Iwo Jima Memorial

Robert recently got a new phone and has been playing around with the GPS feature and GPS apps in anticipation of the awesome camping and hiking we are going to do this summer. So to test out a GPS app (test how it did measuring our elevation, average speed and location) yesterday evening Robert, Julia, and I drove down to the Tidal Basin to walk around and get an early peek at the Cherry Blossoms. Unfortunately there were just a few trees in bloom, most of the cherry trees looked just about ready to start blooming. So we decided to walk across the bridge instead and check out the Iwo Jima Memorial.

When we got to the hill by the memorial with a great view of the city we saw a whole bunch of people out with their nice camera's and tripods getting ready to take pictures. And more just kept coming and coming.

At first we were a little confused why there were so many people out. Sure it was a great view of the city, but why so many people on this particular night? Then we remember last night was a Perigee Moon and the moon was going to be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than regular full moons. That made us almost want to stick around another forty-five minutes to see it. Almost.

Picture this view with a giant full moon rising behind it. I'm sure it was very cool, but we hadn't eaten dinner yet and we were entertaining a two year-old.

Instead we saw what we had come to see. The Iwo Jima Memorial honors U.S. Marine troops killed defending the country since 1775.

The obligatory Julia picture.

We finally did get a glimpse of the moon after we got back to our car and were driving away. Here's the picture we snapped of the moon. This one is a lot cooler.