Washington DC Day 5- May 18, 2023

Zestful Zeuglodon

The hotel told us this was a mid-week repeat of the special Mother’s Day breakfast we’d missed the day of arrival. Consistent with the accuracy of the other information we received about food in this hotel, the meal was the same as it was every other morning.
 
After Rosa and I ate, I got to quote one of my favorite people, and a member of the holy trinity of fictional straight men, Bert from Sesame Street.
 
“It’s time for the most exciting part of my day… time for my nap!”
 
Once we were all awake and fed, this day had its proper beginning with our second visit to the Hirschhorn Museum. “For that guy on the bus,” restated Anabelle.
 
We followed what was now our usual route by the World War One memorial onto Pennsylvania Avenue. General Pershing was now a close personal friend. Most of the walk involved a conversation with Anabelle about what drew her to the nonrepresentational art. We didn’t reach much of a conclusion, but “I like it,” is always the best reason for anyone to view any art.
 
Supporting Rosa’s irrational attraction to the building, we paused to say, “Hey there!” to the Capitol as we crossed the mall.
 
Anabelle’s own irrational attraction required an about face to wave at the Monument in the other direction as well.
 
Passing the meatballs/alien eggs/ blueberries/ Mummenschanz we entered the large cylinder once again, and after a time (or a few times since my confirmation email vanished) we were allowed into the Kusama special exhibit.
 
The line to enter had the life story of the artist on the walls. She spent much of her life having hallucinations, mostly of patterns, which inspired a great deal of her art.
 

The first room had one thing she’s known for, giant sculptures of oddly shaped, spotted pumpkins. It was overwhelming and weird but in a cool way. The information in the waiting area talked about how she would look at a pumpkin for as long as a month to get inspiration.
 
DC Flashback:
Once again, not DC. In sixth grade we had a mold growing contest in science class. Everyone else had slightly green pieces of bread or fruit. The day it was announced, we were just about to throw out our large Halloween pumpkin at home. Instead, we saved it in a garbage bag until the judging in December. In a month it hadn’t quite mutated into the horrifying, black furred with a white stripe, foul smelling and oozing monstrosity that earned me undisputed first place. (To quote the teacher, “Does anyone have ANYTHING they think could compete with THIS? Didn’t think so, Jeff here’s your quarter for ice cream.”) However, I am quite sure by the point of a month, continued inhalation would have led to hallucinations.
 
The other type of art Kusama is well known for, and the reason for limiting the number of people to enter the exhibit, were Infinity Rooms, created by using a Hall of Mirrors type set up. The first was a “stand in” the second a “walk through.” Besides being dangerous to the exhibit, having too many people inside would ruin the effect.
 
The stand in room was…
um…

A field of spotted basketball fan bang sticks.
It was more impressive than it sounds, I just don’t know how else to describe the white with red spots inflatable thingies that went off into an artificially generated infinite horizon.
 
On our way to the second art piece, Rosa peeked in and said, “Jesus.” That prompted another woman on line to laugh, and Anabelle to decide even though this one allowed three guests at a time compared to the bang stick room’s two, she would rather experience it on her own. Because she didn’t want to go in “with Philistines.”
 

This mirror room was called “My Heart is Dancing In The Universe.” That was on the poster Anabelle bought. I do not know the name of the bang stick room. This second one had a path through it with several right angles. Mounted all over the mirrored walls were various spheres with lights that changed color.
 
After passing through the “Infinite Disco of the Damned” we regrouped.
Honestly, they were both really wild. However, its far more fun to get some revenge for all the times she picks on me and make fun of Anabelle’s taste with these descriptions.
 

There was one other item in that section by a different artist that won a reality show. It was a multi angle view 3D printed demon thing. Again, something much niftier looking than my ability to describe…
Like most non-representational art.
 

Crossing the mall again and giving quick recognition to the obsession inspiring objects at either end, we went to the first “Gridded” museum of the day, the Natural History Museum.
 

Passing the Triceratops skull outside, I was excited, as always by my favorite, but I felt like something was forgotten. It would take a couple days to figure out why. (Yes, more foreshadowing. Neat, huh?)
 
The guard noticed our dinosaur shirts as we entered… because Gridding matters.
 

Anabelle took on map duty, plotting our course through the museum that would start in the prehistoric section and finish with a grand finale in the “room of shiny things.”
 

