Thursday, March 19, 2009

Southeast Road Trip Day 4

We took the Metro into town again and had breakfast at Johnny Rocket's in Union Station before getting back on the Tourmobile. This time we went to the Museum of Natural History and saw the Dinosaur and Fossil Mammals. Then we went through the Sant Ocean Hall and the Mammal Hall, which was just like the Field Museum with tons of stuffed animals on display. There was a Giant Panda, a Fennec Fox and a movie playing about the earliest mammals. It explained that the first ones were very small shrews during the time that the dinosaurs were the dominant aniamals. Somehow the shrews survived the meteor and became dominant. Even though it was geared towards kids, I still learned quite a bit.
After that we went down to the basement to visit the gift shop and have lunch. Then we went up to the Geology Hall and saw lots of cool rocks and minerals before going inside the little room that houses the Hope Diamond, the largest blue diamond in the world, and some large meteorites. The day at the museum had tired us out, but I insisted we go out see the Jefferson Memorial, so we got back on the Tourmobile. I'd always thought Jefferson was sort of hunched forward because I'd only seen it from behind, but he's standing straight up. As we were leaving, we saw more helicopters over the Tidal Basin like we had yesterday. Lastly, we grabbed some gelato back at Union Station and headed back to the hotel, where we played dominoes and booked our next three nights, one in North Carolina and two in Savannah.

My Flickr Pictures from March 19th

No comments: