Bike tour of monuments at night!

This was my favorite activity of the whole trip, even though it ended up raining on us in the end.

Jefferson is 19 ft tall, just 6 inches shorter than the Statue of Freedom on the Capitol building.

Clouds gathering (preparing to rain on us later)

The FDR memorial was my favorite.  It had four "rooms" /sections to it for each of his terms.  There are cascading water features throughout and beautiful lifelike bronze statues.

FDR memorial

FDR went to great pains to hide his disability and the fact that he was in a wheelchair.  This sculpture was added relatively recently (2001) (and he would likely not approve).  One of the other large sculpture shows him in a large chair.  The sculptor put very tiny (out of proportion) wheels on it.

Delaney listening to a Fireside chat with the statue.

 MLK memorial.  It started raining fully on us at this point in the tour.  We were afraid they were going to call it off because of lightning, but the storm called down and we continued on.

View of the Jefferson Memorial across the basin.

MLK - sculpted by a Chinese artist.

Korean War memorial - 19 stainless steel statues, 14 army, 3 marine, 1 navy and 1 air force.   In the reflective wall there appear to be 38 soliders - symbolic of the 38th parallel and the 38 months of war.

Reflective Wall - laser engraved with images of over 2000 images, all combined they create a mountain landscape as a backdrop to the memorial.

Lincoln Memorial.  We got to stand on the spot where MLK made his I have a Dream speech.

Can you find the engraving mistake that was corrected?  "F"uture was originally "E"uture.  Part of the stone was filed away to make it less visible.

Vietnam memorial sculpture

Sculpture for the nurses who served in Vietnam.  (Modeled after the Pieta by Michangelo)

WWII Memorial.  There is a pillar for every state and territory.  4000 gold stars, one for every 100 soldiers lost.

An obelisk is 10x as tall as it is wide.  Washington Monument is 55 x 550 ft.