Rosa and I had recently watched Prehistoric Planet and all of the Walking With series. (Including “Dinosaurs,” “The Unluckiest Allosaurus” “Big Ugly Prehistoric Mammals” and “Weird Crap From Before the Dinosaurs.”  I’m paraphrasing.) This allowed me to point out stuff we had seen, which she had mostly forgotten about. At least she humors me.

Like Denver, seeing a diplodocus was always welcome, as there are none in our home museum. 

We don't have a camarasaur in New York either.
 

The dinosaurs have all been remounted since I’d last seen them, and the Allosaurs suffered the most loss of ferocity in the intervening decades. One was posed sitting peacefully on a nest while the other was on its back after being smacked by the “thagomizer” of a Stegosaurus.

 No, Anabelle, it is not the one I rode to school.
 

The Tyrannosaur did get a violence upgrade, however. The King of the Tyrant Lizards was posed accurately tearing the head from a Triceratops to get at the huge neck muscles.

DC Flashback-
Dad, as always entertaining in museums, posed for a picture with his head in the (skull only) mount of a Tyrannosaurus's mouth on one of our last family visits to the Smithsonian.

 
We shared looking at one exhibit with a family that had a small boy inquiring about what the bones were. The concept that he had them inside his body threw him into a state of panic which led his mother to decide, “We’ll unpack this later.”
 

In the prehistoric mammal room was a ground sloth far larger than the variety we have in the AMNH back home. Considering the idea of that one is terrifying; this one was a straight out abomination. I was still referencing the Walking With series, but Anabelle felt the need to correct me by the glyptodonts and refer to them as the villains from an Ice Age film.

Clearly, I still have some work to do. A young couple walked by as we were at the exhibit and the woman made the same comment about the glyptodonts.
“We had an Ice Age moment.”- Anabelle
 
DC Flashback- As a geeky dinosaur kid, I was able to identify the difference between a mammoth and a mastodon by their teeth from halfway across the room. When we got next to the exhibit, they had a tooth display showing what I had just told my parents. My excitement at proving them wrong got some laughs from a guy near us.
 

As we approached the prehistoric elephant skeleton, Anabelle called it a mammoth. I was explaining about the teeth difference and how we couldn’t tell what it was until we got closer, because I don’t see as well as I did when I was a smart little kid.
 
Of course, it was a mammoth, prompting Anabelle to delight in the fact that she was right, much like I did as a kid, but with far less documentation behind it…
But that made her laugh at me more.
 
Then the “annoy Daddy” portion of the museum continued as she insisted on calling the megaloceros a “moose,” in spite of the fact that she knows full well what it is.
Harumph.
 

We retraced our steps through the fossil exhibits in reverse, because not all museums can be set up as well as the New York ones. Whipping quickly through the “African Voices” section we entered the fish and other ocean stuff exhibit.
 

Again, comparisons with New York museums are rough. There wasn’t room for a blue whale like we were used to, and instead there was a right whale. It was still impressive, because “WHALE!”
 
DC flashback- As a geeky dinosaur kid, I read every single paleontology book in the school library. One was oversized and had full page pictures with single page descriptions that ended with which museums in the US had each fossil animal. The enormous prehistoric whale, the zeuglodon, was listed as only being in the Smithsonian in DC. Me pointing this out was the initiating factor that started my folks planning our first visit to the nation’s capital. The first time we were in this museum, I spotted it from across the fossil exhibit and was yelling about how it was the zeuglodon. When we walked up, Mom started to tell me I was mistaken this time, because the plaque read, “basilosaurus.”  I proudly read further on the plaque where it said, “Also known as the zeuglodon!” leading yet another stranger to laugh at our family.
 
We had passed through the entire prehistory section of the museum…twice.
There was no zeuglodon.
I was crushed.
 
However, hanging on the ceiling, near the right whale model and with several other large skeletons was the basilosaurus!
I cheered, “It’s the zeuglodon!!!!”

My family did not care.
Being smart in a museum gets way more praise when you’re a kid.
 
I noticed another difference between the Smithsonian and the AMNH in this section. The Smithsonian is much more an “old school” type museum. Instead of beautifully constructed environments to display models of sea life ecosystems, there were a huge amount of…
well…

pickled fish would be the best way to describe them.
It created much less of an “high end educational experience” feel and a lot more of a “high school biology class storeroom” atmosphere.
 
