Two Awesome Museums

We thought today might be an easy day with a quick trip through the American Indian Museum followed by a couple of hours in the Aviation Museum with a stop by the Iwo Jima monument. Back to the condo early for a long rest. Wrong!

The National Museum of The American Indian is Wonderful. It is very modern and not at all what I had envisioned. Each individual display is put together in collaboration with the various native tribes and communities represented. It was very well done. The docents were mostly Native Americans representing a very wide range of Native American cultures. The food court was a mixture of about six different geographical areas including cedar plank salmon from the Pacific Northwest. This is by far the best Smithsonian restaurant area we’ve run across. I had an excellent Indian Taco and Cheryl had fry bread with honey.

Unfortunately most of the displays were hard to photograph because of the glass enclosed displays. If you visit Washington D.C. this is a must.

The National Air and Space Museum

This place is so large that entire airplanes get lost in the displays. I took as many photos as I could but without a wider angle lens (remember mine is broken) it’s hard to take a photo of a large or even small plane. There are entire rocket ships here as well as space capsules.

The famous Ford Tri-plane

The first sucessful fighter plane.

WWI German Bomber

WWII B-17

My personal favorite is the first successful jet fighter plane, the German WWII fighter ME 262. I was surprised at how small it was compared to contemporary jet fighters. What brave men to fly in them and especially to fight against them. It’s a good thing for the Allies that production came at the end of the war.

German V1 rocket (I think)

I told you “Night at the Museum” was everywhere. This is in the Air and Space Museum entrance.

Actually this was our first stop this morning and involved a walk of several miles. No ex-marine can miss the statue of Iwo Jima. It is beautiful, meaningful and represents everything the U.S. Marine Corps holds dear.

Tomorrow.... who knows?