Washington, D.C.

It’s Danielle here. Sorry we’re late in updating the blog but we fell far behind.

As you can see this, is the White House!!! The one and only!!! There’s not really anything I can say except that it looks exactly how I imagined it. On our last day in Washington, (we only stayed for 2 days) we saw 3 helicopters come in to the White House so we are assuming it was George Bush coming home. Unfortunately, we were on the front side of the building and they land the copters on the back side so we didn’t see anyone get out. There was a guy living in a tent outside the White House protesting against nuclear weapons. He has been doing a vigil since 1986.

This is kind of a weird picture to put on the blog, but I think it’s really cool. We went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and this was in the fossils section. It’s a prehistoric fish of some kind, but the cool part is, if you look closely (you can’t really see it on the picture) you can see another fish inside the first one. This guy died right after he ate the fish and its skeleton is inside the other one. It’s really cool. This museum was really big so we each got to pick a section to look at. Of course, I picked rocks and minerals and we saw the Tiffany Diamond and the Hope Diamond. There were tons of minerals. There was also pulverized wood which I found very fascinating. It’s wood that has been under huge amounts of pressure and heat and it turned to rock. I bought a little piece of it at the gift shop. Steve chose the insect section (of course) but it was closed for renovation so we went to the Animal section. It was really cool too.

This is the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. We went here on our second day in Washington. We read his speeches and all about how he freed the black people in the Lincoln visitors’ center. In the Constitution, they say all men are equal and stuff but what I don’t get is, why did they slave the black people if all of them were equal??? It confuses me. Did you know that it’s the Lincoln Memorial on the American penny??? I always thought it was the White House!!!
We went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and they had a room full of the treasures of history. This is the original R2D2 and C-3-P-0. There was also Kermit the frog, the signpost from MASH, the stopwatch from 60 minutes, George Washington’s uniform and sword, Abraham Lincoln’s hat he was wearing the day he was shot, Albert Einstein’s pipe, Marilyn Monroe’s gloves, Colonel Custer’s coat, Louis Armstrong’s cornet, the first computer, the first telephone, the first light bulb and a bunch of other stuff. We also saw some cool planes and the space pod that went to the moon on Apollo 11 (I think) We also went to the Art Gallery and the National Archives but we don’t have any pictures of that because there was no flash photography aloud and we couldn’t figure out how to turn the flash off on the camera.

This is the Washington Monument across from the Lincoln Memorial. We tried to get a tour to the top but it was fully booked. Dad wouldn’t have come anyway.