Saturday, August 21, 2010

Washington DC Trip: Part 2

After a long day of riding roller coasters we ate at a quaint little restaurant called the Smokey Pig. It was a delicious BBQ place, complete with complimentary hush puppies. The next morning we got up and drove to the DC area with a short detour through Bowling Green, VA. Our first stop was the National Air and Space Museum. It is unbelievable how much stuff they have in each of the museums that we visited. We could have spent a whole day in each museum and still not have seen everything. We saw some very interesting stuff though and were also in awe at the largest McDonald's we had ever seen that was inside the Air and Space Museum.






Huge McDonalds

That afternoon we visited the American History Museum. This was my favorite of all of the museums we saw. It has all kinds of artifacts from American History. I wish that our feet weren't so tired from the previous two days. It would have made walking around museums all day a lot more comfortable.



A "hero in a half shell"


A car from the Dumbo ride at Disneyland


Dorothy's ruby slippers
After our visit to the two museums it was time to meet at City Segway Tours for our tour of the city via segway. I absolutely LOVED this part of the trip. I was a little leery at first when Dave signed us up for this tour because I was afraid of wrecking my segway. Then I figured that is couldn't be too hard if they were letting just anybody ride one. Turns out that I love to ride segways! It started out with a 30 minute instruction on how to ride then the first stretch was a straight shot with our speed regulators set a 6 miles per hour so you really got a chance to get comfortable with it. There were 8 of us on the tour plus our tour guide. You should have seen some of the stares we got from people when they got passed by a gang of segways. We got to see all of the sites of the city and hear a little information from our tour guide at each one. We all got off the segways at the Lincoln Memorial and spent about 1/2 hour looking around there. We also saw the White House, the National Archives, the capital building, the FBI building and Ford's Theatre just to name a few. We also rode past a newer museum called the Newseum. It has artifacts from major news stories inside. Outside have a display case that has that day's newspaper from a city or town in every state. The one from Wyoming was the Laramie Daily Boomerang for the day we were there! Pretty cool! It sure looks different from the days of helping collate it with Mom and Dad. It was a great tour and after we got done we walked a couple of blocks (we did a LOT of walking) and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe before catching the Metro back to our hotel. We knew we were too late to catch the shuttle from the Metro station to our hotel but the hotel boasted being 1 mile from the Metro station so we figured hey, what's another mile, right? Well, it turns out it might be a mile away if we could have flown over buildings and stuff, but it was quite a bit farther (yipee! more walking!). We made it to the hotel and I could barely stand long enough for a shower before I collapsed into bed. This is certainly not the vacation to take if you are looking for some relaxation. Lots of fun and interesting things to see though. Next up, Cheesesteaks and Ford's Theatre!

Dave wanting to be an agent
My first time on the segway
Visiting the Obamas
Waiting to shoot you if you act up

Washington Monument
Lincoln Memorial


Cruising--I think they had turned the speed regulator up to 10 MPH!
Capitol Building


The Boomerang



1 comment:

The Mahi Family said...

Love the tour idea!! Those machines look like a blast, thanks for the stories...