Museums and Memorials

The next day was the longest of all the days- and yet I didn't seem to take a ton of pictures. I have found that I spend so much time taking pictures- that I forget to live in the moment and actually experience things. So though we saw a crap-ton this day, I only captured a fraction of what I saw.

Well, the first stop wasn't my fault. You're not allowed to take pictures in the National Archives so- you just have to go back to your National Treasure knowledge and imagine. 

We saw the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. They're in a dark-ish room and are very sensitive to light. They're really hard to see, there's been so much deterioration over the years. I also half wonder if they're real- or reproductions *because* they are so delicate.  

Yes, John Hancock's signature really is that big.

We walked down the street to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. All kinds of fun things in there to geek out over. Right as we walked in, we entered Julia Child's kitchen. This is her actual kitchen! They took it apart bit by bit and rebuilt it here. The only thing that was not genuine to her was the plastic fruit in the bowls.

She was a little before my time. I mean, I've always known who she was, but I did not watch her show. It wasn't till adulthood that I gained an appreciation for her- and her towering height. I feel ya girl, I feel ya. She was a few inches taller than me, but she gets me.

I passed some original Mickey Mouse ears and of course I *had* to take a picture of them! It's Baker law that if you see something Disney somewhere you don't expect it- you HAVE to take a picture of it!

We wandered through the Presidential section. There were lots of really neat things, but the only thing that compelled me to take a picture was Lincoln's iconic stove pipe hat. His actual hat! That thing sat on LINCOLN'S head! 

Ok... calm down. 

There are also a lot of dresses from First Ladies. It's was kind of cool to have that connection to them. I've never seen a president- former or current- in real life- so it was neat to have them be a little more real to me. Jackie Kennedy's stuff was probably the most incredible, also Michelle Obama's- but like I said, I did not take many pictures.  These three are the inaugural ball gowns of Roselyn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Barbara Bush.

The thing I probably geeked out over the most- was the original Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz. 

We've talked about this. You KNOW what a fan of all things Oz related I am (except the original books, of all the weird things. I find them very dry) (Ok, and not the weird Oz movie made with that crappy Franco guy... that was a mess too...) 

ANYWAY!

There were 10 pair of shoes used in the film. These are two of the shoes. They're not even a matching pair, but they were both worn by Judy Garland.  It's interesting to me to see how different they are in person- I mean- I knew they were- I've seen them in documentaries and stuff. They never were the RED that you see in the movie, and I'm sure time has faded them a little, but just to be so close to something so dear to my heart... 💖

We also saw  a display of Stradivari instruments. Megan, the violinist in the group, nearly cried. She may have actually cried. Hey- you would too if you were inches away from one of the finest instruments in the world and it was *your* instrument. I nominate her to be one of the people who get to play them. Instruments *have* to be played or they deteriorate. 

Speaking of deteriorating, we got to see the original Star Spangled Banner. The one that inspired the song. Wow. It was ginormous! AND it was not in tact. Over the years people were given bits of it as mementos so the entire flag no longer exists. They have and preserve what remains. After years of touring and being displayed- it has deteriorated and become extremely fragile. Like the National Archives, it was in a darkened room and no photos allowed to assist with preservation.

There were also several displays from political campaigns and rallies. There was an awesome exhibit about women and our social and political evolution. So much to learn. We spent *way* more time there than we meant to.

We were supposed to spend half the day there, then half at the Natural History Museum. It was nearly closing time- so we ran over and crammed in as much as we could. I was only there for 20 minutes and I took way more pictures there than I did in the six hours at the American History Museum. Whoopsie.

Right as you walk in there is giant crystal. 

When I say "giant" I'm not kidding. I took a pic of myself with it to give you an idea of its size.

I don't know if you know this about me- but I was once upon a time going to go into geology. I love the study of rocks and earth. BUT once I hit college and found out how much math is involved- I gave it up. I honestly do not care how far each continent drifts over the matter of 47 billion years. I won't be here to see it- so I don't care where it ends up. 

These next two are kind of funny. We'd been having a conversation about poisonous vs venomous.

If you bite it and you die, it's poisonous. 

If it bites you and you die, it's venomous.

It drives me bananas when people get them mixed up. So it was super hilarious to me to find this blatant mistake at the freaking SMITHSONIAN!

BUT at least they owned their mistake and put this little notice on the display. 😂

We also saw a handful of Mummies. I stole this picture from Katie. She took pictures of some cat mummies. Poor little kitties... 

We only had a few minutes to check out the gem section. I also wanted to be a jeweler in another life. I do love sparkly things. 

