DC adventures
DC Vacation
For their New Years’ gift, 2017, the girls each
received their own National Park passport book.
It’s set up like a passport – a place for your name, your picture, and
lots of pages for stamps that document where you’ve been. In this case, though, the visa stamps are for
each national park or monument you have visited. The girls received their books and instantly
started clamoring to go get some stamps.
We are planning on hitting five national parks this summer – Tetons,
Yellowstone, Glacier, Badlands, and Wind Cave – but it wasn’t enough. So, we decided to go to the Capitol over
Spring Break, with the goal of being tourists and acquiring as many national
park stamps as possible.
Saturday
The Whomptons are drivers, not fliers, so we piled
into the Prius early Saturday morning and headed east. From Missouri, we traveled through Illinois,
Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia that day. Lola was car sick a few times, so we
successfully drugged her with Dramamine for the remainder of the journey. The drive was extraordinarily pleasant, with
spectacular rainbow views in the West Virginia mountains. Simply stunning. One might think that driving in a car for
12.5 hours would create antsy children or adults, but no one complained. In fact, folks preferred to be in the car so
that we could listen to the HPMOR podcast / audiobook some more! J We stopped in Fort Royal, VA; it is at the
north entrance of Shenandoah National Park and we excitedly planned to explore
it Sunday morning before heading into DC.
Sunday
Curses!
Shenandoah National Park was still closed due to the surprise blizzard
the week before! L Disappointed, we loaded up into the car and
decided to audible and check out some Civil War battlefields instead. Who knew looking at battlefields could be
interesting?! Manassas was surprisingly
compelling; we tromped around in the rain, checked out cannons and hills and
fences and buildings, and marveled at the five minutes map-reenactment of First
Manassas that is available in the visitors center. Watching the troop movement really helped
visualize the story of the battle. We
wanted more! The girls got their first
and second stamps of the trip and then we headed out for other battlefields and
sites to explore.
Midday we headed farther into Virginia to visit
the Air
and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center, located near Dulles. Modern museums have a well-organized floor
plan and Udvar-Hazy is phenomenal. So
many space items, planes, helicopters, memorabilia! The aircraft are resting on
the ground or are suspended in the air; the catwalk allows the visitors to get
an up-close view of the displays and easily imagine them flying around in
real-life. We said “wow!” countless
times. Big recommend from the
Whomptons.
Then it was time to officially enter DC. The Hotel Harrington was home base,
very centrally located and within walking distance of almost everything we
wanted to do. From there, we trekked
through the Hirshhorn
Sculpture Garden, to the Air and
Space Museum on the Mall, met up with good friends Ben and Meredith, viewed
the founding documents at the National
Archives, had dinner, and ended the evening at the Navy Memorial.
Nighttime began our daily experience of a jazz
saxophonist right outside our window.
Awesome, city living.
Monday
Monday was a whirlwind of walking. From the hotel, we headed to the Bureau of
Engravings and Printings to get passes for later, then crossed the Mall to the
Capitol. Our US Rep had arranged for us
to take the Capitol tour! Then Ben took
us on a more intimate tour of the Senate side, which included riding the Senate
subway. Lola was thrilled! Lunch at Union Station, exploring the Postal Museum, back to the
Navy Memorial to get the stamp (stamps are only available between 9 AM – 5 PM,
so planning for this was a little tricky each day), to Bureau of Engravings and Printings to
watch money being made, then to the Washington Monument with the plan of
walking through the monuments to Lincoln Center for a 6 PM show.
At this point, the girls had logged 30,000 steps
and were highly unenthusiastic about walking the two miles to Kennedy Center
and then the two miles back to the hotel.
The thought put Lola in tears, as did the thought of skipping the
symphony show. We caught the Circulator
bus, which dropped us off at the Lincoln Memorial, and headed uphill to the
Kennedy Center. At this point, Lola
needed a potty break – the State Department refused to help – but we found a
place, then found dinner and the energy to finish the distance to the Kennedy
Center. The Kennedy Center has free showings each
day at 6 PM and we delighted in the youth symphony and harp performances. WOW, those students were superb! WOW, were we relieved to sit for an hour! Afterwards, we trudged up the hill to the
Foggy Bottom Metro stop, caught the train to Metro Center, and staggered back
to the hotel.
The girls had walked over 17 miles and gratefully
crashed in their beds. Everyone slept
hard that night!
Tuesday
Whompton goal for Tuesday: see panda bears! The subway ride deposited us in a
non-touristy community with actual grocery stores! It was a delight to walk through the town on
our way to the National Zoo. Highlights from the zoo: panda bears, fishing cat, Asian otters, Alice
the Stanley Crane, and the orangutan overhead connector from building to
building. The Whomptons LOVE the Saint
Louis Zoo and everyone wholeheartedly agreed that the STL Zoo was better – it’s
bigger, with substantially more animals and a wider variety of them as
well. Even so, it was a lovely spring
day and it was amazing to see, in person, animals we’d only every seen before
on screens.
We hit the grocery store, loaded up on bread and
apples, had an early dinner, and caught the train back to the hotel. After lazing in the hotel a bit, we dashed
over to Ford’s Theatre and the Petersen House, and
learned lots about Lincoln. Two
stamps! We followed up even more lazing
in the hotel with a surprise outing for dessert at Ollie’s Trolley, lots of
reading, and bed.
