Welcome to Washington

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Today was our first day officially in Washington, DC. Our goal was to see a few museums, maybe a few monuments and try to stay cool as the temperature soared. We did pretty well on most. I don't like heat.

We spent 5 minutes in the truck on our way to Greenbelt Station, our subway stop of choice for the next four days. It's truly amazing that we could be on a train heading in to DC within 15 minutes of leaving the campground. And it's only $55/night! The ride in was great, given that it's a weekend, and we hopped off at Archives/Navy Memorial. The boys think the subway is cool.

After checking out a couple monuments Jeff and I had not seen before (one for a virtual cache), we headed to the International Spy Museum. My clinic's administrator Ismail told me we had to go because it was so cool, and I had heard good things, so off we went. We couldn't take pictures, which bums me out, as a scrapbooker, but it often is better for experiencing places anyway. We first watched an intro movie about spies, voiced by Linda Hunt who we love on NCIS: Los Angeles. We then walked in to the briefing room and were told to pick an identity. Jeff became Michael Grant, Canadian schoolteacher on his way to Taiwan. I became Carol Liu, 42-year-old American architect heading to Russia for vacation. After that it was pretty much just wander through and look at stuff and test different abilities. Liam really liked the Bond car, while I thought the fact that intelligence agencies used ideas from the early Bond films was humorous. They have a real Academy Award there, because John Hunt, a director, was also a spy. We learned that the Germans had been given Overlord as the code word for the D-day operations, but didn't pursue it because they thought it was too good to be true. But aside from one computer screen asking for our identities and giving us more information, they didn't really go beyond the spy experience, unless you paid for more to investigate around the city. Oh, well.

Our second stop was the Newseum, which was a very cool place. You walk into a giant hall with a gigantic TV screen (which was playing a World Cup game at the time). We started by watching a movie about the Sedition Act, narrated by Martin Sheen, my favorite president ever, and then wandered through exhibits including seven sections of the Berlin Wall, the FBI as news, and Walter Iooss's photography (I have always loved his photos in SI). There is a timeline of news, basically, with newspapers chronicling different events. There are exhibits on newer technologies and many about the first amendment, even an exhibit about Elvis. (I think Liam's favorite part was the video about Elvis playing on a big screen. It left Viva Las Vegas in my head for a long time, though. And now it's back.) Tim Russert's office is there right now, which was a pleasure to see. He was my favorite political reporter. This is definitely worth visiting.

We wandered around hunting for a few more geocaches on our to the Renwick, but stopped at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on the way. We promised the boys it would be quick, and we stayed 20 minutes, but there were a few interesting pieces. I really liked many of the works at the Renwick, which is more craftsy. They have a gorgeous Dale Chihuly vase that I'd like to take home. Jeff wanted to duplicated their main gallery of paintings for home, although it's bigger that the original part of our house.

Once we arrived back at the campground, the boys also finally got to go swimming. They enjoyed very much noodling around the pool, which meant we didn't even have to get in. Woo-hoo!


Liam's "When I have kids . . . " Statement of the Day: When I have kids, I'll count to 20 if they're doing something really slowly. Also, when I have kids, I'll control their behavior and make them smart.

Number of Times Cole Asked about Going Home: 2

Projects Completed: 0 (and I didn't knit a single stitch

Geocaches Found: 9 (DC-8, MD-1)

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