Monumental Failure

When I was about 10 years old my family took an extended road trip across the country, hitting all the big sights along the way. In my opinion the coolest thing we saw was Mount Rushmore. It was just so impressive to think people had carved these sculptures out of the side of a mountain. It probably also helped that the day we were there was picture perfect - not a cloud in the sky. Honestly, it all came together so perfectly you almost thought it was a something out of a movie. We were less impressed after driving slightly down the road to see the Crazy Horse monument. For those of you unfamiliar, this carving is along the same lines as Mount Rushmore but is being done by a much smaller group of people, having been privately funded. As a result even though it has been under construction for many years it still wasn't very far along (and progress has not picked up since). So when they wanted something like $40 to go and see it, my father balked. The issue was that we were in a very large camper on a narrow road so we couldn't turn around. They had to let us in the park to go down and turn around. As soon as we went through the gate my father told us to open the curtains at the back of the camper and start looking because you could see the top of the mountain from the road. We couldn't stop to admire it or use binoculars to get a better look but we still got a good enough glimpse before we left and I kind of felt that we had paid exactly what the experience was worth.

I bring that story up because this week there seems to be a lot of talk about people being turned away from the monuments in the wake of the government shut down. While I totally agree that it is a shame people that people who used vacation time to visit DC can't get into museums or tour the White House, I can't help but feel like there are plenty of other reasons we should be pissed off about this shutdown before we get to the part where people can't visit monuments. First off, none of them recently opened, so if you waited until now to visit the St. Louis Arch I can't really feel very bad for you. Besides that, I can't imagine there is much to see inside that Arch or the Washington Monument. That is why I'm much more concerned with the fact that there are kids who won't get school lunches on Monday because of this. But, the larger issue is that you really can't close the big monuments anyway. I saw one kid on the news complaining about not seeing the Lincoln Memorial. Well, unless they have established a two-mile perimeter than I am pretty sure you can, in fact, see the Lincoln Memorial. No, you can't go up the steps and go inside but allow me to burst a bubble - you aren't missing much. I have been inside those monuments and it's about an hour of waking for something you can check out in 5 minutes. Visiting monuments may be one of the most inefficient ways to spend a day, making them the perfect symbol for anything having to do with Washington DC at the moment.