Leg 2 - Washington D.C.

 We left for the second leg of our Baseball and National Park trip on Tuesday, May 2.  Our first stop was Washington, D.C.  On the way up we stopped in Northern Virginia so see some of the places we lived including our old house in Herndon, Va (where we lived before we moved to Durham in 1996), the house that Melinda grew up in in Vienna, Va (sadly, recently torn down and replaced by a McMansion) and the house I lived in in Vienna in the 1970's (when I met Melinda).  The memories were so thick we had to brush them away from our faces (to quote an old baseball movie).

On Wednesday, we spent the day visiting the National Museum of African-American History and Culture down on the National Mall.  We've been wanting to go since it opened and are so glad we finally made it.  It is a great museum and we learned a lot.  Much of it was heartbreaking, but redemptive nonetheless.  If you haven't been there yet, we highly recommend a visit the next time you're in D.C.

After we left the African-American museum, we walked down the mall to one of Melinda's favorites - the World War II Memorial.  Even though we've been there multiple times, the temperature was in the low 50's, and it started to rain as we walked down, we soldiered on and paid another visit.  This is a wonderful memorial and offers great views up to the Washington Monument and down to the Lincoln Memorial (and the rain stopped pretty quickly).

We stayed in a hotel near the Nationals ballpark (and near a Metro stop).  Neither Melinda nor I have been to Nationals Park since it opened in 2008.  In 2005, when our son Michael was living in D.C. we went to a Nats game at the old RFK stadium (another dump).  I should mention that the temperature at game time was 55 degrees and for some reason we got to the ballpark an hour and a half before the game.  And then, it started to rain during the National Anthem.  Thankfully the rain stopped by the second inning, but it was a cold night. 

As I've mentioned before, we want to see many friends and family as part of our adventure this spring and summer.  Melinda's brother Mark (who is younger than Melinda in spite of what some people think), lives in Centerville, Va and took the Metro in to attend the game with us.  Mark is a big Nats fan and told us some great stories and lamented about how bad the Nationals are this year.

If you care about baseball, the Nats beat the Cubs 2-1.  There was a risk that the game would go extra innings, but thankfully the Nats pulled off a game ending double play in the top of the 9th.  Since it was 49 degrees when the game ended, we were not rooting for extra innings.

We're hoping that this will be the coldest game of our trip.  Next stop is Philadelphia.