4th continued...

So along with the fireworks, the National Mall and Capital were in full celebration mode all day with tons of things to do and eat. We arrived at the Capital lawn at 2pm after spending a few hours at the Mall and waited in line for an hour to get good seats (our patch of the lawn), from there we waited 5 hours for the show to start. 5 hours of heat and humidity followed by heavy rain and being soaked, and while we were starting to grumble by 8pm we soon forgot the wait and being soaked (kind of a more sophisticated version of Woodstock) as the show started.






This is a before and after photo. Doesn't do it much justice though because the first photo was at 3:15 pm and the second was at around 5:00 pm, there where still 3 hours till show time and the people didn't stop coming in until after 8:00 pm.














This shot kind of pans out from the Capital to the Washington Monument. They said 1/2 a million people but I only counted 498,593 (I'm surprised the Gov would exaggerate numbers or make more of something that wasn't).


















Once we where packed in like sardines the light rain set in and silly us thought it would be a quick passing shower.









The light rain turned into heavy rain and by that point umbrellas were useless. Being the ever prepared wilderness folks that we are we did prepare for any scenario and brought with us a vinyl table cloth that kind of worked...sort of. I'm the lump on the left and the girl being the girl. (Note: at this point, The Mrs. really wanted to set up a slip-and-slide on Capitol Hill, but then realized that this would be frowned upon by the Capitol Police.)

Soon the concert started and the rain let up for awhile, but once the music started everyone forgot about the rain got up and danced. Okay that's the end of the complaining part of the day although it was a small price to pay and we would all do it again. Next post will be why it was worth it all.