A Day at the Mall...

Carl and I decided to take another excursion into downtown D.C. since we have been here this long and haven’t actually seen anything other than the Washington Memorial from a distance. So we met Auntie Em downtown and had a wonderful afternoon – perfect weather!

We saw the sculpture gardens...

Random, but this was my favorite one. Can you figure out what’s different about this one?

Then took a small walk around the mall. On one side you could see the Washington Memorial.

And on the other side, you saw the Capitol. And lots and lots of people.

They also had “The Castle” nearby that was beautiful. It was the first Smithsonian but is now just used for administrative purposes.

Then we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Emily was wonderful to have there too. She knows so much!

This was one of Amelia Earhart’s planes.

This aircraft can is a Mach 6, meaning it can go 6x the speed of sound. Wow! That means that you can travel across the U.s in 30 minutes. That would be nice for our trip coming up.

This is the original Wright Brother’s first plane. They had it re-canvassed but most everything else was original. I’ll be honest, I don’t think I would have the guts to actually go up in that, even if I was positive it could fly. Maybe if you strapped a parachute to me or something. But, with that being said, I sure am glad that they did come up with it, because now I get to fly home in a few weeks!

There were so many intriguing exhibits. We absolutely loved it! We even got to touch a piece of the moon on our way out – and all the grimy germs of everyone else who have touched it.

The Natural History Museum

We made it to about 1/3 of this museum. There was so much to see, I felt like it was nine museums packed in one. However, we quickly walked through a few of the areas and saw some pretty neat stuff.

We got to see all sorts of different animals from around the world. I’ll be honest, there were some animals that I had never even heard of before. But to be honest, most of it, I kind of felt like I was at a glorified Cabella’s without all the shotguns, fishing gear, and clothing to buy.

Next we went to the Evolution area. In case you were wondering…

Our current population is 6,758,239,025. I don’t quite know if they caught that baby that was born in the middle of Africa, but hey, it’s pretty close!

Emily and I had our pictures taken to see what we would look like if we were from pre-historic times.

Emily's. Not too shabby eh?

This one on the other hand...

For those of you who have read “The Lost Symbol,” you may remember a giant squid that they referred to. None other than this one. Ugh!

The Hope Diamond. Call me crazy, but I was a little disappointed in the 45.5 karat diamond. I had always imagined this HUGE diamond in a gold casing of some sort. Guess my knowledge about diamonds was a little out of proportion. Oh well. Don’t get me wrong it was gorgeous, but I think I liked some of the emeralds more.

And Carl loved it all. It was a jam packed day and we didn’t even make a dent in what there is to see downtown. But we are getting a little bit closer! Ü