5/20/15 Today we took another wonderful ride on I-95’s bombed out surface to the Franconia, VA, Metro light rail station for a ride into Washington D.C. After some fiddling around at the station, we were parted with $65 to cover the cost of parking and light rail rides into D.C. for 2 days. We hopped on something called the Blue Line for a ride to an underground station at the Pentagon where we changed to the Yellow Line for the continuation of the ride into the capitol. We disembarked at a stop called Archives and emerged from the subway catacombs directly north of the National Archives building. We heard a rumor that stuff like the Declaration of Independence are stored here but we didn’t go in so we really don’t know what’s inside. Archives, I presume.
After a stroll of about 1/3 of a mile, we entered the National Sculpture Garden which, unsurprisingly, has exterior sculptures strewn around a big round concrete fountain which doubles as a skating rink in winter. There is a sculpture of a large, life-size shiny stainless steel leafless tree which I thought was pretty spectacular but the rest of the stuff is pretty modern, a style which I do not have the talent to enjoy. The garden is still pretty neat even if morons like me lack the sophistication to appreciate it.
From there we wandered another quarter mile to the entrance to the National Museum of Natural History. Here is a museum that I can appreciate. The variety of natural history exhibits in the museum is quite extensive and I could easily have spent at least a full day or maybe two to see all the stuff if my feet didn’t hurt so much. Our experience in Washington taught us that there is a lot of mass transit, but no matter where the train drops you off, you will be required to take a long hike to get where you want to go and seating in the museums is very scarce. Also, at some museums there are long lines outside because everything in D.C. has overabundant security measures in place in order to inconvenience the tourists, give unemployables a job and make sure nobody brings a nail clipper into Federal buildings to commit terrorist acts, like farting in public.
From the Natural History Museum, we took another trek to the National Museum of Art – West where we scoped out a whole bunch of paintings, some of which I recognized but most of which I couldn’t. Numerous artists I have never heard of have scads of paintings stuck up on the walls and Peggy loved this place. We strolled through areas where French painters had pictures of ugly people, fruit and country scenes to areas where Dutch painters had pictures of ugly people, fruit and country scenes and on into areas where American painters had pictures of ugly people, fruit and country scenes. There were also some paintings of city scenes. A few interior sculptures are also showcased in the museum and I really liked one of a female and her gorgeous dog but there were quite a few of ugly people but no fruit or country scenes.
With my feet almost ablaze with agony, we then walked into the Mall where I took pictures of the Capitol Building which is covered with scaffolding such that it is almost entirely hidden from view. The middle section of the Mall is also very busy with excavation equipment which limits your view west to large Caterpillar and Mitsubishi excavation equipment busily obscuring the view. We could see the Washington Monument which is quite spectacular, even if the bottom part of it was hidden behind enormous piles of dirt. From our vantage point we could also see the National Air & Space Museum and the Smithsonian Castle which is a gorgeous structure.
Having endured about as much fun as we could stand in one day, we hobbled over to a Metro station where we boarded the light rail system for the ride back to Franconia, the parking lot and a one hour, 16 mile commute back to the Invader on the cleverly malformed I-95.