Ammon:
We got up and got an Uber (we had no car) to the National Book Festival (at a convention center). Then we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I really liked the WWI air reconnaissance mission photos. We then got a taxi to the Capitol, did a tour, saw statues and big rooms. Saw the original painting of Pochahantas getting baptized. Took an underground tunnel to the Library of Congress. Took the Metro Rail/train back to our hotel, and walked 5 minutes from the stop to our hotel.
LaReita:
While creating a 2 day itinerary in DC a couple of weeks ago, I did get some good suggestions from Grok (an A.I.), including the requirement to have (free) tickets for timed entry at nearly all the places we went. Grok did not do well with how to schedule the itinerary according to building proximity and open/close times. That took a human to decipher, “uh, those 2 museums are on opposite sides of the city.”
While on the Library of Congress website getting our timed-entry ticket, it showed other events the LOC hosts, including the 25th annual National Book Festival happening the very day we were to be in DC! What an incredible line-up of workshops and authors. There were two kid-oriented workshops we picked: illustrations and creating stories. Ammon has started writing his own story based on a video game, and was excited to share it.
The class was led by a Coretta Scott King award-winning author, Kwame Mbalia, and a gal with a nonprofit who teaches inner city kids how to become writers. The workshop was a kid-crowd-sourced story writing workshop. They all shared ideas to start creating a story together. So much fun. Afterwards Ammon asked the gal if she would read his story and offer suggestions. She was so kind and thrilled he brought something and that he ASKED for HELP. Great moment.
The National Air & Space Museum was packed full of information and so good. If you go and really want to experience it all, I would suggest spreading out the information overload by going for 3 days and just 1-2 hours at a time.
The Capitol tour was good. The 15 minute intro video was a power-nap for me and Dave. More walking & stairs and seeing America’s legislative home was impressive. Interesting new additions are the 2 statues per state that now adorn the halls of the Capitol. Utah has Brigham Young (of course), and Dr Martha Hughes Cannon (first female state senator – 1896 – the year Grandma Lucy Hawkes Jeppesen was born AND when Utah became a state. If Dr. Cannon was as fiery as Grandma Jeppesen, I’m sure she made a bang in Congress. I’m channeling dad jokes right now.)
The Library of Congress was beautiful of course. Saw the reproduction and recreation of Thomas Jefferson’s library. Impressive. I’m sure he read all of those books. What would our society be like today if more people read like that?