Where Wednesday's weather was sunny and warm, Thursday was rainy. But we figured that it was perfect weather for being inside museums. So we gathered our foul-weather gear and headed toward the Smithsonian.



Now, the Smithsonian isn’t one, big museum. It’s actually multiple museums (there are 3,487 of them, I think), all in their own buildings and conveniently located around the National Mall, which is 45 miles wide and 400 miles long. Easy walk. We wanted to see the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of American History, and the Air and Space Museum. We got into the Natural History Museum by elbowing our way through the oceans of school kids on field trips. We saw a bunch of stuffed animals (which we could have seen at our granddaughter’s house and saved a lot of money) and a lot of bones. After spending a couple of hours in there (and never getting more than 45 feet away from the entrance because of the school kids), we decided to move on to the American History Museum.

We walked next door (and clocked about 45,000 steps each on our FitBits) in the rain and found a line to get into the museum that ran all the way out to the sidewalk (and it’s a loooooong way from the sidewalk to the entrance) filled with school kids. We gave up on that one and moved on to the Air and Space Museum, conveniently located only 100 miles or so up and across the National Mall. By the time we got there and got in, we saw a couple of exhibits and decided we were tired (I can’t imagine why), so we got a snack in their snack bar and called it a day. We’ll go back in a few days to see the rest.

We left about 3:20 and got onto the Metro, which took us to College Park Station, where we waited for the bus to take us back to Cherry Hill Campground. It comes every 30 minutes (that’s the schedule), and we waited 45 minutes before one actually showed up. We got back to the RV at 5:30 (over two hours to get back).We were very tired; it’s catching up with us. All in all, an interesting day.

We’ll try the Smithsonian again tomorrow.