About Arlington's Arlington National Cemetery

A Memorial Day Visit To Arlington Cemetery

One of the great things about living in Washington, DC is proximity to so many special places. And of course Arlington National Cemetery is one of them. And this afternoon, we headed across the Potomac to see this beautiful place on Memorial Day.

We got there late in the day, just in time to see the changing of the guard ceremony and the laying of the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.

If you come to Washington, this is an inspiring place to visit. It's the final resting place for some many important figures in our country's history, and a stunning reminder of the sacrafices that so many men and women made serving the country.

I have no idea if this person is somehow related.

My husband JOHN GOULDING, is 3rd generation Californian.

Imagine my surprise when Tyler found this Lieutenant's Tomb Stone from

Company C in the Civil War when I was in Arlington with Tyler before he left for Iraq.

Freaky - a tad bit. Goulding is NOT a common name in the Bay Area of California... perhaps it was in 1865

This is a shot of Arlington House, the Lee family's home, that I took this monrning crossing Memorial Bridge. The house is on top of the hill, and the flag is half mast, as it is any day there is a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.

© 2009 Patricia Kennedy. Unless otherwise noted, the content, both written and in pictures, is the property of Patricia Kennedy . If you would like to use this image, please email me (housepat@mac.com) with your request. I'll almost certainly say yes, and ask only that you provide a link back to my original content as well as an acknowledgment. The same thing applies to any other material you see posted here on Active Rain or on any of my other blogs.

Last night, after I read Katerina Gassett's Choices Are Not Void Of Consequences, I realized that after living in Washington, DC for almost 4 decades, I had never been to Arlington National Cemetery. So this afternoon, I did.

We turned down an invite to a neighbor's Memorial Day picnic and headed to Arlington.

It's a powerful place, especially over Memorial Day, where each of the thousands of graves has a small American flag, placed exactly one foot in front of each stone.

We took the tour bus up the hill to Arlington House, and on the way learned a lot.

What we now celebrate as Memorial Day began right after the Civil War. Widows in the South whose husbands were buried in the North ouldn't go visit them. Same for Widows in the North who had husbands buried in the South. So they started to put flowers on each other's husband's graves.

I never knew that!

So, it was a flawlessly beautiful day with a clear sky. And I had my camera in tow, just in case there were some amazing views.

There were.

From Arlington House you can see all the way to DC.