WASHINGTON, D.C.: THE REFLECTING POOL AND TIDAL BASIN MONUMENTS, PART 2

We left the Jefferson Memorial and continued clockwise around the Tidal Basin.

Our next stop was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. It was dedicated in 1997 by President Bill Clinton. It's distinguishing feature for me was its sprawling layout. It covers 7.5 acres! I kept expecting to come to the end of it, but then there would be another section. Of course, it does have to cover the longest presidency in U.S. history--12 years. The basic format is four "rooms," one for each of FDR's terms.

One especially cool thing about the FDR Memorial is that it is completely wheelchair accessible--a nod to FDR's disabiity.

FDR was known for his pithy statements, and many of them are engraved on the walls of his memorial, such as this one that reads, "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."

This one states, "The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man or one party or one nation...it must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world."

Wow. That's an ideology that seems completely foreign in today's political climate.

Next to that quote is a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt--the only First Lady honored at a Presidential memorial. Eleanor stands next to the seal of the United Nations, to which she was the first delegate from the United States: