Washington D.C., July 5, 2016

Today we learned how to work with the Metro and managed to use it to get from our hotel to the national mall. The first thing we saw when we got there was the Washington monument. It was so impressive to see it in real life.

You can see we are not close, but we will be within the next couple of days.

The Washington Monument

We walked to the other side of the national mall and went to the national museum of American History. The first exhibit we saw was the Star Spangled Banner.  This is the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star Spangled Banner". It was completely hand sewn. It was a very large flag. We couldn't take any pictures because it was allowed. They kept it in extremely low light conditions to preserve it.  They did have cameras that were moving slowly over it and were displayed on touch screens that had places highlighted where you could touch the screen and learn about the spot on the flag. 

This is not a picture we took, but one I found on the web.  The flag is in bad shape, but it is still amazing.

We then went to an exhibit of a home that was built in the 1700s.  The Smithsonian had dismantled the home and moved it there. They had partially reassembled the home leaving some of the parts partially put together so that you could see how it had been built. It was incredible. I loved seeing the way it was built using the old methods. I got emotional seeing that they marked their boards just like my dad always did when adding joists to a wall.  There was a mark and then two xs to make sure the board is placed on the right side of the mark. My dad used pencil to make his mark, but these people carved them into the wood. 

Can you see the xs where the upright boards are placed?

We went through some more of the exhibits,

A statue of George Washington carved by his friend.

although we didn't get to see all of them. We decided to move on so we could see more of DC.  

As we left the building, there was a little touch of home we had to take a picture of. 

I had to take two pictures to get all the information.

Our Utah state flag

After grabbing a bite of lunch. We headed to the National Archives.

The National Archives building

We really wanted to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of rights. When we got there, the line was out the door and almost to the corner of the block. We did stand in line in the sun for about 20 minutes before it started moving.  We finally made it inside and went through some exhibits before making our way to the rotunda. That is where the founding documents are located. It was crazy busy, but we finally got to see all the documents. Of course we couldn't take pictures of them either, but loved being able to see the documents that were used in founding this great nation. 

We wandered a little more in the archives. One of the things we saw Michelle would have loved. It was the homesteading deed for Charles Ingalls. This was an actual deed for the father of Laura Ingalls Wilder who wrote the Little House on the Prairie series based on the life of her family who lived on the property on the deed. If we could have taken a picture of that we would have. We found it is amazing how much time you can spend wandering the museums. 

At that point we had walked enough that we were worn out and we returned to our hotel for the evening. We saw so much and learned a lot. It was very cool. We look forward to seeing more of the capital city his week. 

We walked past this on the way to the national archives.

This was the building with the flags.