This was Jessey's one and only day in Washington DC, so the activities were all up to him. This morning we were glad that we were so close to the National Mall because the one place Jessey wanted to make sure he saw was the Smithsonian Museum of American History. That was one of the two museums we were most sad to not have seen when we were last in DC 9 years ago,
Even though half of the museum was closed for restoration, we still managed to spend almost 4 hours in there. We were excited to see that for some reason the museums were open until 7:30pm today. Usually they close at 5, so we were happy to have some extra time to look through them.
The Museum of American History was SO cool! It had so many pieces to it from the progression of transportation (with separate sections for ships, aircraft, space shuttles, automobiles, trains, and public transportation) complete with models and life-size pieces, to the wars in America, with uniforms, weapons and military propaganda. There were items owned and used by the Presidents, gowns worn by the first ladies, an entire exhibit on the progression of food in America from farms to machinery to genetically-modified foods that also talked about our fascination with vegetarian and vegan diets and foods from other countries and included food pyramids through the generations for comparison - that was interesting. There was even an exact replica of Julia Child's kitchen in there.
Probably the most popular exhibit was the pop-culture exhibit which had Dorothy's ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz, an old Apple II computer, Apolo Anton Ohno's skates from the Olympics in 2002, a walkman, a record player, a real Kermit muppet, and so much more. Lots and lots of photos were taken in that room.
One of the coolest exhibits to Jessey and I was the one that included the actual American flag (or what's left of it) from 1814 that Francis Scott Key was looking at when he wrote The Star Spangled Banner. That was a really neat once-in-a-lifetime thing to see.
I also found it very humbling to stand next to an African-American man as we both gazed at the model of a slave ship from the transportation exhibit, complete with figurines and miniature cargo. The expression on his face brought tears to my eyes as I watched the emotion in his.
The whole museum was completely interactive with plenty of things for the girls to touch and play with and more video clips than you could watch in a day. It's astounding that this museum is free! My girls probably learned more about American history in those 4 hours than they've learned in all of their years in school so far. And when you look at the past exhibits on their website and think about how much they have in storage at that place, I just think it's a shame we live so far away from it.
Sorry that this is all just words, but photography is not allowed in most of the exhibits there. If you want to see some of what we saw, you can check out their website at: http://americanhistory.si.edu/
After the American History museum we had a quick snack break from one of the food trucks outside and then we headed to the Museum of Natural History. We still had a couple of hours to look around that museum, and it was Jessey's second choice so we went for it.
The bottom floor was kind of so-so with ocean creatures and evolution plaques we'd seen a hundred times before in other museums. Jessey and I couldn't decide if this museum really was ho-hum or if we were just so 'museum-exhausted' from having looked at the American History museum that we just couldn't take anymore. At any rate, the girls absolutely loved the hall of mammals, which I must admit was pretty cool with probably close to 100 animals of all shapes and sizes. The museum actually had the world's largest taxidermy animal, a bull elephant, inside it. The girls we enraptured by the animals everywhere and C took pictures until my camera ran out of batteries. I just took one photo of "Rexie" from Night At The Museum.
Some of C's best pictures are included at the bottom of this post.
After we left the Museum of Natural History, I suddenly realized I had lost my hat :(. I had bought a really cool Indiana Jones-type dark green canvas hat at the Omaha Zoo and was so excited about it since my old one was crushed in the car and had holes in it. I had been looking for a new one for ages and finally found one I loved - and now it was gone! We went back to the two museums, but neither of them had it. We'll have to go check again tomorrow.
By this point we were all hungry and tired. Finding places to eat after 8pm has proven to be quite difficult in this area of DC. We were able to find a place called Qdoba, which is exactly like a Chipotle and was a great pick for dinner. We had a nice, relaxed dinner there and then headed back to the hotel to go to sleep since we had to leave at 8am the next morning to take Jessey to the airport. He needed to fly home because he has finals coming up soon and couldn't miss the week before finals and the preparation days for them. We'll miss him!
Photos from the Museum of Natural History by C:
Haha -- American and Natural history were my two favorite Smithsonians as well.
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