetime and we are glade we made the trip.

Inauguration Day!!

Well our journey to the Inauguration did not turn out as planned or as expected. While a bit disappointed, but what did happen was that we had an experience of a lifetime and we have a story of a lifetime.

We were there and we witnessed history!

We started the day at 4:00am. We headed to the New Carrollton Metro in Maryland where we got stuck on US 50 at the exit for about two hours. We then got in the station where we waited another two hours. The Metro was badly under utilized, because as people came up they stopped at the middle of the train. The ends of the trains were empty so we had seats.

We got to the Capital South stop and were directed behind the Capital to the purple gate. We arrived there at about 11:00am and it was just a mass of people. We talked to several people there and they had arrived at 6:00am and had been sent from gate to gate and was stuck in the third street tunnel under the mall for three hours. It was opened to pedestrians. Since we didn't have much time until the swearing in and so we decided to high tail it over to Congressman Kingston's office to watch from there. We got there and the door was closed so we were invited into the office of Congressman Chet Edwards from Texas. He let us watch the swearing in and the speech. We were able to see everyone and hear the crowd and the 21 gun salute from the windows.

Chet Edwards' Office

We spent some time in in Congress man's Kingston's office and then when we left, we ran into Congressman Edwards in the elevator. He took us down to the garage and helped us get out around all the crowds.

I wanted to get something up on the Blog but we will have more when we get home and I get more time. We are getting ready to hit the road.