These dogs are tired!

Today we walked and walked and walked and walked! I know it was at least six miles, but it could have been as many as eight. We walked for at least three hours (not to mention standing for five - including the time walking), and my dogs are BARKING! :)

Poor Darcy was non-verbal by the time we sat down for lunch:

We walked from our hotel, north of Dupont Circle, to the White House (which was surprisingly small to Darcy - in fact she asked me if it wasn't indeed the Vice President's house - LOL - she is a funny one!), then onto three of the Smithsonian's, including the Museum of Natural History that was WAY cool. We saw an IMAX show about the ocean, and it was amazing! We walked the National Mall, then onto the WWII Memorial, to the reflection pool...we saw the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the Capital building, and everything from the EPA HQ to the Department of Commerce...

Darcy has never been to DC before, and she was asking me what everything was. She pointed to puddles on the street (practically), and asked me what significance they had. I have only been to DC for bleeding heart causes I love, so I just wasn't quite the tour guide she was hoping for. She asked me what the point of the reflection pool was. I didn't know. I told her it was probably a place for us to reflect upon...something... She asked me why Washington was the District of Columbia...did it have to do with Columbia? Yeah....no clue. I must have skipped US History class that day.

I did some research, and the answer was slightly harder to find than I imagined. Apparently, there are a lot of people confused about this, as I was. It's named after Christopher Columbus, in the feminine. In fact, here is a picture of him/her that was created for a WW1 poster:

So there you have it.

Tonight, when we are up for walking again, we are going to head out to find a lovely dinner, which shouldn't be hard. DC has some great restaurants! I'm in the mood for something vegilicious, so I'm going to look online for menus ahead of time.