The Day That we Walked, and Walked, and Walked, and Walked, and Walked

We got up the morning of the 10th and put on our walking shoes!  It was time to really see D.C. and we were prepared.  We got the van from the hotel to take us to the Metro.  It took a little time, but we finally got cards and got all the money from previous visits put on them.  By about 10:00 we were on our way into the city. Our first stop was The White House.

From The White House we walked over to The Washington Monument.  Natalee was really sad that we couldn't go inside because of the damage the monument sustained in last years earthquake, but she liked seeing the outside.

Then we walked to The Museum of American History.  It was really fun to see The Star Spangled Banner, but we couldn't take any pictures.  They have it under heavy glass and away from any natural light to prevent it from deteriorating further.  The song was playing the through the whole exhibit, which was awesome.

After the flag, we went over to American Stories, which is just a random collection of things from America's history. However, we found a couple of things that were very interesting to us.

This is one of the Sunstones from the original Nauvoo Temple.  It was so amazing to see and read what they'd written up about the early church and Joseph Smith.

 This is a replica spike of the one driven to join the Transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point.

 Kermit

 Dorothy's shoes and the Scarecrow's boots and hat from The Wizard of Oz.

There's a display of things that belonged to all the presidents.  Natalee loved this collection of signs with all their names on it. I don't know why, but I didn't take many other photos of it, but it was really interesting. They had a chair owned by President Washington, dishes from The White House, items from several of their children and articles of clothing.  The picture below is President Lincoln's famous stove top hat!

 And finally...

 DUMBO!

After getting our fill of all things historical, we walked over to the Museum of Natural History.  It was very similar to the zoo we'd seen the day before, but the animals weren't moving.  This is the elephant in the rotunda, which I wish you could see a little better.  It's kind of amazing.

We saw lots and lots of preserved animals and lots and lots of bones!  Some scenes from Night At the Museum Battle of the Smithsonian were filmed here, and it was fun to see those.  There were lots of dinosaur bones and it's amazing to see how big they were.  Natalee wanted a picture of everything that was from Utah, which was quite a lot! 

This is the Hope Diamond. It was really beautiful and sparkly.  We also got to see lots of other sparkly rocks, which Natalee adored!

One of the funniest things was when we went to see the mummies.  We had told Natalee that there were mummies in this museum and she was really excited to see them.  When we got to the display, we saw the box below and two preserved bodies, one of a grown man and one of a child. She was looking at them and said, "So, this is a mummy?" and we said yes and she said, "Hmmmm, ok."  I don't know what she was expecting, but I think it was a bit of a letdown for her.

After looking at all the bones, we walked to the metro and got off at a station where there was a McDonald's.  We had some lunch and went around the corner to Ford's Theater.  We were just in time to get tickets for the second to the last tour of the day. Natalee has been kind of enthralled about the death of President Lincoln since she first learned about in the first grade.  She was very excited to see the theater and the house across the street where he died.

 These are the clothes the President was wearing on that night, along with the door that led into the box.

 This is the bed where the President died on April 15, 1865.

We got back on the Metro and rode back to The Mall.  Our next stop was The Air and Space Museum.  Natalee really liked seeing all the planes hanging from the ceiling and the early passenger airplanes.  She thought they were quite a bit more fancy than airplanes today.

This is the Wright Brothers airplane that made the first ever flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  Some of the canvas has been replaced, but the frame is original.

 We took the Metro to Foggy Bottom and walked down the hill to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial and Lincoln Monument.

 This has always been my most favorite DC monument.  For lack of a better word, it's spiritual.  It makes me proud to be American and all that America stands for.  Standing in the shadow of Lincoln is powerful and amazing. I was so glad to be able to share this with my daughter.

After spending some time at the monument we took a taxi to back to the Metro (Best $7 I spent in DC) and went back to the hotel.  Speaking of our hotel, it was so nice to have a comfortable place to crash at the end of our two long days!  It was so nice and there was a van which took us to dinner, the metro or where ever we needed to go in the area.

This was the view from the windows of our hotel.  We were right across from The Pentagon and the Washington Monument. We could also see the Capitol and Arlington Cemetery.

 We had such a fun time in DC, even though we left exhausted with very sore feet!