Wednesday
Krystal is a super-planner and really tried to get
advance tickets for all the cool free things in DC. I missed on the Infinity Room tickets – all
gone within minutes of the weeks’ launch – and on the African American History
and Culture Museum –July’s tickets are all taken right now! While in line at the Petersen House, another
tourist told us that we could log on at 6:30 AM and try to get same-day tickets
for certain places. That’s what we did
on Wednesday morning. Eric, Krystal, and
Raina used their three computers, all logged on to the Museum of African
American History and Culture at 6:30 AM, and continuously refreshed the page
until we got tickets. Scheduled for
11:30 AM, win! With that success, we
grabbed 3:30 PM tickets for the Holocaust Museum as well. Stupendous start of the day!
Then it was time to go stand in line outside of
the White House for our 7:30 AM tour. It
was COLD and WINDY and we occupied ourselves by singing Hamilton songs. We were on Alexander Hamilton Drive, after
all. Eventually we made it through the
two security checkpoints – security is no joke in DC – and entered the East
Wing for our White House tour. Krystal
badgered the Secret Service with all sorts of questions – I was told I could! –
and we all appreciated the historical preservation of the spaces.
The White
House Visitors Center was next, which provided a lot more of the historical
context of the White House than just seeing it was able to provide. (The Visitors Center was substantially more
interesting that the White House itself.)
Lola and Krystal earned their Junior Ranger badges, and Raina and Lola
got their passport stamps. We grabbed
lunch back at the hotel and prepared for the afternoon of museums.
Oh, my. The
Museum for African American History and
Culture is the crown jewel of the Smithsonian. Hands-down, this museum was the highlight of
our DC trip. The place was PACKED and we
waited in line to enter, and then to enter the history floors. The museum has three subterranean floors and
four above-ground floors; you start at the very bottom crowded in a narrow
space – with the origins of slavery – and then steadily progress into the light
and celebrations of African Americans at the top floor. It’s symbolic, profound, and uplifting. How do you find artifacts documenting the
life of individuals (who were not allowed to own property) that the powerful
found unimportant? It’s a question I
never asked myself before – much to my shame, I realized, when I was in the
museum – and the artifacts and information displayed push awareness. We learned so much. We learned from what regions most slaves
came, which nations and states pushed for slavery the most, which nations and
companies sacrificed the most lives in transport. The museum is supporting underwater
explorations to find artifacts from slave ships, and some are on display
currently. Once out of the slave ship
area, the museum opens up a little bit more space physically and shares about
the American colonies, the slave rebellions and revolts, shows more artifacts
and personal stories, leads to the Congressional compromises about slavery and
states, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Movement, and up
to Obama. The history from the past 150
years had more artifacts, images, and video footage, and each level capitalized
on the medium choice to share the history.
Each level was different and powerful in new ways.
The history section of the museum is organized
along a narrative, and we wanted to read each part. We were still below ground in the history
section at 3 PM, which was when we needed to leave for the Holocaust
Museum. Everyone agreed to stay, and we
finally emerged into the light at ground level.
With our remaining two hours, we rushed through two more floors of the
museum – focusing on art, music, sports – but we never got to one of the
floors, nor to dinner at the café, nor to the gift shop.
It was very notable that we, as white folks, were
a significant minority of the population in the museum.
We stayed until close (5 PM) and then left,
stunned and overwhelmed, and found dinner so that we could talk through and
process all we had seen. The rest of the
evening was filled with lots of reading in the hotel.
Thursday
Thursday morning, we headed straight to the one of
the newest National Parks: the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality Center. We learned
about Alice Paul and the women’s suffragette movement and, instead of becoming
Junior Rangers, Lola and I became Junior Suffragettes. Awesome.
Next we had lunch at the American Indian Museum –
oh my goodness, SO GOOD! Fry bread,
sweet potato hash, everything was delectable.
The American Indian Museum has an interesting physical layout in
connection with the sun and has positioned prisms at points in the room, which
shine moving rainbows on the interior of the museum. Gorgeous.
We spent about two hours at the Natural History
Museum and then headed out. We had a
dinner date up in Dupont Circle and we had quite a walk – through all the international
embassies – to get there. Insane amounts
of pizza were consumed and we thoroughly enjoyed Ben and Meredith’s company.
Friday
We planned to devote Friday to walking around and
seeing all the monuments but it started raining. Walking for two hours in the rain excited no
one, so we switched gears and headed back to the Natural History Museum. Afterwards, the weather cleared and warmed,
the cherry blossoms popped, and the Whomptons walked around and saw all the
monuments on the mall. I found the MLK
and FDR monuments to be the most moving – maybe because they are more modern,
maybe because it’s easier to relate to one person’s story than a whole
military’s story. Regardless, the girls
got an incredible number of passport stamps from the monuments and we have
beautiful memories of walking around and seeing the sites.
Afterwards, we trekked over to Ben and Meredith’s
home, had a lovely dinner, and got a little sad that our trip – and frequent
Purser fun – was coming to a close. We
caught the train back, thumbed our noses at the Trump Hotel one last time,
packed up our stuff and went to bed.
Saturday
Saturday was a day of serious driving. We were in the car by 6:20 AM Eastern and
headed west. We detoured to Pittsburgh
to see Bryan, Joy, Xiri, and Amai for lunch (and also upgrade our Hanabi
set). Two hours was not enough time, by
far, to see them but our goal was to reach STL and sleep in our own beds that
night. With the assistance of the HPMOR
audiobook and one Starbucks stop, we made it back home at 10:45 PM Eastern.
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