Sunday 7 July
The shuttle bus at the KOA office left promptly at 9am and took us in to the nation’s capital. It dropped us off at the Capitol Building, which was closed as it was Sunday, so we decided to wander down the Mall. We walked all the way from there to the Lincoln Memorial, which is quite a distance and seemed even longer in the heat – the kids had not-so-good memories of being hot and tired in Central Park and were afraid we were going to repeat that!
There were no crowds along the way, just several joggers, and we were interested to see informal games on the grassy area down the middle of soccer and rugby league, not American sports. We wandered to the Washington Monument (which has been closed for repairs since an earthquake in 2011), and past it to the World War 2 memorial,and Lincoln Memorial. It was great to be able to just stand and read Lincoln’s famous speeches set out on the walls either side.
From there we headed towards the White House. Sam has been talking about seeing “Obama’s house” since we left Sydney, so was very excited to finally do this. While every other child talked about Disney, meeting princesses, and rides they wanted to go on, Sam always had two places he wanted to go – New York and the White House! I still cannot explain why…
We looked at the White House from the other side of the field a block away, and had been planning to walk up to the gates, but everyone (adults as well as kids!) were so exhausted from the walk so far, and hot and hungry, that we detoured into the Ronald Reagan building where there was a food court. At 12pm Subway was an early lunch, but meant we had several hours still to explore. As we plan to do a trolley bus tour tomorrow, we decided to spend the next few hours in a museum. We picked the Natural History museum, and enjoyed the exhibits there as well as an IMAX movie about surfing in Tahiti, and we were able to get up close to the Hope Diamond.
The bus was ready and waiting for us when we returned to the Capitol Building at 4.45pm, so we returned to the campground for a refreshing swim. Ross ordered some firewood (which they package and deliver to your camp ring on site for $6) and marshmallows for toasting, but we had to evacuate the pool when a storm arrived suddenly, so much to the kids’ disappointment, the campfire is on hold until tomorrow night!

PS. Being unwell, I got a couple of days behind in recording diary entries, and we have not had good wifi each night, so I will publish these posts as soon as I have Internet connection for long enough! It is at the top of our debrief list that our biggest mistake was not to get wifi access – the salesman in Target where we bought our American phones told us we wouldn’t need it because places like Starbucks, Maccas etc have it for free, but it would have helped us to have it on the road, especially at the pace we have been travelling! 😉