We were hungry and were following Anabelle’s plan to go to the cafeteria through the fish. There was a set of giant megalodon jaws in a case on the floor. Rosa asked about them, I reminded her of the ones on the ceiling in the AMNH. 

At this point I launched into a dramatic description, containing much extreme arm waving, as we left the exhibit:
“Imagine a great white shark, but the size of that whale, just a massive predatory…
AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!
Never mind, just look behind you.” 

Hanging over the cafeteria was a terrifyingly accurate, full sized megalodon.

[Later edit, some recent planetological discoveries indicate that the Megalodon may not have had a great white like body shape, but rather more like a mako shark. That means they were lighter, but also faster and longer.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!]

We nosed around the café near the giant shark. Rosa’s usual line of inquiry led us to the larger cafeteria we could see one floor down. That place had excellent quality Mexican selections, and a helpful manager who walked Rosa through the options. The tacos were gluten free. It was a pleasant change of pace where all of us could have decent lunch at the same time.
 
We went back up under the megalodon. (WOOOOOOO!!!!) Then we passed through the ocean room again, stopping, of course, under the zeuglodon for a bit. (WOOOOOOOOOO!!!) 
Yes, I have a thing for giant extinct sea life. So what? 

Anabelle pointed out the pickled “giantish squid” was another area where our New York Museum bias was causing us troubles.
 

Halls of Human origins always give Anabelle the Heebie Jeebies, therefore we staggered some rest room breaks to allow Rosa and I to see what we wanted while Anabelle headed towards the mammals’ room.
 
There was something about bananas here. Museums are very dense and hard to constantly keep track of, even with notes. I may have lost a good monkey joke in the mix.
 

AMNH comparisons continued as the mammals had changed from my childhood visits and were now grouped by environments, not species. However, they weren’t in dioramas, just kinda standing around. This pushed Anabelle into needing a trip to the New York Museum before she went back to college.
 

There was a dinosaur themed gift shop with some horrifying looking plush creatures we didn’t spend too much time in before heading upstairs.
 

Yes, Anabelle the central display was only one African elephant, not a whole herd like New York has. However, it is the “mascot” of the museum, impressively mounted, and there was a nice “elephant evolution” display overlooking it.

New York Museum bias continues to be a horrifyingly real thing.
 
The first exhibit we did on this floor was the bones.
BONES!!!

BOOOOOOOOOONESS!!!
 
Yeah, it was a huge collection of animal skeletons, not posed in dynamic ways, just kinda hanging there.
*shudder*
 

The great museum debate continued. Denver and the Smithsonian put their Ancient Egypt section in the Natural History Museum. New York properly places them in the Art Museum…unless one believes mummification is part of the natural order of things.
Then again, the “Historical Art” sections of non-MET museums are on the low side.
Is my New York Museum bias showing yet again?
Apologies…its hard.
 
Next door we found the Insect Zoo!
Sponsored by Orkin.

That seemed…
Very wrong.
 

There were a bunch of captivating, bug filled displays. Much to Anabelle’s chagrin, NONE of the ants were on exhibit. There was curator running a handling display. Hissing cockroaches are very commonplace, at least in the weird life I’ve lived. The giant caterpillar looked way too squishy, even for me.
 
Therefore, I held an ENORMOUS grasshopper. Rosa and Anabelle both flung gallons of Purell my way afterwards.

We had reached the “Rocks and Shiny Things” section, the grand finale of our exploration of natural history.
 

I touched a piece of Mars!
Woooo!
 
Then I spent the rest of the exhibit following Anabelle around saying, “OOOH! Another rock!”

Anabelle was in chemistry heaven. She saw her favorite beaker!
Yes, she has a favorite beaker…chemistry major, whatcha gonna do?
 
Along those lines, she loved seeing magnesium sulfate and was overly excited about the diffraction test display.
 
I noticed that if you ignore the signs, it’s nearly impossible to tell if you’re in a geology or modern art exhibit.

I also learned how a lava lamp works, which was really cool.
It’s not like I ever thought about it before, but it was still cool.
 
In the Gift Shop dedicated to these areas I bought a pack of gem post cards that I thought would be fun to send to people when we got home. (As I, yet again, forgot stamps and addresses.) Come to think of it… I have no idea where in hell those postcards are. Maybe our friends and family will get them, someday.
 
Then we entered the “Not as nice as New York but still pretty swanky shiny things collection.” 

