9-11-01 The Pentagon

I found myself with a little extra time when I was in Washington DC recently, so I took the Metro out to the Pentagon. There's a memorial area on the opposite side of the building from the Metro station, but it's worth the walk. I'll show you more of the memorial some other time, but tonight I want to show you the spot on the building where the plane impacted on September 11, 2001. You can see the black marble rectangle above, inscribed with the date. That's all there is to mark the spot. Plain, simple, and straight to the point.

Normal tourists like me can't get past the fence, but at least it's close enough that you can see it over there. I can only imagine the lengths they had to go to in order to build a publicly accessible memorial right next to the Pentagon.

I don't know if anyone ever uses these three entrance doors. All the activity seemed to be on the side to the right of this one. It opened up onto a giant parking lot, and a tunnel under a road that led to the neighboring mall.

I was a little nervous about taking these pictures, since there was more than one sign posted that said no pictures. But none of them were in the immediate area of the memorial, so I just kept shooting and hoped for the best.