Museum Hopping in D.C.

I tried to find as many boat pictures as I could in the art museum

While we were in D.C. we visited some of the Smithsonian museums.  When I was younger I thought there was a single museum and I imagined it had the warehouse from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  I have been to D.C. three times and spent days each trip in different museums, but I have not even come close to seeing all of them.  There were thousands of school kids swarming over the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum so we spent more time in the art museums than Emily and Aleah would have liked.  

They had a sketchbook from Paul Guaguin that I thought was really interesting.  Emily and I each sat down and tried to draw some of the scenes.  

At the Air and Space Museum, Aleah discovered that she looks a lot like Amelia Earhart as a young girl.  Emily dressed as Amelia Earhart for a school project one year and they both look like her.  She is an inspiring woman.

The national mall is full of people always, and the grass is very sad.  The dirt it sits on is highly compacted from tourists and locals, from protests, and celebrations.  The probably need to deep rip it every 3 years and start over.

We spent almost a full day in the Natural History Museum.  From the biology to geology displays we could have spent another day.  I just love this stuff.

Aleah was obsessed with the short films about evolution.  She was really interested in all of the human ancestor species.  They have a display that shows reconstructions of each branch that makes it easier to imagine.  Neanderthals really would not have looked very different from other people I realized.  The Homo floriensis exhibits were really cool (Emily is reading over my shoulder and is reading this in her best British pompous accent so I will try to not be so erudite. Look that one up, Emily).

We had a great time canoeing with my Mom and it was a great visit.  I just wish we could hang out more often.  She wrote about it on her blog too.