I Decided To Go and I Did - World War II Memorial

It may help you a little if you refer to my post entitled "I've Decided and I'm Going To Go" dated May 25th so you know what is going on.  For those of you with good memories you can proceed to the next paragraph.

Well I went.  Technically I'm still there sitting in my hotel room typing.  I'm at the Hotel Baron just off Dupont Circle.  It's a nice place with a great bar with many, many, many beer choices. Which so many beer options it makes you wonder why anyone would order Bud Light.  I also like the neighborhood we are in as there are lots of places to eat and great people watching opportunities.  It reminds me a little of New York City as it has a pretty international flavor.

My objective was met on day one.  We left the hotel early and rode our bikes into the museum and monument area.  By the way the decision to take our bikes was great.  We visited a lot of locations in a very short time on very hot days.  The World War II Memorial was my first priority and I have to say it was quite impressive.  The memorial was in two sections, the Atlantic front and the Pacific front and I turned to the Atlantic side to search for what I was looking for.  It took a couple minutes until I saw it and walked over and sat on that granite wall with the words Battle of the Bulge right next to me.  As you can see I now can do pictures thanks to my wife, Mary.

It was an emotional moment for me sitting there next to an inscription from a WWII battle that may Dad participated in.  Right after taking this picture I stood up and saw a bunch of people wearing read shirts on the opposite of the memorial.  I said to Mary we got here just in time as the tour groups are starting to arrived.  As we made our way to the Pacific side of the memorial I realized who those people were in the red shirts.  They were WWII veterans and their families.  This was an Honor Flight tour of WWII veterans from Kansas.  There were at least thirty veterans with the majority of them being pushed around in chairs with wheels as I suspect all were in their nineties and not very mobile.  I stopped and parked my bike and told Mary that I wanted to thank these men.  I then proceed to shake hands and say thanks to the WWII veterans who are know today as America's greatest generation.  This was one of those moments in life that I'll remember for a long time.  The only thing that could have made this a perfect trip was if I was walking along with my Dad.  I'm going to stop now as it is a little hard seeing the screen with tears on my eyes.