Tag Archives: travel experience

National Mall

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The National Mall in Washington, DC, is an open-area park right at the heart of city. This area is among the most popular places to visit in Washington, DC, particularly because there are many monuments located here and its proximity to landmarks like the White House, the US Capitol, and the Smithsonian Institute Museums. During the weekends (and summer evenings) this area is also popular among locals who go there to play sports, or simply go for a jog or a walk. On the west end of the National Mall you find the Lincoln Memorial. On the east end you find the US Capitol, and roughly in the middle you find the Washington Monument. It’s about 1.9 miles to go from one end to the other.

I live in the suburb of Washington, DC, so I don’t go to the downtown area on daily basis. But often times I would go there during the weekends especially either to visit one of the museums or if there is a special event (festivals, charity walks). The National Mall is pretty nice (and safe) to visit at night as well. You can see the Washington Monument and some of the memorials lighted up. During special days like Memorial Day or Fourth of July (or presidential inauguration), the whole area could be packed with people coming to attend concerts, fireworks, etc.

The photo below was taken from the steps of Lincoln Memorial. You can see the Reflection Pool, the Washington Monument, and the US Capitol in the distance.

National Mall

Gateway Arch

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The Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, is another very recognizable landmark in the United States. The Gateway Arch was built as part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park, which was established to commemorate Thomas Jefferson’s role in the Louisiana Purchase, which cleared the way for Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the western part of what is now the United States. The Gateway Arch was designed by architect Eero Saarinen, who was also known for his design work on the Main Terminal at the Washington-Dulles International Airport, not far from where I live in Washington, DC, area.

I visited the Gateway Arch briefly during my coast-to-coast road trip with my brother tracing the historic Route 66 through St. Louis. We only visited the grounds of the Gateway Arch since we were under tight schedule for our trip. One activity that you could do if you visit the Gateway Arch with some time to spare is to take the elevator up inside the Arch. You can also visit the Museum of Westward Expansion to learn more about the history of land exploration in the Old West.

The photo below was taken from the grounds near the base of the Arch. Because of the size of the Arch, I had to take the photo in an angle to capture the whole Arch within the frame.

Gateway Arch

Mount Rushmore

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In addition to the 58 national parks that were set aside to preserve the nature in the United States, there are also other properties managed by the National Park Service for other reasons, such as monuments or historical sites that are preserved to commemorate historical events or figures. In the next few days, I will add posts about some of these places that I’ve visited.

The first one to mention is a monument located within few hours from the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore National Memorial. This monument is a sculpture of four American presidents on a granite mountain — very recognizable monument, though given its location in South Dakota, unless you happen to pass the area during a road trip or you live in the state, chances are that you’ve never seen this monument in person. In fact, initially the idea of building this monument was to increase tourism to the state of South Dakota.

The four presidents represented on the monument — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt — were selected by sculptor Gutzon Borglum to represent the first 150 years of American history, and because of their role in preserving the Republic and expanding its territory. The figures were originally supposed to be carved head to waist, but it ended up to be only the heads due to insufficient funding.

I visited Mount Rushmore during a road trip from Rapid City to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We only stopped briefly at the monument to take photos from a couple of different angles, but it was quite neat to see such a familiar monument in person.

The photo below was taken at one of our stops near the monument. You can see the highway in front of the monument and a couple of visitors walking (to give you scale comparison for the size of the monument).

Mount Rushmore

Badlands

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Badlands National Park in South Dakota features landscape that may not conform to everyone’s idea of beautiful, but the scenery there is certainly dramatic and other-worldly. Weather erosion caused the cliffs on the Badlands Wall to have jagged edges, and mixed with prairie land around, it provides very unique and somewhat surreal landscape. This national park is also known to have one of the riches fossil beds in the world where many unique fossil species had been discovered. The national park’s prairie area is also home for some wildlife, including bison, deer, pronghorn antelope, prairie dog, and black-footed ferret.

I visited the Badlands National Park during a drive from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at the south of the park on the way to Rapid City, South Dakota. The drive through Badlands took us through very dramatic scenery with towering jagged cliffs around, and at times going through a vast prairie land where we could see a herd of pronghorn antelopes and prairie dog city in the distance.

The photo below was taken from the front passenger seat while we were driving inside the park. Someone on flickr commented on this photo saying that the jagged cliffs looked like serrated knife edge. It’s definitely a unique scenery that you can’t find elsewhere.

Badlands

Bryce Canyon

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Bryce Canyon National Park is located in Southwestern Utah, about 90 miles away from Zion National Park. Bryce Canyon is known for its hoodoos, the spire-like rock formations in arid, desert areas formed by erosions. While hoodoos can be found also in other places in the world, nowhere else you could find a large concentration of them like in Bryce Canyon.

I arrived late at night on my first visit to Bryce Canyon, and we went straight to our hotel that was located just outside the park. We went to the Bryce Amphitheater — the main area where the hoodoos are found in Bryce Canyon — very early in the following morning, hoping to catch the sunrise and see the sun light illuminating the amphitheater area in the morning. We were not disappointed; it was quite a sight seeing the sun rises in the distance, then slowly seeing the hoodoos in the Bryce Amphitheater being lighted from just silhouettes to bright red color of the sandstone. During the daytime, you can see the area quite clearly from various overlooks in the park. The air quality around Bryce Canyon is among the best that you can see as far as 160 miles away from there.

The photo below was taken from an overlook near the Bryce Amphitheater during my second visit to the park. It was early spring time. That morning it was a bit cloudy so we didn’t get to see the same dramatic illumination of the hoodoos, but the sun light was still soft in the morning that you can see the details of the hoodoos at the Bryce Amphitheater. In the background, you see some vegetations that looked like bushes. Those are actually tall pine trees — to give you an idea of the scale.

Bryce Amphitheater