D-M-USA-roadtrip-2014: Day 43 Tuesday 30th September, Around Washington DC.

The "woodpecker" (jack hammers) in the basement started at a much more reasonable hour this morning - at 9am . By this time we were up and ready to go anyway - so not too bad.

We couldn't help ourselves and sneaked a peek in the old fire house next door and discovered a treasure and one of the fireies invited us inside to take a closer look.....

Guess what - just next door in Fire house number 3, is a 1905 La France Steam pumper, horse drawn vehicle, which was decommissioned in 1925 still sits pride of place in the fire house. The modern fire truck and paramedics van are a tight squeeze in the remaining section of the firehouse.

Leaving the fire station, a short brisk walk took us to Union Station for the early bus which took us to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. What an amazing collection, even more impressive is that they tell you which articles are original (like the Wright Brothers Flyer and the Spirit of St Louis) and which are replicas (the Wright Brothers test kites), or exhibits which could have been used but weren’t (such as the Lunar Lander which was the second test vehicle but the first worked so well they didn’t need it) through to the Hubble Telescope from which NASA recently took back the solar panels as the ones on the actual telescope in space had a problem and had to be replaced. Incidentally the Hubble Telescope was the last Space vehicle which NASA built two off, prototyping is so good now they only build one and if there is a problem they can use computer modelling to fix the problem before building a second.

Original Wright Flyer, the fabric has been replaced (twice) since it actually flew, much to the curator's disgust....

Picture of the original flight, taken on the day by a professional photographer
told to press the button as soon as it took off.

Original "Spirit of St Louis"

As part of the contract under which the plane was given to the museum the door must remain open at all times, annually a team of lawyers visit every year to ensure this is so otherwise the plane can be withdrawn.

We also did a guided tour which was very informative. All the Smithsonian’s are free although we did pay to go in the IMax and watch a movie on Hidden Space which was excellent. Interestingly the film was partially sponored by the Victorian Government and Swinburne University.

Part of the display includes spaceship one, all the big planes are now at an annex at Dulles Airport,
will have to visit there next visit.

Apollo 11 Lunar Lander test vehicle that wasn't used.

Although we could have easily spent all day in the Museum, and several others, we decided to get on the bus again and do the tour which went to Arlington. On the way back we were once again delayed by traffic and the bus had to make several detours.

Apparently an Indian Diplomat was getting a guided tour by the US president and according to the Bus Tour guide, several monuments had been closed over the day to allow secure private access. The manpower expended to closing roads and re-directing traffic - it was quite amazing to watch.

After this we made our way back to the hotel to tackle the daunting task of packing.