Day 16: Monday 28th June 2010: Washington, DC (Miles to Date: 4363)

Washington is another place we had visited before but as were travelling this way it seemed to be an opportunity to call in on the Nation's capital once again. We were staying in the Alexandria suburbs and caught the Metro into National Mall area, a journey of some 20 minutes or so.

The Smithsonian Institute runs a number of museums in and around the Nation's capital. To visit all of them in any depth would most likely take weeks. On previous trips to DC we had been into a couple, and decided this time to visit some again, especially as the hot, humid weather made moving around outside in the open pretty uncomfortable. Also the oppressive heat was bubbling up some wicked looking clouds, so we were definitely set for an afternoon storm or two! We took the short walk from the Metro station to the Natural History Museum, passing through the National Sculpture Park, which houses some very interesting exhibit, the most eye-catching of which is a full-sized polished metal tree. There was also fountain fed pond, which was an ideal place to cool our already hot and tired feet.

The Natural History Museum is wonderful place to visit and there are always new things to see here, so it is a place to you can come back to again and again. We toured through the “Oceans” gallery, which not only contained models and preserved specimens of creatures from the sea but also exhibits on the ecology of the seas and oceans. It was not the huge skeleton of a whale suspended from the ceiling that impressed Emily and Jack most, it was the display case containing the preserved giant squid, nearly 40 feet long, that caught their imagination. The next exhibit area we visited was the one that traced the evolution of the human species and our other close “erect” cousins. We were surprised how closely the human DNA structure was to that of bananas and chickens, but when we think back to some of the people we have met it is not too hard to make the connection!

On the second floor of the Museum is the gems and rocks exhibits. This houses the National collection of jewellery, including the famous Hope Diamond, which, like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, is somewhat disappointing in real-life! More interesting and impressive than the cut stones laid in silver and guard are the collections of gem stones and rocks in their more natural state. There is also a section on geologic phenomena such as volcanoes and earthquakes, and their root cause- plate tectonics. As we are watching an active display on the “Ring of Fire”, the active plate region in the Pacific Ocean where most of the major earthquake activity takes place we were talking about the number of earthquakes around New Zealand when a couple standing by pipe up and say in Kiwi accents, “did you mention New Zealand”. We had bumped into Irene and Glenn who are on their own World-wide tour. During our travel we have met a number of fellow travellers and explorers and it is always good to exchange experiences and information with them. We spent some time chewing the cud on global travelling and exchanged Facebook and Blog details before moving on.

By this time it was approaching lunchtime so we left the museum to find something to eat. One look at the skies told us a downpour was imminent so we bought some pretzels from a street vendor and headed off down the street to Museum of American History. We just managed to get sheltered in the eaves of the building's entrance when the skies opened. Phew! We had never visited this museum before and began to look around the ground floor. The first floor covered inventions and technology, and ranged from the contraceptive pill to nuclear bombs. It was actually really interesting and we spent nearly an hour looking around watching videos and reading the displays. After this we went to see “America on the Move”, a wide ranging exhibit on transportation through the ages; with trains, planes and auto-mobiles. Fascinating stuff! The time had shot past and it was getting towards 5pm and we wanted to see some of the outdoor sights. Leaving the Museum we found the weather had improved; still hot and sticky, but the sun had replaced the rain. So we headed out on to the National Mall to take some pictures of the Capitol Building, National Monument and the Whitehouse. Sadly extra security around the Whitehouse meant we could not get as close as we had done on our first visits here. Tired and hot we decided to jump on the Metro back to our hotel to eat and relax for the rest of the day.