Monday, June 11, 2012

Rock The Mall

Well, it's 9:00 already.  I was going to spend the evening writing up the detailed story of our trip to Washington, DC and Rock the Mall.  That's not going to happen. So, I'll leave with you a few pictures and a brief description.

We left the church around 7:40 in the morning.  The drive down was pretty uneventful, even if two of us totally forgot to stop at the planned rest stop.  We got on the Metro at the Greenbelt station.  Along with almost an entire train full of girls and leaders and other people.  I feel sorry for anyone who thought they'd just catch the Metro and head into DC on a whim or were going about their normal Saturday routines.  The Girl Scouts totally took over the Metro. There was singing and swapping and story sharing.  We rode with a troop from Dover, DE.

We arrived at Smithsonian station right about noon.  There was a nice shady tree right near the exit from the Metro station that no other troop had taken over, so we did in order to have lunch.  We also borrowed the facilities at the Freer Gallery for a potty break.

You should have seen the masses of girls that had taken over the Mall and were steadily heading towards the Washington Monument.  It was like a sea of girls and leaders.  It was impressive just in it's own rights.  We joined in the migration and headed off towards the Washington Monument and the main event.

We never did get close enough to either stage to actually sing along, but we had so much fun talking to other girls we met wandering around and heading in the general direction of the stage.  I think the person from the furthest away that I talked to was from Arizona.  I saw someone carrying an Alaska flag.

We got to the other side of the Washington Monument ellipse because Rachel saw the fire trucks and just had to go up closer.  So, we were on hand to watch the telesquirt rise into the air and get ready to shower the people with water to cool them off. It was a lot of fun.  Liz did get separated from us for a few minutes, but we found her pretty quickly.

Since we couldn't get near the stage and it was already just about 2:30, we wandered through the WWII memorial for a bit.  The best part was that there was a Hero Flight chapter there with about two dozen or so veterans.  We were able to talk to and thank every one of them.  That was just as moving, for very different reasons, than seeing so many gathered to celebrate the wonderful thing that is the 100th birthday of Girl Scouts.

We were smart and didn't want to fight our way up the Mall to the Smithsonian Station, we walked a dozen or so blocks to a different station that was on K street.  We easily got onto a train and even made it with little fuss onto a car heading back to Greenbelt.  Once we got there, we used one of the GPS units to find a place nearby to eat.  We end up at the Silver Diner.  I could probably write an entire blog post on how awesome a diner it is.  But I won't, because as you can see, I've rambled on way longer than I intended.  Needless to say after dinner we headed back up 95 and home.  Boo and I got dropped off at about 11:15 or so.

It was a full day, and a fun day.  I'm very glad we did it, but I really don't need to be around that many people any time again soon.

Oh, and I've been doing Photo A Day June, they've all been posted on G+.  I'll do a more in-depth photo update tomorrow.

So, until then, I"ll leave you with these pictures from Rock the Mall.
Peace to all and may your adventures be fun and your weekends wonderful.







1 comment:

Margaret said...

I'm a Girl Scout leader too. I've been with my girls since Daisy's and now they are Seniors. Looks like a fun trip.