The largest museum in the world.......

I took my parents and my grandpa over to wander through the Smithsonian Institute. We drove down the 30 or so miles to the edge of Washington D.C. and then took the subway from the beltway down to the Smithsonian Institute. Grandpa had never been on a subway before. In addition, we were heading down to DC on a Saturday, so it would be very difficult to find a parking spot anywhere in the city, so the train is always a great alternative in that case.

We exited the subway and headed over to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Found some really cool stuff over there. Upon entering the museum's main entrance, you immediately see a large flag in front of you. After reading the information, we figured out that the flag was the same flag that was hung from the Pentagon for several months following the 9/11 attack. Large flags with some obvious black marks from when it hung over damaged portions of the Pentagon.



Next, we moved on and saw a few more exhibits related to the 9/11 attacks. They had a couple of large steel girders from the World Trade Center.......





Also, there was a box where an actual airphone from Flight 93 (the flight that crashed in Pennslyvania) was displayed. In addition, there was a photo ID from someone at the Pentagon that was found in the clean-up afterwards......



The museum also had a lot of presidential exhibits. Some really neat stuff from all of the presidents. Here's a picture of an outfit actually worn by George Washington.....



My personal favorite was an exhibit of some Lincoln artifacts. In the picture below, you can see the top hat that Abraham Lincoln was wearing the night he went to Ford Theater in 1865. He was assassinated that night. Next to the hat, you can see the actual death mask of Abraham Lincoln that was made following his death. It's amazing to see exactly what he looked like upon his death......



They also have some exhibits from the modern era. Below is a familiar face.....



After we finished up at the American History museum, we walked over to the Air & Space museum. Lots of things to see there. In the next picture, you can see Spaceship One. It was the first commercial aircraft to reach space. It did that early last year.



Next is a couple of the old rockets used by early Russian cosmonauts.......



Finally, what many consider the crown jewel of the Air and Space Museum, the Spirit of St. Louis. It's the airplane that Charles Lindbergh used for many of his historic, record-setting flights.



The sad part of this whole situation? We only saw roughly 15-20% of the museums at the Smithsonian Institute. For those that decide to come out, you could take an entire week just to tour all of the museums. Amazing stuff.