Big trip- day 2

I am the early bird of the group. I woke up early, dropped by my barn at Facebook, made coffee, prepared my self and prepared packed lunched for the day. We are headed to Washington, DC for July 4 fireworks at midnight and some other free attractions in between.

Crime and Punishment Museum opens 9AM. We got there about 15minutes before their opening so we took our breakfast for the meantime. This is the only museum with an entrance fee on our itinerary that day, but we settled on the idea of trying it since we thought it would be interesting to see CSI labs and forensic bits and pieces for real. While we were introduced to America’s big time criminals, we also procured a mission for extra bucks that forced us to be familiar with other documented crimes to come up with the solution to the puzzle. Aside from preserved evidences to the crime, we were also kept busy with the games we can play with involving crime and punishment. We also took a tour on America’s Most Wanted studio. What we estimated for an hour or two was extended to almost hours.

I was not impressed with the National Arboretum as much as I was with the UK Arboretum here in Lexington maybe because it’s the peak season of summer and most of the flowers seemed to be dying due to the heat of the sun. It was a much bigger place (and looks harder to maintain) but there’s nothing much we saw. I love the bonsai’s though. They were gorgeous and the best of what I’ve seen so far.

The National Zoo was another huge place. The main target was to see Panda bears. I was a bit upset on how the panda’s were housed. I was expecting them to be on outdoors but they were accommodated in a room with glass walls so people can see them. We just hope that those rooms were just their sleeping quarters and that tunnel like opening from the “outside little forest” leads to their dwelling. It would have been sad if all they have is that room space for their habitat. We saw a lot more animals but again did not have a chance to look at all of them. Not just because we ran out of time but we were also running out of energy.

We went to McDonalds to grab our dinner and charge our camera battery for the fireworks. After almost an hour there, another hour was wasted looking for a parking slot. We decided to skip the National Mall as it took us forever to finally eye for a vacant space to which we can finally park the car. As expected, the place was jam-packed and we did not a find good place to spot the fireworks with the Washington Monument on the background. We also missed seeing the Whitehouse and the Capitol close enough but at least we were there…

Time was too short! We need to get running back to Baltimore that same night and drive back to Lexington on the next day….