Most people know that the Washington monument and the Lincoln monument are along a grassy park-like area in Washington D.C. known as the National Mall with a long rectangular reflecting pool in between them. What I didn’t realize was that the Veitnam memorial is also on the National Mall, fairly close to the Lincoln monument, and that there is a new monument in the same area for WWII.
The Washington monument recently was covered in scaffolding so repairs could be made from damage caused by an earthquake a few years ago. We were lucky that the scaffolding has been removed, but we couldn’t go up to or into the monument as repairs are continuing.
The Lincoln monument surprised me with its size. It’s much larger than I thought it was – Lincoln is about 30 feet high!
The Vietnam memorial seems very plain as you walk up to it – it’s appears to be just a cut dug into the ground with a black marble wall set up. It’s not until you walk along the wall for a minute or so that you realize that it’s a long list of names on the wall sections and the gravity of how many men died there starts to sink in. There is an index nearby where you can look up a name and find the section and line within the section where a particular person’s name is. We saw lots of people looking for specific names and there was a volunteer there talking about the memorial and helping people.
The WWII monument was very pretty. It’s a circular set of monuments for each state and a large monument at either side, one for “Pacific” and one for “Atlantic”.
The Jefferson memorial is on the other side of the “Tidal Basin”; we didn’t walk to it but we got a good view and Jeff took a few pictures using his telephoto lens.
Here is a map of the National Mall and also pictures we took:
