August 7, 2012 Washington, DC

We toured the Capital Building.  The AAA book said you needed advance reservations, but there were some first come first serve tickets available.

The ceiling of the Rotunda, John touring in the Statue Room

The statue room, there were statues of important  people from each of the states, the statue of King Kamehameha of Hawaii

This is a replica of the statue Freedom that is on top of the capital dome. The supreme court, it was getting a facelift

The inside of the library of Congress. The front of the National botanical garden. They were having a carnivorous plant exhibit, these are huge statues of pitcher plants in front.

Orchid, orchid, orchid, real pitcher plants, three orchids, cacao tree- they make chocolate from these seed pods on the trunk and a turmeric flower.

Giant Venus fly catcher plant. It had buttons you could push, shaped like flies and the flowers opened and closed, Sue inside the giant pitcher plant-help, I am being eaten!

The Nation museum of the American Indian. We had lunch here. They serve really good native food. They had an exhibit of the Indians and horses. This is a fused glass horse mask . They had a great art and artifacts from various Indian tribes on exhibit.

A painting in the Indian museum and the front door was a cast glass piece called Study of the Sun.

Three different boats from the Indian museum, a tropical Indian tribe boat, an Alaskan sea kayak and a birch bark canoe. The rat head is part of the heads of the zodiac exhibit at the Hirshhorn  art museum

A Nepalese god from the Freer museum, a pine needle basket shaped like a scorpion, with a merman statue from the American Indian museum, a figure from the Freer Museum. The Jefferson Memorial.

John at the low point of Washington DC, and even lower in the second photo.  He does not think DC counts since it is not a state, but the AAA listed a high and low point.

Jefferson Memorial across the tidal basin with Canadian geese.  It was one of the coolest monuments. John at the  FDR memorial. It was huge, this was just one of the many waterfalls.

One of FDR’s quotes, his dog.

one of the statues at the FDR Memorial, and John lines up in the bread line at the FDR Memorial.

The sun setting on the Martin Luther King memorial. It has the mountain of despair in the background, with the one MLK is on, the stone of hope pushed out in front. The DC war memorial lit up at dusk.