DC Flashback- When Jesse came with us on a Washington DC trip, the alarm went off when we were in the room with the Hope Diamond!
EXCITING!
Nothing happened and it was probably just someone leaning on a case, but still…
EXCITING!     
 

I felt bad for the Whitney Flame Topaz. It’s a gorgeous red crystal, one of the finest Imperial Topaz gems in the world…
Yet, everyone ignores it because it’s in the same room with the Hope Diamond.
 
After years of her Grandmother talking about how much she loved the famous blue gem, and seeing the perfectly photographed image of it on a magnet on our fridge supplied by her Grandmother, Anabelle got to see the Hope Diamond in person…

She was underwhelmed, stating she expected it to be much shinier and it was kind of dull looking in the case.
“Oooh, look at this dusty rock.” - Anabelle
 
Good luck impressing her with and engagement ring.
 
Having completed Anabelle’s route, we continued to the plan for the day going one museum closer to the hotel and returning to complete the sections we skipped in the American History Museum.
 
We started out with the Star Spangled Banner, the flag that inspired the writing of the national anthem during the War of 1812.
 
It was in the dark.
 
DC Flashback- When we visited as kids, the flag hung out in the open on a wall and looked much more impressive. However, light and exposure was causing all kinds of damage. Therefore, it was now hidden in a dark room which had other effects on the museum.
 

Looking over the balcony at the circular marks on the floor I realized that building protection for the flag removed the Foucault Pendulum (back in 1998) we used to spend long times watching process around. 

Alas.
Double Alas, because Kim told me this, and I forgot, meaning I got disappointed twice.
 
We went through the voting history section on the second floor. Considering how much the National Archives and government funded world’s largest museum spent on voting rights you’d think everyone in that government should be pushing to make voting as easy as possible for everyone, no?
And yet…
 

The other big section of the floor was about American Military History. This is an area I have done a great deal of reading about and have had interest in from my nerdly youth. It is difficult to go into details about it, as Anabelle walked close by me the whole time saying, “YAWN…yawn yawn.”  Rosa, meanwhile, navigated the confusingly laid out section at warp speed.
 

There was a display about the home front where they had a mockup of a two-and-a-half-gallon water bucket to be carried from the well. Water is about nine pounds a gallon and some football looking Eighth Grade trip guys were challenging each other to lift it two handed. Anabelle, having experience carrying gallons Up the Lake, hoisted it easily with one hand, making them all look silly.
That’s my girl.
 

Since this was our last visit to this museum, we returned to the third-floor entertainment section for a stretch. It was a great recharge moment for us, and Anabelle basked in the glory of Rosita for close to a half hour. We discussed dating when the Elmo on display came from by his eye position.
We really are Muppet nerds.
 

We looked around at other stuff a bit but mostly got some much needed sitting down time. There was a screen there highlighting various important scenes from Children’s television over the years. Mr. Rogers’s overwhelming strength through calmness in his speech to congress has always been inspiring.
 
And forty years later I still cried like an infant over Mr. Hooper.
 
After we were thrown out of yet another museum as it closed around us, Anabelle wanted a coconut snow cone. We passed by the huge line of trucks, checking all their listings. One attendant was offended we didn’t order from him and yelled at us angrily, “All the trucks the same!”
Great attitude for drumming up business there.
 
Anabelle calmly kept going on, stating without looking at him, “Sir…You do not have coconut.”
 
She did find one a couple of trucks down and enjoyed a big, wet coconut snow cone. In the spirit of sharing experiences, I had a root beer float as we continued our walk across the sunblasted mall in the opposite direction from which we had originally intended.
 
Rosa continued in her unhealthy obsession with the Capitol, and we hadn’t done pictures on the Mall facing side. Therefore, instead of heading back to the hotel from one of the closest museums to it, we walked the entire length of the Mall down to the home of the Legislative Branch.
That was in case anyone wants to give me a hard time about the root beer float.
 
While we walked, we talked about favorite experiences. Anabelle declared the Hirschhorn was her favorite place. She also made the point to state the Military History section was extremely boring, while patting me on the head and saying,
“pat pat pat.”
 
Over at the Capitol there were ducks in the large pool. We had many duck encounters on this trip. I don’t think anyone cares.

 
Some guys were taking pictures of each other falling off a concrete pylon. This was likely not their goal, but that was what happened.
 

