Friday, January 20, 2012

Our DC trip: Day One, the Museum of Natural History

For Grant's big Christmas gift, I shopped around and found a decent rate on a hotel in downtown D.C., not far off the Smithsonian campus, which he's been dying to visit since we got to Pennsylvania but as soon as we got here I got kinda...pregnant and not up for a trip.  Then I had a baby and I was soooo not up for a trip.  But we finally, finally made it.

We could see the Washington Monument from our room:


Then, the next morning after a pretty awesome hotel breakfast, we headed out.  We were trying to get to the Museum of Natural History as soon as it opened, but we noticed that we were walking by the National Archives just as it opened, so we made a small detour there.  We totally recommend hitting the Archives first thing in the morning because it's deserted, but the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are definitely worth a gander and it was nice to not have to fight a crowd to get it.  No pictures allowed inside but we snapped this one on the way past it another day to prove we were there.


It took all of 15 minutes, in and out, and we still made it to the museum pretty close to opening time.


I'm finding it pretty hard to pick and choose which pictures to share because there was just so much to see and we took lots and lots of pictures of it...but here's a few.

The Hall of Mammals was pretty neat...


 This is as close as he'll get to a bear.  Ever.  Because he knows it's not alive.

 "Hop, hop, HOP!"




And lots of rocks, too...



And whatever this is...


And did you know that early humans were only as tall as this head?


Kendra liked this cave, too.



Besides running from one point of interest to another, Kendra was also a very helpful big sister.


By lunch time, the museum was getting pretty packed, but it was an awesome way to spend a morning!

1 comment:

Jacqueline said...

Wonderful. I can hardly wait to take her to our museums, and Explora. Smaller but she really gets excited about it.