Happy Memorial Day
(warning - no knitting content!)



I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Mine was heaven. I have been off from work since Friday. Such a nice treat considering I am about to enter HELL month. Saturday, I took myself out to breakfast (a frequent Saturday morning occurrence.) and then went to Savage Mill to wander around for a while. Then I went home and was a complete slug for the rest of the day. I watched many episodes of LOST on ABC.com. (I can't remember if it was Lolly's Kris or Laura's Shmoo who told me that ABC was running episodes online, but many thanks to whoever it was!) That show is totally addicting and totally frustrating!

Sunday was an amazing day. Scott and I spent the entire day wandering around the mall in DC. Completely by chance, we got to see Rolling Thunder. It was amazing. Thousands of motorcycles demonstrating for veterans, POW's and MIA's.


Gotta say... Got a little choked up by it. Just the sheer number of people involved was staggering. (The Washington Post says there were "tens of thousands" of motorcycles) The bikes just kept coming and coming. For HOURS. And wherever you were on the mall, you could hear the low roar of the engines - "rolling thunder" is exactly what it sounded like.

After watching the bikes for awhile, we headed to the National Botanical Gardens. I had never been there before. It was very cool! So many spectacular flowers and plants.

I went a little crazy with the flower pictures, but can you blame me? Made me really wish I had a decent camera.

We then headed down to the American History Museum, which was our reason for coming to DC in the first place. We wanted to see the Muppet exhibit. It was a little disappointing because it was very small. Only four or five display cases. But it was still fun.



I was very excited because they had Emmet Otter and his Mom.

Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas is one of my favorite Muppet movies. How cute are they??

We also had to stop at the America on the Move exhibit. Scott did some of the lighting install for this exhibit. So we had to walk around so he could point at lights and say "That lamp is out, that unit isn't focused correctly, that pattern rotator isn't working."

I also had to prove what a rebel I am.


We then walked down to the World War II Memorial. (past Rolling Thunder again) I had never been there either, and I figured Memorial Day weekend would be a perfect time to visit. It was really moving and beautiful. Many people had left pictures, mementos, stories and flowers along the walls. It made the whole experience more personal.


We had originally intended to go find lunch/dinner at this point, but as we headed back to the mall, we happened to pass the S. Dillon Ripley Center. Neither of us had ever heard of it. There was a huge banner hanging in front that said "Amazon Voyage: Vicious Fishes and Other Riches"
We decided to check it out.

What a surprise! It was a very fun exhibit in this strange little building. AND, it was remarkably not crowded. (I don't think anyone else has ever heard of this place either!) The exhibit was very hands on and kid friendly. And since Scott and I tend to act like overgrown 5 year olds, it was perfect for us!

Scary picture of Scott in a fish tank. Ok... so I made him do it... I couldn't get him to put on the fish costumes they had to try on.

We finally went and got some food at the fabulous Teaism that Lolly introduced me to a few weeks ago. So delicious! I wish I had bought some cookies while I was there. They have these amazing salted oatmeal raisin cookies. But lunch/dinner was yummy.

Finally we decided we were completely exhausted and it was time to head home. And since this is a knitting blog, I suppose I should mention that yes - I did do a little knitting on the subway. And of course, I did not take any pictures of that!

A much appreciated wonderful day! It's always fun to play tourist in DC - so close by and so much to do.