Mom shook us out of bed at 4:45AM! We were on the Metro by 5:45 and in line at the Washington Monument visitors center by 6:30AM! The center opens at 8:30 and they start to pass out tickets for the day. We fussed and grumped about waiting. Mom was prepared with snacks, iPhones and some studying for Marine Ecology for next fall for 4-H! We got tickets to the 9:00 group! YAY! We eagerly raced up the hill to the waiting area.
We were the first people in line for the day! After security check we waited in the elevator lobby and read signs about George Washington.
A quick trip and we were at the top. We looked out in all directions. They have maps and I enjoyed finding all the buildings on the maps.
The White House!
Then you proceed down 15 steps and there is an information section with all about how the monument was built.
Then we went down the elevator and it paused so we could see the stones donated by each state. Sadly we only saw a few but they were very cool!
Back on terra-firma!
I was sucking the cold out of the cool marble benches.
We walked over to the National Museum of American History for a meet-up with B’s pal, Aran. Aran moved to Washington state a while ago and we just happened to be in DC at the same time!
We saw Prince’s Yellow Cloud guitar!
Finally we connected with Aran and his mom.
We explored the museum and returned to the Spark Lab for more inventing.
I worked on a laser project. I had to make the beam split, reflect and bounce around to a goal. It took a bit to figure it out but I made my goal!
The lab was very crowded so I retreated to a corner with tons of books on inventing and art. I had a great time curled up reading.
I invented a cool microscope that has a shoulder mount so you can take it into the field to examine specimens.
We found our photo from the other day. Aran got his on the wall too!
I made a “photo holder”. I call it Mr. Wire.
Saying good-bye to the mall area. We have plans outside of DC the next few days.
