Part 3: Museums, Capitol, & Family

Luckily we got most of our outside walking excursions done the first couple days so after that we could be inside more. Thank goodness - neither Mark nor I were in the mood to feel like we were about to pass out from heat exhaustion again! Sunday July 8th was our museum day. It was incredibly crowded so we didn't spend as much time lingering at exhibits as much as we normally would have but hey, we were still learning and seeing neat things and (perhaps more importantly) we were inside!!

First we went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. When we went to get tickets we were told we would have to wait about 45 minutes to get in, unless we were active/retired military, firefighter or police. Well whataya know - Mark whipped out his badge and we got in right away. I knew that would come in handy at some point! I'd been to the Holocaust Museum before and it was just as dark and depressing as I remembered. This is not a feel-good museum. You leave feeling kind of nauseated and depressed about humanity in general, but I feel that it's still important to know this stuff.

Next we went to the National Air and Space Museum. Again, swarming with people, but still fun.

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*I took a sideways panoramic shot to get these rockets in the picture. Except for the distortion I think this is a cool shot.

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*Inside the cockpit of a Boeing 747

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*The Wright brothers' plane

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Our next stop was going to be the Capitol but as we were walking around to the entrance we saw that it closed to visitors in about 3 minutes. So we decided we would come back the next day for that but since it was starting to storm we ducked into the nearest museum, which happened to be the Botanical Gardens. I'm not much of a plant person - I often say I have a "black thumb" because I swear any plant I try to take care of dies - but this place was neat. There were lots of different plant habitats to wander through, such as desert, jungle, a room for medicinal plants, and even an entire room of orchids!

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We finally had to leave because they kicked us out for closing but that worked out well anyway because we had plans for a family dinner. We all met at a Japanese restaurant. Here are some pictures of my family. Everybody had such a good time visiting and catching up!

Fran on the left, Bobbi on the right

L to R: Alan, Cheryl (Gary's Wife), and Gary (Alan's son), and me

And Jim

Mark having some fun after his cocktail

Monday July 9th was a lot cooler outside so even though we still had some walking to do outside it was so much more tolerable. Our first stop was the House of the Temple, which is the headquarters for the Scottish Rite. Obviously this was more for Mark than for me but I just loved the architecture. The outside was modeled after the Mausoleum of Mauselos, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

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The "Throne Room" as I call it.

*His Supreme Masterfulness

All you have to do to get your own Pillar of Charity is donate at lease $1 million to the House of the Temple. Let me get out my checkbook...

Next we went back into the center of DC and went to the Capitol. Mark had been inside before and he kept saying how different the process is now. 9/11 really changed how things are done. We had to dump all the water out of the Camel-back, put everything through x-ray machines and they still pawed through our bags. It was like going through security at the airport. We did a tour but I'll admit it was a bit disappointing. We only got to see a few rooms and we were almost literally packed shoulder-to-shoulder with other tour groups and we hardly had time to see anything at all before they were herding us into the next room. Then when we were done we couldn't go back to see things we wanted to look at some more. As I said, a bit of a let down but oh well. It was still neat to see.

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The memorial for Ulysses Grant

The rest of the day we spent in the Natural History Museum and a few parts of the American History Museum. I really wish we'd had more time, I could have spent days in those museums and still not have seen everything I wanted.

This is the Archives of the United States. So. Cool.

*We walked through what was essentially an outside museum of fine arts.

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*The Hope Diamond

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Earrings that supposedly were worn by Marie Antionette

I'll take one of those, and one of those...

*Presidential dinnerware sets. I believe this belonged to the Clintons.

*The Obama dinnerware set.

*First Ladies' inaugural dresses.

*Mary Todd Lincoln's gown and silver tea set.

*An excavated shipwreck.

*George Washington's uniform. He really was tall, even by today's standards.

*Andrew Jackson's uniform from the War of 1812.

*Remember Union General Meade from the Gettysburg post? This is his horse. No, I'm not making this up. His horse was shot 8 times throughout the war and survived Meade, was put to stud, and finally had to be put down because he refused to die. You can't make this stuff up.

That was our last full day in DC. There was a Civil War Medicine museum up in Frederick that we wanted to see so that night we spent with Jim and Fran again. Since our flight didn't leave until evening on the 10th we had time the first part of the day to spend looking through the museum (but not before we tried out driving Jim's awesome motorcycle with a sidecar!).

Notice the "pedestrian slicer," as Jim calls it, that says "The Communist Plot." So tongue-in-cheek - we loved it!

It's quite a bit harder to drive with a sidecar.

After the museum Jim and Fran drove us to the airport and we were off to Vegas.

We had such a fun time out there! We're definitely thinking about another trip out there in a year or two to see more Civil War battlefields and re-enactments and museums. And of course it would be wonderful to spend more time with family.