The Smithsonian

To go through all of the different museums that make up the Smithsonian would take days and much of it would bore the children to tears, so we have trimmed our visit down to a few key areas. Today, we went to the first two: The Museum of Natural History and the National Air and Space Museum. I guess technically the zoo was the first since it is also part of the Smithsonian, but it's so far away I forgot to count it.

The kids really enjoyed the dinosaur exhibits in the Museum of Natural History and we spent probably two hours in only three or four rooms. Reagan and Abbie both went over every exhibit in detail reading nearly all of the captions and explanations. After that we tried to find some lunch. Remembering that we had seen a McDonald's on the Mall earlier in our trip, we headed there to get something quick and easy. Apparently, free enterprise is alive and well in DC because a quarter pounder with cheese is about $9 at the Mickey D's on the mall.

Instead of stopping there, we went a few blocks over and ate at a more traditional McDonald's location. By the way, the kids are loving the fast food, but Leah and I are tiring of it quickly. Anyway, this particular McDonald's was about the nastiest fast food joint that I've ever been in. Our feet stuck to the floor no matter where we walked, there were no clean tables, the restrooms were locked (and I'm not sure that wasn't to keep something in), and every person behind the counter (most of which had untucked and disheveled uniforms) was extremely rude. At least we didn't have to pay $9 for a fast food burger, though.

After eating, we wen to the National Air and Space Museum (one of my favorites) and spent another couple of hours tracking down the Wright Flyer ("It's the real one!" Reagan discovered after reading the caption) and Amelia Earhardt's plane (the only thing Abbie wanted to find in there). In addition to those finds, we also went through a very cool series of rooms that the kids really enjoyed that provided a series of experiments so they could learn about how airplanes fly. They even got to sit in the cockpit of a plane and work the controls (today was a light picture day, and those are really the only shots I got). Finally, my favorites, we saw "Glamorous Glennis" (the X-1 Yeager flew to break the sound barrier), "The Spirit of St. Louis" (Lindbergh's plane), "SpaceShip One" (Paul Allen's commercial spaceship that won the X-Prize a short while back), "Voyager" (the plane that circumnavigated the globe), "The Spirit of Texas" (Perot Jr.'s helicopter that circumnavigated the globe), and a wide variety of space vehicles from probes to lunar landers.

After all of that, we went to rent bikes and discovered that they are only open until 6pm on Sunday. We've postponed that until tomorrow, assuming that we have time then. We're also planning to visit the National Art Museum (another of my favorites) and possibly the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Right now, the kids are already in bed and we've got some dinner on the way to our room. I think they would go to sleep on their feet if we made them go out anywhere else.

Sunday, June 24, 2007