The Smithsonian, and the Air and Space Museum in specificity is and will always be Venue One when visiting Washington . There is nothing that captures the American ethos more intrinsically than the story of the Wright Brothers.

Followed by Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis, all of NASA with Voyager & the Space Shuttle, Rutan with Scaled Composites, maybe even Musk with SpaceX but the jury is still out on that one…

Amongst all the aviation history both military and commercial two emerging sets of displays  stood out. Drones…

and the satellites and missiles…

One thing that caught my eye were the burr marks on all the screws that hold the missile sections together. They looked stripped…not on just one, but all?

Later we walked the mall to the Natural History Museum. France has the “Thinking Man”…we have the “Thinking Rabbit”…and a fake entrance to the Paris Metro…

The depth and breadth of the exhibits is overwhelming. The iconic African elephant greets you as you come in the door. 

Moving through the exhibits we were drawn to the evolution of man exhibit… where one of the facial recreations made me burst out laughing…I renamed him…”Ligna Exercitus”

The only things missing were tattoos and the scarf. The expression clearly captures him doubting the last call by the official…

It was a long day we caught the metro back to College Park…and it was good…