July 4, 2012 - National Botanic Gardens, Washington DC

After the surprisingly decent time we spent in the Museum of the American Indian, we continued down to the botanic gardens.

Hey look, the capitol!

Tourist shots! Me... *

And Alex. *

I really liked their little display of carnivorous plants.

Especially the Venus Fly Traps.

And giant pitcher plants!

The outside of the building is pretty neat.

Really gorgeous orchid just inside the doors.

I like that they have flowers tucked away in just about every spot.

You can hardly even tell that Alex is about ready to faint from the heat/humidity combo!

Hibiscus

Bromiliad

So pretty!

Weird looking...

Love these, too.

Neat foliage. *

We didn’t spend terribly long inside. Surprisingly, the humidity was hitting Alex even harder than it was hitting me. Their arboretum thing is very pretty, but we had to get out of there before one or both of us got heat stroke.

The one thing we wanted to see was the Orchid Room, because it is completely amazing. Fortunately, Alex remembered the fastest way to get there.

These are some of my favorites.

So lacy and pretty looking.

I like this one a lot.

Hiding up high.

I'd never seen the fan-shaped ones before.

I wish I'd gotten something to show how tiny this is.
The little translucent flowers are smaller than my little finger nail.

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After this, we retreated outside, to where it was… still hot and humid.

We walked down the mall toward the natural history museum, which is both of our favorites. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, we saw there was a massive crowd of people waiting to get in, and we’d probably only have had twenty minutes or so inside before they closed. That was a shame, but we decided it wouldn’t be worth it. So instead we left the mall to go get coffee and just sit down for a while.

We also went through one of their cooling stations, which is basically a bunch of water spraying you, and a great big fan. It felt amazing while standing there, and then after that became horrible. My clothes and hair were soaked through, and the humidity meant it didn't dry probably until well into the evening. So don’t take advantage of the cooling stations unless you can stay there all day.

How patriotic.

Pigeons! One had a broken foot, but seemed to be getting around okay anyway.

We then decided to walk down towards the White House, since we hadn’t gone that way last time. And hey, I do actually want to see some of these spots. But then there was a big checkpoint thing, and we didn’t want to go through that twice, so we ended up just heading towards the Washington Monument, where we were going to watch the fireworks.

We passed this neat little building, which I guess used to be a gatehouse.

Markers of flood levels.

The checkpoint to get onto the grounds around the Washington Monument was pretty hardcore. The lady who checked my bag just kind of poked through, but Alex’s bag was very seriously searched. And he had our hiking backpack, which I forgot had pepper spray in it. We had to throw that away.

But then, the monument!

Monumental, indeed.

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I suck and didn't get the monument very centered behind Alex. *

We found somewhere to sit, and got comfy for the fireworks.

<3 Even though Alex looks kind of unhappy. *

We both decided not to take pictures of the fireworks show. I’m glad, too. In previous years, sometimes I’m so focused on trying to get a good picture that I end up not really paying enough attention to the show itself. This one was fantastic, and I’m glad that I got to pay attention to it the whole time.

Nighttime shot of the monument. (It's watching us!)

The moon looked pretty badass.

It ended up being a very long walk back to a Metro station. We went the wrong way once, and then one station was too crowded and we just left immediately. We ended up going to one that was far enough away that we got to get on the train at an earlier part of the route, so we got to avoid the worst of the crowds. It was late and my feet hurt, but it was completely worth it.

This is an ad for one of the airports, with Rockville being a city in Maryland. Our trip from Rockville to the Rockies was not the easiest, apparently.

A late night, but a very good one!

* These pictures are from Alex's camera.

July 4, 2012 - The Museum of the American Indian

The Fourth of July in Colorado was, from what I hear, kind of a bummer. It’d been so dry, there were so many very serious fires, the danger of more fires starting was so high, etc. that there were pretty much no fireworks. Almost all the usual professional shows were cancelled. But spending the Fourth of July in DC was awesome! (It’s kind of a big deal there, for some reason. :P )

We decided to spend most of the day in DC, and go to some of the museums along the mall. Our original plan was to hit the botanic gardens and the natural history museum.

The Smithsonian Castle is pretty much my favorite building ever, by the way.

It's just SO PRETTY, okay.

The plaque tells me that this is Joseph Henry.

 

But then along the way, heading towards the gardens we decided that maybe we could take a look inside the Museum of the American Indian. [I wanted to link to their site, but it appears a little broken at the moment.]

Okay. So. We did go here last time we were in the area, and Alex had been there before as well. And we were both severely underwhelmed. It’s very disappointing, in my opinion. There are many very interesting artifacts and displays, but very little easily-accessible information. For instance, one display had a booklet of information about the pieces, but the book was on a fixed stand almost around the corner from the display, so if you wanted to try and find one piece, you had to walk to a point where it was almost out of sight in order to read about what it was. Much of what they have displayed is meant to be aesthetically pleasing (and it often is) but then provides no context or information about the pieces individually. I believe the laudable message that they seem to be aiming for by placing everything together, regardless of whom/where/when it is from is the idea of “everyone as one people,” but it comes off more as homogenizing. Obviously, this has been a huge problem historically, that all tribes were treated as interchangeable, as identical, as if they had nothing unique or important about their individual histories, beliefs, traditions, etc. The museum, to me, seemed to reinforce that mightily. It was very disappointing, and we’d decided that we probably wouldn’t bother coming back when we were pressed for time.

But we decided to go in anyway. And it was totally worth it.

See, this year (I think through next January) they’re doing an exhibit all about horses, and what they mean to different tribes. And it was a really impressive exhibit, in terms of what they had, and the range they covered. It’s a shame that this is a temporary exhibit, because it’s my favorite thing I’ve seen there.

The poster for the exhibit. We would have bought one, if they weren't 30 freaking dollars.

Awesome tipi. *

Saddle.

Navajo horse origin myth.

Horse headpiece that looks like a bison head.

Another horse headpiece/mask. *

Beautifully decorated.

Most of this is done with porcupine quill.

Picture of a picture, but it was just a very awesome picture.

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We did go through some of the rest of the museum, though not in as much detail.

Right side.

Center

Left side.

This wall of different points is one of the examples of homogenizing that I saw… the points are displayed in a really interesting way, and it’s lovely to look at. But at a glance, there’s little information given about them. It’s just a pretty wall-hanging of “look at all the arrowheads!” (Lots of these are not arrowheads.) They do have some computers nearby that you can supposedly use to “interactively search” for more information, but both times I’ve been there, the computers weren’t working (or were so slow that I gave up after looking up one or two things.) So, a pretty display that has some amazing individual pieces, but it’s not a very good for a museum.

I somehow doubt this is historically accurate...

Bearclaw necklace. *

And another display with frustratingly little information… things seemed to be categorized by type of animal? So all the birds were together, and all the fish were together, and all the snakes… but still lacking any relevant context. Still had a few neat things, though:

Turquoise bobcat. *

Scorpion basket! I want one! *

The silver and turquoise bit with the horses is awesome,
but I also dig the crazy crab and the puffin. *

I wish a picture of this without flash would have come out, to show off the mother-of-pearl inlay.
In the eyes of these masks, it looks like reflective animal eyes. *

And that’s the end of what we saw in the museum. I’m breaking this day up into two parts, because otherwise it’ll be even more horribly image-heavy. So the rest of our time in DC will be in the next post.

* These pictures were taken with Alex's camera.