The hope diamond is pretty spectacular but once you've seen the crown jewels... 

But like I said, I love sparkly things and this room was full of them! It was the end of the day so the glass was all smudged with greasy finger prints, but you can still get a taste of some of the incredible jewels.

Holy crap! Will you LOOK at that aquamarine? I'd rather have that! 😵

Seriously though... 

Time was ticking away and the sweet guard just kept telling is to take pictures and move on- it was almost closing time. He got it. He understood. The guards in the atrium however, were not as considerate. They kept yelling at Megan to leave- and she was just trying to get to our group. 

This is us trying to rush a selfie before getting thrown out. Megan was just around the corner and nearly had to rassle the guard to get to us.

She got to us just enough to get her nose in the picture. haha!

I will definitely need to add that to my list of repeats if I ever make it back to DC. We didn't get nearly enough time in there. 

A few of us waited on the Smithsonian Lawn while the others went to get the car. This is the original Smithsonian Museum.  There are several spread throughout the city now- but there are minor exhibits from each one in here (or so I'm told).

On the lawn, looking one direction you could see the Washington Monument...

...and in the other direction was the Capitol building. 

That evening the girls wanted something exotic for dinner. I suggested Haitian. Oh my gosh. I LOVE Haitian food. I picked it up in New Jersey. Going to those dinner appointments was always my favorite. No one else had ever tried it. We found a restaurant called Port au Prince and ate the most incredible food! I'm still crying over how good it was. I hadn't had it in 20 years (not a lot of Haitian options in the Intermountain West) but it was just as delectable as I remember. I even hugged the chef when he came out and thanked him for being amazing (I also put my foot in my mouth by saying we wanted something "weird" when I was really looking for "exotic" but he was nice and let my idiocy slide).

He gave me the recipe for Sos Pwa- which I could never google because I didn't know how to spell it! It seems pretty straight forward. I bought the stuff to make it- now I just need to garner some courage!

After dinner we went back into the city to explore the monuments by night. 

There is a lot of construction going on around the Jefferson Memorial, so we walked all the way around it before we figured out how to get up to it. 

It was very nice- and inspiring. 

Me and Jefferson... and Washington in the background. 

Next stop on the agenda was the Lincoln Memorial- where once again, I made a fool of myself crying. 

Seriously though. Stand there in the Lincoln Memorial and read the words of the Gettysburg address and try NOT to cry!

Somewhere there exists a group photo of us all here, but I can't find it! 

For it being so late, there were a lot of people still at the monuments- and they were not at all respectful. I was disgusted by their behavior and the trash strewn about (and the bathroom there was out of my nightmares. Literally. I have had horror dreams of bathrooms and this was it! It was THE MOST DISGUSTING bathroom I have ever set foot in). Sometimes people suck. 

This is Lincoln's view. This is what he stares at all day. 

We walked over to the Korean War Monument. I cried more here too- but there were fewer people so it was less embarrassing.

 

We also walked over to the Vietnam memorial. We spent a lot of time there. I didn't get a photo- but I stole this one from Katie.  

The wall has thousands and thousands of names. Every so often there was a picture or a short bio that family had placed. Things had gotten blown around a little bit- so we (mostly the others because I was a stupid, weepy mess) took time to read about the soldier, then find them on the wall and put the envelope back where it belonged.

This evening gave me renewed gratitude for my freedoms. Every single one of those who died had someone at home to mourn them. Can you imagine all the anguish? Those poor mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands and children. I'm always sad for those who lost their lives- but I mourn with those who were left behind. 

There are more monuments to come- but for now, this is the end of our day. 

 Lincoln says "by-eeeee"

Mount Vernon & Chip and Dale

Today's adventure took us to Mt Vernon. I learned lots about George and Martha Washington. 

The decor of the home was awesome. I love the plaster ceiling and wall colors. 

I don't know if you can zoom in on the ceiling designs- but everything centers around agriculture. Here, you can see it a little better in the wall relief. Scythes and rakes worked subtly into the design. Seriously- NOTHING is missed. There are details in the details! I love it!

A smaller sitting room and piano. Isn't the wallpaper just delicious? I LOVE it!

The man of the hour, General George.

This was a second sitting room. 

I think they said this was a guest bedroom. 

This is the key to the Bastille in France. It was a gift to Washington from Lafayette. Kind of awesome, right? 

This is the same color it was in Washington's day. This color of green was very hard to come by, so anyone who had this rather garden-hose green was showing off their affluence. 

There are many things in the house that are originals. The only thing original to the house that you can touch is the bannister. 

