the education of henry

Day 20: Tidal Basin, Archives, and Portrait Gallery

2023-10-03

We were up and in the city early again. Today we started with the Tidal Basin memorials: Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King.

The Pentagon at sunrise on the way in.

Another beautiful morning in DC.

Climbing the steps of the Jefferson Memorial.

Me and TJ.

The George Mason Memorial. Mason wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which inspired both Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

The rest of the Mason Memorial.

Me with Franklin. This depiction of him in his wheelchair was added recently to represent the fact that FDR was disabled by polio for much of his life - a fact that was mostly unknown to the public because the media did not mention it.

The FDR memorial is huge, with large spaces for each phase of his presidency. Dad and I are sitting down to talk about all the things that happened with FDR in the White House.

Representation of the Great Depression.

Franklin and his dog, Fala.

Mom with Eleanor.

Dad with Eleanor.

The Martin Luther King memorial. This was impressive, the way the carved image is pulled out of the mountain behind it: "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope" is the inscription.

The monument from the other side of the mountain.

And on to the Washington Monument.

It's pretty tall - at 555 feet it is the world's tallest free-standing stone structure.

Dad and I talking to one of the volunteer rangers about the history of the monument.

Checking out some of the Civil War era graffiti that was done when the monument was unfinished and soldiers were garrisoned in the park around the monument.

This is above the elevator that takes you to the top.

Statue in the waiting area.

The view down the Mall to the Capitol building.

View down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial.

Then it was time for the Natural History Museum.

The African Elephant that greets visitors is named...Henry!

T-rex killing a triceratops.

This guy was making drawings of some fossils using a microscope!

T-rex poop by the bathroom.

The Hope Diamond.

Jewlery that Napoleon gave to his second wife, which I was excited about because Napoleon touched them.

These glow-in-the-dark rocks were super cool - as were a lot of the other gems and mineral and geodes in the collection, but that would be a hundred more pictures....

A diamond from a meteorite!

A giant leatherback turtle.

A large sea turtle, still much smaller than the leatherback.

Mom with the world's biggest seed.

An actual Moai from Rapa Nui!

An actual Rai stone!

The jaws from a Megalodon.

An actual cuneiform tablet! Smaller than I thought it would be.

Examining the cave painting reproductions.

Learning about our growing world population.

The entry hall from above.

The National Archives. We got to see an original Declaration of Independence, the original Constitution, and the original Bill of Rights. We were not allowed to take pictures, so this is it.

I bought a copy of the Declaration in the gift shop, just like in National Treasure and then I wasn't paying attention when I set it down and it started rolling away down the sidewalk...kind of like the movie when it rolls across Pennsylvania Avenue!

Eating my $10 cup of ice cream from an ice cream truck.

After the National Archives we walked over to the National Portrait Gallery.

The FBI building - we didn't go in.

The National Portrait Gallery.

Mom with the ladies of the court.

George, of course.

Me with John "Poopy Pants" Tyler.

Barack Obama.

Congressman and Civil Rights leader John Lewis.

A big display for art and automobiles.

Another impressive building!

A Napoleon statue.

A cool dog statue.

Katherine Hepburn's Oscar statues.

Mom with Michelle Obama.

More beautiful details of the building.

A bust of President Lincoln.

This is a painting of Ulysses S. Grant and his generals.

Frederick Douglass.

A lithograph of Robert Shaw leading the 54th Massachussetts.

The ledger of the man who owned Frederick Douglass, where he is listed as property along with all the other slaves.

We made a little detour walking back to the car to see Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was shot, and the house across the street where Lincoln died the next morning.

Ford's Theater.

The house where Lincoln died.

And that was it for the day. We walked a long way - over 20,000 steps! And we still didn't see everything - there is so much to see and learn about here. Thanks for reading!