d.c. tourists {part 1}

June 2012- I've got to be one of the worst bloggers ever...this trip to D.C. was in June and it took me 4 months to finally post pictures of it.  Poor Jamie has been patiently waiting for her shout out in cyber space and I'm just now getting around to it.

I've been wanting to take Pecos to Washington D.C. for a while now to visit his Godmother and my best friend, Jamie.  I've put it off for various reasons but decided last fall that this would be the year for Pecos to get his boots on the hill!  We thought about going during Spring Break but decided March might still be a bit too cool for us.  So after synchronizing Jamie's c-r-a-z-y schedule and our limited frequent flyer ticket options we decided on the first weekend of June.

Like I said, the flight options were a bit limited so we flew into Dulles but flew out of Reagan.  Jamie got a bit confused with our schedule and thought we were flying in to Reagan so when we arrived we had to wait for just a bit but that was kind of funny.

Our first stop was lunch at a hot dog joint.  I don't really care too much for hot dogs but Pecos loves them so he was really excited.  I got a hot dog wrapped in bacon which was yummy.  I mean it was wrapped in bacon, what's not to love about that?

Pecos had quite a list of things he wanted to do in D.C. The list included the American Indian museum, dinosaur museum, Kermit the Frog at the Smithsonian, zoo, the place where they make money (Bureau of Printing & Engraving), a boat ride, mini-golf, Jamie's office and the capitol building.  With a long list and just a few days we jumped right in.

First up, the National Museum of the American Indian.  It was a beautiful building but I was a bit under-whelmed with the exhibits.  There were lots of artifacts and plenty of reading to do about each one, I just thought they could have done a much better job describing different tribes and their role in our history.  Maybe there was some of that there and I just missed it since visiting a museum with a 5 year old means lots of bouncing around from one thing to another.  But they did have a fairly large gift shop and we got Casey a few new Indian books.

Next up, our tour at the Federal Bureau of Printing & Engraving.  This was surprisingly one of the more complicated things for us to schedule.  Although they have regularly scheduled tours through the day, you have to request a tour in advance. Of course Jamie was able to secure us a spot.  Since I knew Jamie would work out all the details necessary for our visit I did absolutely no advance research.  Perhaps if I had looked it up I would have known this is not the place where they make coins; that is the U.S. Mint and tours are only in Philadelphia and Denver.

Photos are only allowed in the lobby waiting area.  We found out Pecos is as tall as $1.1 million.

The next day we hit up this place:

Which is well known for this giant elephant in the rotunda at the entrance.

But is is also known as the dinosaur museum.

For this reason:

But I love it for this:

The Hope Diamond

Next up was lunch at this place for yummy pizza and salad before venturing to the zoo.

There was some sort of promotion or special exhibit on tigers, lions and other big cats.  These people were directly across the street from the entrance to the zoo and being in D.C. I thought they were protesting against it.  Turns out they were just trying to get people to go see it.