DC Trip Highlights – Natural History Museum

Lesson learned – you can only do one Smithsonian museum in a day and feel like you saw some of what was inside.

We took the Metro into the District during the worst rainfall of the week.  It had been 88 degrees on Sunday.  It was now pouring rain and cold.  However, we could still see some monuments when we got off the train!

(I think that is Tad’s “get me inside” face.)

Our destination was the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  We had promised Tad that there would be dinosaur bones.  We HAD to deliver on that promise as soon as possible.

The elephant in the central rotunda was still there.  I remembered that from my trip before.

And we wasted no time getting into the hall of dinosaurs.

The boys were pretty pumped.

We even found the skull of the new T-Rex skeleton that the museum has acquired from Montana.  The current dinosaur exhibit is going to undergo a major overhaul and remodel, and closes at the end of this month.  They will still have some dinosaur skeletons and fossils on display, but the new permanent exhibit will open up in 2019.  So we just caught the “old” set up before it goes away for good.

After our visit to the dinosaurs, we found more contemporary fish and animals.  Tad found a hammerhead shark, which made him happy.

But after rooms and rooms of skeletons and taxidermied or preserved animals and fish…

… I’ve decided that I like to look at live animals and fish, and prefer zoos and aquariums to museums.

We also checked out the rocks and minerals section.

Even Thumper got to take a good look at things.

We spent about four hours at the museum, which also included a lunch break.  But by the time the four hours was up, the kids were wiped out.  We rode the Metro back toward the Major and Q-Bee’s house, and went out to dinner that evening in honor of Berry’s birthday (this was her actual birthday, so she picked the restaurant for dinner).

The next day was just going to be me, Ane, and the Webmaster.  It was going to be a day of sightseeing and making Ane’s dreams come true.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2014 at 12:55 am and is filed under Children, Vacation Tales.
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