Very sturdy to last during 200 or so years of tourists!

Most of the time I'm not a fan of mixing prints- but I think this room is just charming!

So pretty!

This room just exudes sunshine. So pretty!

This is the room- the very bed- that George Washington died in. After his death, Martha never slept in this room again. She took a smaller, upstairs room. 

This was his office downstairs. The chair is kind of interesting. It has a blade above it, and a foot pedal. He could sit in the chair and pump the foot pedal and it would fan him. Cool! (pun?)

HIs massive bookcase- all his books!

It's always interesting to see the kitchens in these large estates. They had to feed so many people and it just amazed me how it all got done. 

We took a short stroll through Martha's garden. There were some incredible blooms there. We were hoping to make it back through so I didn't take many pictures- we ran out of time.

The estate is huge! And it's a fraction of the size it was in his day. We walked around to some of the points of interest. 

The cow goes moo.... 

We made our way to the family tomb. Here are the final resting places of George and Martha, and behind them are 25 other members of the family. 

A little bit down the path from their tomb, we came upon something that affected me greatly. Less than 100 yards from their opulent tomb, is a slave graveyard.

It looks like a very peaceful wood, but in this area are buried hundreds of slaves in unmarked graves. 

They're only now starting to use technology on the area to find graves. If you look closely, you can see where string is marking them off. They'll never know who is who. Even sitting here writing this, I'm in tears. This absolutely breaks my heart. You know I love a good cemetery. Why? Because people *want* to be remembered. We leave headstones, heck, we leave graffiti because we want to be remembered. Why to we keep history? Why do we do genealogy? Because people want to be remembered. They want to be able to say, "I was here." And all of these people- worked and lived and died and their names are forgotten. I hope they know they are NOT forgotten. We may not ever learn their names. But they lived. We know they lived. They suffered through so much. I hope in their suffering they had even a little bit of happiness. If not, I hope they have found peace in death. But they are not forgotten. 

I am a little embarrassed about how much this affected me. I bawled. Like, I totally ugly cried. Why are we so mean to each other? How on EARTH can anyone justify owning another human being? I just don't get it. There was a very sweet couple from California. We chatted with them for a while and they were asking if we'd been to the museum of African American History and Culture. Not yet. It was on our list. They were very sweet though. I felt like an idiot crying in front of them. 

In 1929, a group erected a memorial to those buried here, and another, larger memorial was erected in the 1980s. What's sad though- is that at the time, they did not have the technology to search for remains, so the concrete and brick memorials are probably directly over several graves that will now most likely remain unknown.

We were fortunate to be there at the time they did a wreath laying ceremony. I didn't get any pictures of it because Megan volunteered to be part of the ceremony and I was recording it on her phone- so no pictures- only tender memories.

Inside the museum they had several things that were owned by the Washington and Custis family (There was something I didn't know. George Washington did not have his own children. He married the widow, Martha Custis, and raised her children as his own!)

This was some of Martha's jewelry. 

They were a musical family and had many instruments.

They had a few scenes from his life, telling his history. I didn't get a picture of it, but they had one talking about how he *could* have been king. Wisely, he turned that down. 

It was a hot and surprisingly emotional day. I did not plan on crying my face off at Mt Vernon. 

We headed out to pick up our final arrival from the airport. Katie got in that evening. On our way, we stopped by the Fairfax County Courthouse. We were there around 5 pm when court should have been getting out. What was the big deal? The Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial was going on inside! There was a news truck parked outside, but we did not see anything exciting.

After we picked up Katie, we drove into Leesburg to eat at a fancy schmancy restaurant that used to be a bank. It was a fun atmosphere. I don't know why I didn't take any pictures. Sorry!

As we were walking back to the car, a vigil march passed by. They were protesting gun violence and mourning the deaths of those in Buffalo the week before. They were singing, "This little light of mine" as they marched. We did not march with them- but we sang with them as they went by. One lady even threw me her little candle (an electric tea light) as she passed. It was very moving. I'm glad I got to be part of it! I still have the tea light. It's sitting on my countertop. 😊

When we got back to Marie's we decided to take it easy. It was funny- I took my massager with me because I knew my feet were going to hate all the walking. Marie got all of her massagers out too- she has a really nice one for feet, back, neck, shoulders, a whole spa's worth! We sat down to watch the new Chip and Dale movie since it had just come out that day (I was wearing my C&D shirt coincidentally!) and passed massagers back and forth. I think the most popular one was the foot massager... oh man. I have got to get me one of THOSE!