So, on Friday, we had decided to take the weekend off to give the school kids a chance to go home. Yesterday, we did--do I dare say it?--laundry (that hurt). Today will be a day of relaxation and doing whatever we want. I got up around 8:00 (Barbara elected to sleep in—I think she got up around Tuesday). I made coffee, then walked the dog (yes, coffee comes before the dog; I'm not proud of it, but it’s a fact of life). I sat and enjoyed my coffee...

I can't believe we have to do the laundry again.I don’t want to talk about it.

4:29 am. Barbara and I are sleeping peacefully, dreaming of triceratops bones, elephants, and school kids, all trying to trample us. Dreaming of better times to come, when all those kids have to go back to school and write reports on what they saw. Reports like, "A Terrified Old Man with a White Goatee Screaming NO! NO! GET AWAY!" In my sleep, I realize that I'll still be on vacation when they're back in their classrooms. I smile. 4:30 am. We are unceremo...

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. ...

The second day going into DC was easier. I wasn't sure about the escalator, but there were no issues, and it transported us to the platform just as it was designed to.We had our plan for the day. The DC Metro system has six different lines, each denoted by a color. We took the Green Line to L’Enfant Plaza, where we transferred to the Blue Line and took it to Foggy Bottom (which is not an intestinal disorder, as it turns out), and poked our heads up out ...