Friday in Washington, DC

We made it to Washington yesterday afternoon. The flight was smooth except for the descent into DC. There was some turbulence going through the cloud layers and the pilots were working to fly the approach the whole way.

After checking into our hotel, we went to the National Natural History museum as they have summer hours that extend later in the day. We spent a good 3+ hours walking around. It is a nice museum with lots of different exhibits including dinosaurs, fossils, skeletons, minerals & gems, etc. A lot of the fossils in the dinosaur area came from Ohio. Some were similar to those you see around the Caeser's Creek park area near Waynesville, OH. I enjoyed looking at the skeletons of creatures both extinct and those around today. It was interesting to see things side-by-side through the ages to get a picture of evolution. One of the best presentations of that we saw was an exhibit comparing horse skulls and forelimbs through the ages. Click here for a picture of Dianne at the exhibit. At the right is a picture of Dianne standing under a set of shark jaws from millions of years ago. If you look at the wall, you'll see a white outline that was projected on the wall to depict the body of the shark around those jaws. It was large! Click here for a close up picture of the jaw. Just above Dianne’s head and a bit behind the large jaws, you’ll see a smaller set of shark jaws from a recent great white shark. Quite a difference in size! We didn't spend a lot of time in the gem and mineral area, but we did see the Hope diamond and I took this picture for Eric. From top to bottom that collection of crystals was at least 4 feet high.

We also walked to the main building of the Smithsonian. Around the south side of the building (away from the Mall) is an extensive rooftop garden. Here is a picture of Dianne sitting in one section of the garden area. While sitting at the garden, Dianne mentioned she was tired and wasn’t feeling the best. I thought it was because we didn’t get much sleep Thursday evening and we hadn’t had anything to eat since having a light brunch. We jumped on the Metro and found our way back to the hotel. She didn’t feel like dinner, so I ate by myself in the hotel. Unfortunately, she is fighting some type of GI bug and isn’t feeling well at all. Check out her blog entry. Finally, all the Friday pics are collected in a group here.