Goodbye D.C. (Natural History Museum, Part 2)

So, it was quite the event getting out of the house this morning

Last night, Jonathan got home from Boston at about 7 pm. The kids and I were all tired from our visit to Mount Vernon that afternoon. And I was in the midst of packing and had not yet made dinner. He jumped in, made dinner, put kids to bed and basically saved the day. #hessohandsome

By the end of the evening, I had finished packing everything but still needed to finish loading the car. But, like I said, I was pretty tired. And so, I checked the weather, saw that it wasn’t going to rain and just left the stuff out on the patio.

This morning, when my alarm went off at 6:30 it was raining. THE STUPID FORECAST LIED! So, Jonathan and I hustled and got everything inside as fast as we could.

Fortunately, it had only just started raining. So stuff was a little damp on the outside, but it wasn’t drenched. #praisethelord.

Basically, we were all a little crazed by the time we made it out of the house with all of our junk.

SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

So. On our way out of town, we decided to go downtown one more time. We didn’t really have time to do a full blown visit anywhere since we had a drive ahead of us, so we decided to try and catch a few more exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, since we hadn’t seen everything that we wanted to. We determined that we would drop by for a couple of hours (which happens to be the maximum time that you can reserve a parking meter in the area) before we made our way to New Haven.

I was impressed all over again by the Smithsonian. Everything is just organized and arranged so thoughtfully and beautifully.

One of the areas that the kids had really wanted to visit on our previous excursion to the museum was the Rocks, Gems, and Minerals Section; we decided to go there first.

The exhibit begins by looking at space, meteorites, and all that we have learned about space by looking at meteorites. There were some truly impressive specimens on display.

Early on in our visit, Logan commandeered Jonathan’s phone to take a picture. And he never gave it back. And he took pictures of EVERYTHING. Needless to say, some of the photos were better than others… 😂😂😂😂

Next we learned about the rock cycle and how different kinds of rocks form.

Next up was Minerals, the uses of different minerals, and how they are acquired. There were a couple of replicas of mines that you could walk through and everything. It was really cool.

Our favorite section though, was the gem section. We all wished that we could’ve dedicated more time to this section. It was truly impressive. And beautiful.

We rounded out our time by going to the Rocks and Gems gift store.

By this point, we were maxing out our parking meter and we needed to get on the road.

We have done so much while we have been in D.C. And I feel like we barely scratched the surface. We could have definitely used more time; there is so much that we still want to see.

And then there’s all the stuff that we have seen but we want to go see again…

We’ll just have to come back!!

Also, on a completely different note: the license plates here are quite intriguing.

Goodbye D.C. Hasta la Vista!!

Epilogue

So, D.C. actually came back to haunt us a little bit. There are picture enforced speed limits all over the place. And let’s be honest, neither Jonathan nor I are slow drivers. We got $400 worth of speeding tickets sent to us in the mail. Lamest souvenir ever 😑😑.

Also, on that note. D.C. has THE craziest drivers I have ever seen. I have never seen so many risky maneuvers in such a short period of time. The craziest one that I witnessed? I saw someone drive in the opposite lane of traffic and then cut back into the correct lane to cut ahead in line. It was madness.