To the stars

It was 31 degrees today so we decided to visit some of the Smithsonian museum and avoid the heat. Our first stop was the National Air and Space Museum which holds the largest collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft in the world. Matt was in his element but the museum was full of huge groups of school kids so it was hard moving around and therefore I didn't enjoyed it as much. There are some amazing exhibits including the Wright 1903 Flyer; the Spirit of St. Louis; the Apollo 11 command module, the original Star Trek production model of the USS Enterprise and a MQ-1 Predator drone. The photo is of a public artwork called 'Ad Astra' which means "to the stars" in Latin and is located outside the entrance to the museum and stands 100 feet tall.

Our next stop was the National Museum of Natural History which is on the other side of the Mall. I had forgotten about the heat when we were indoors but it hit us again as we crossed over and it was a good excuse to get an ice cream. The Natural History Museum has over 126 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, and human cultural artifacts but we had to get around quite quickly as it was getting close to closing time. I preferred it to the Air and Space museum but both were excellent and I can understand why the Smithsonian is one of the best collections in the world.


'Ad Astra' by Richard Lippold, National Air and Space Museum, Washington