Washington D.C., Part 3

I'm finally continuing my wrap up of DC after several interruptions. Adorable little interruptions (check back after Christmas for more pictures of Allie), but interruptions none the less.

After we left the hotel where my conference was held, we traveled to the National Mall. Our second hotel was just blocks from the Mall. We immediately ditched our bags and headed out.

Only problem was we headed out into a flood of people. People everywhere! I hate crowds and we managed to walk right into one of the largest I've ever been in.

We had forgotten that the John Stewart/Steven Colbert rally was that same day. When we initially heard about the rally, they were expecting around 40,000 people. That number swelled to an estimated 250,000 people (or more depending on who you ask).

It was insane. People were dressed up (it was the day before Halloween) and it seemed like everyone had a picket sign. There were people young and old (you should have seen the number of baby strollers...hello, I like my heels. Please don't run over them with your stroller!).

I know I'm from small town America so it's probably no surprise that the crowds were overwhelming. I mean there's 250,000 people in Lincoln and Lincoln is a heck of a lot larger than the National Mall.

I was amazed by not only the number of people that attended the rally, but also by the distances they traveled to attend. The next day when we were out sightseeing, I was wearing a jacket we had picked up in Alaska a few years ago which had Alaska stamped on it. As we were crossing the street, a woman with 3 teenage daughters stopped us to ask if we were from Alaska. I explained that we had picked up the jacket on vacation but that we had heard there were people in town from Alaska to attend the rally. They kindly pointed out that they were the people in town from Alaska. I was floored. I can't imagine traveling that far for this rally. Maybe a different rally, but not this one.

Now don't ask me what the rally was about. All I know is it attracted a ton of people and I never did figure out its purpose. Our plan was to avoid it all costs. So, we ducked into the first museum we could safely reach and enjoyed the relative peacefulness of the museum.