Rosa finally got her photo of the “I Wish I Took a Picture of That When We Came Here Can I Get Out of the Bus” statue. No, ironically, we did not find out who it was a statue of.
 

Because of construction or getting ready for the Memorial Day events there were huge rows of Voting Booths, as Mr. History called them. (Port a Pottys)
 
As we walked up the Capitol steps, I found a Chick Tract on the ground. I hadn’t seen one of them in the wild for years. Coincidentally, the last one was in the Human Origins Hall of the AMNH.
 

Anabelle wanted the classic photo of her finger atop her beloved Washington Monument. Naturally, I completely failed to take it. Rosa, of course, got it immediately.
 

I thought it was a nice touch that they flew the POW flag along with the American flag right on the Capitol building. We took many photos on the reverse side of the Capitol building. That meant we got multiple images of “The Butt of Freedom” atop the dome as the statue is facing the other way.
 

Anabelle tried to get several selfies for various social media reasons and almost fell over like those guys on the pylon, leading Rosa’s photographic skills to be called on once more.
 

The Grant Memorial was truly impressive up close, one of many reasons this extra walk was worth it. There was taped marks on the floor which we determined were placed there to illustrate the best place to photograph the Grant Memorial.

One of the lions on the corner of the plaza holding the main Grant statue appeared to have caught the Golden Snitch. As always, I am very educational to have around. 

Hey, that pool in front of the Capitol had a Duck Ramp!

And it was labeled, “Duck Ramp” so the ducks knew it was for them. How nice!
 

Once again, we finished the day as far from our hotel as humanly possible given what we wanted to see in this city.
 

On the way back we stopped to take in some sights. Like the giant blue chicken on top of the National Gallery!
 

There was also a statue of George Mead near the Capitol we’d passed a couple times before. He led the Union soldiers at Gettysburg, hence his prominent location. It’s almost like those who were critical to defeating the group of rebellious states that tried to leave the Union so they could continue to have slavery were really important.
How about that?
 
We passed a huge revival tent with a performer on stage singing their heart out…
And no one at all in the seats.
“A” for effort though.
 

This passage allowed us to learn things about stuff we’d seen multiple times. A closer examination of the Mellon Fountain revealed it had Zodiac signs all around it. Naturally, Anabelle had to move to be in front of Libra for her pictures.
 

We got a better look at the impressive statues on the back of the Archives Building as well. There is so much amazing stuff in this city it would be easy to get jaded, but we allowed ourselves to be awed as much as possible by the workmanship everywhere.

I had forgotten I already reviewed the Desk Sized FDR Rock memorial. This was excellent as I missed the incredibly important fact that the conversation about the having a memorial of that size was between President Roosevelt and his friend, Supreme Court Associate Justice FELIX FRANKFURTER! My life was excessively enriched by learning this fact.

After both starting and ending what was to be a “more restful” day much further from home base than originally intended, we decided this was our fancy night. Given nether my wife or daughter were impressed by the menus or prices of the multiple steak and seafood houses near the hotel, we decided to return to the Cheesecake Factory.
 
Naturally, we walked back the wrong way and missed the restaurant. That was fine as we had to “fancy up.” Rosa and Anabelle got into their dresses and went for full makeup.
 
Being me- fancy meant long pants and another World War II Hawaiian shirt.
 
Anabelle had a Marylin Monroe moment walking over a sidewalk grate, but luckily, she is wise enough to wear shorts under her dresses.
 
Weirdly, as Mother’s Day had us seated immediately, there was a twenty-minute wait. My guess is mid-week staffing was far below holiday weekends.
 
Anabelle enjoyed her taquitos and Rosa had a burned to a crisp well done mushroom burger. After reading all those steakhouse menus, I declared it time for my patented vacation “rare as you can legally make it” order of a ribeye.
 
The weirdly named “Flying Dog Snake Dog” local beer went nicely with it as my vacation beer. I am thrilled the waiter asked if I wanted another one. I didn’t want more, but I had completely forgotten what it was called and used his request as an opportunity to write it down.
 
Unlike most meals for the past ten to fifteen years, instead of Disney World trivia, Anabelle asked for Washington trivia. This continued back to the hotel. There we cleaned up and continued our trend by watching the Grammar section of School House Rock before passing into unconsciousness.
 
21246 steps
8.6 miles

Click here for the next day

Click here for index