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.

1 Day before the Inauguration

We went into DC for the day to pick up the tickets today and to scope out the area. We arrived at the Capital South Metro station and walked to the Rayburn Building to see if they were open. They didn't open until 9:00am so we decided to head out and see the area.

We went to 3rd street to cross the mall and stopped to take some pictures and some ladies from Seattle and so we took turns taking pictures of each other.

We stopped at the Capital Reflecting Pool which was frozen over.

While we were going past the Capital, we got to hear Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill, Gabriela Montero and Itzhak Pearlman practicing and doing sound checks. They we playing parts of the Lord of the Dance.

The mall was not very full early in the morning but we got to see them putting up the Jumbo Tron Screens and the sound systems for the people without tickets.

We walked past a lot of buildings.

This was the line to get in the building. It stretched from the front of the building all the way around to the far side. We waited in line for a little over an hour.

While we were there, Congressman Jack Kingston finished a meeting and came out and said hi. He showed us around the office and showed Patrick and Hannah the old photos of the Mall when the Department of Defense had offices there. He also let Patrick and Hannah know that if their mom had not run into him at Cutters Coffee (one of the local Savannah coffee places) They would not be here.

We would like to thank Congressman Kingston and his staff, especially Alexandrea and Monya for all their help and assistance.

When we left the building about 1:30 - 2:00pm these were the lines outside a couple of the buildings for people getting their tickets.

The tickets are in Hand!

2 Days until the Inauguration

No pictures today but we we are still busy. We went to church with Darcy and the kids this morning. Chris is at school this weekend working on a paper so we won't get to see him. Plus it's not worth the aggravation of fighting the Inauguration traffic.

Anyway, after church, we went to eat and then the ladies went to the mall to walk around. The boys all came home to play games and hang out.

Tomorrow morning JoAnna the kids and I will be headed into DC at about 6:00am to go pick up tickets and to scope out the walking routes for the ceremony and for the parade. We also want to try and hit the Official Inauguration store. It will give us a good test run of the area.

They have revised to expected attendance from last we heard from 4 million to 2 million so it will be exciting. We hope to see the parade as well but from what we can determine, they only allow 350,000 people in the area for the parade, so we want to check it out to see what we will have to do to get in. We are going to try and get back early enough to get rested up for the big day.

Tune in tomorrow for day before photos and what we experienced.

3 Days until the Inauguration

We made it! I added yesterday's Blog entry at the Cracker Barrel that we stopped at for dinner.

We continued driving and JoAnna took the wheel and drove until about 3:00am. There was no traffic on the road so we just kept going. We stopped at Roanoke Rapids for the night and left
about 10:30 today.


We got on the road and still no traffic.

We made it to Darcy and Chris's house about 3:00pm.

Patrick and Anthony sat down and listened to Brian Regan on the ipod.


Hannah had some fun with the camera on the trip.

4 days until the Inauguration

We are on the way. We left this evening getting on the road from Pembroke about 6:30 after watching the news. WSAV the local NBC channel interviewed us before we left.


http://www.wsav.com/sav/news/local/article/chatham_county_family_packs_for_inauguration_trip/8467/


We are looking forward to visiting the cousins and having a great time. We hope to get about 5 hours of driving in tonight but we'll see.