Day 39

We woke up early and had a quick breakfast before we left for the National Zoo. All my kids are crazy about animals, but Ryan is most of all. During our last visit at the Museum of American History we'd heard about some unique sculptures using plastic that had washed up on the shores of the Atlantic. I had no idea quite how huge and beautiful they would be!

    

As we walked through the zoo we kept seeing more and more. The part the kids loved most was getting a close up look at all the things that made up each sculpture. There were flip flops, paint brushes, bottle tops, coolers, toys, tires, funnels, bouys, and so much more. It was really astounding to see just what floats around in our oceans.

  

I believe we only saw about half of the sculptures but we were definitely inspired to look into finding ways to reuse more of our plastic.  The zoo does a fantastic job of recycling all the plastic they collect to use it for energy. In fact, one statistic I saw noted that a light bulb can be powered for six hours from a single plastic bottle.

And then of course there were the animals. We were there for the pandas, but kept getting side tracked by all the other adorable animals we found on the way. The small mammals got us all for sure!

                

Laney mentioned she will be having at least half of the animals we saw when she has her own apartment. She is planning to live in New York City, so I'm not sure how that's really going to work out. Perhaps she'll just work at a zoo.

After a long walk uphill we finally made it to the pandas. We met 3 year old Bao Bao, 1 year old Bei Bei, and their parents Mei Xiang and Tian Tian. All the adults were too busy eating to pay any attention to anything but the bamboo, but Bei Bei was having a blast playing and rolling around.

   

Ryan remembered keep tabs on the babies born at the Atlanta Zoo a few years before with live video interviews and web cams, so she told the other two all about how the biologists track their daily activities. 

I handed the camera over to Ryan for the rest of the walk down through the other side of the zoo. We enjoyed watching the sea lions for quite a while as they were very excited to see their handler handing out snacks.

After traveling through the Amazon rain forest and a Virginia farm we decided to opt for ice cream for lunch. I don't even know how the kids each finished one of the cones we bought filled with ice cream, brownies, m&ms, fudge, and marshmallows. It was definitely refreshing and enjoyable to sit in the air conditioning for awhile.

Our walk from the train that morning was wonderfully cool and downhill the entire way. It was now at least 25 degrees warmer and even with our refreshing snack none of us were looking forward to the walk back so we opted for an Uber ride to the Newseum. Our wonderful driver even had a charging stick as we didn't have any options for recharging anything at our campground and my phone was down to 2%. 

We walked back into the Newseum determined to do all the fun stuff today and we all absolutely had a blast.  A docent caught us with some very strange objects as we walked in.  I wish I had video of the kids trying to work a rotary phone. When she asked Brayden to make a phone call he just stared at it with absolutely no clue whatsoever what to do. Ryan tried to push the numbers instead of dial the phone. 

When Laney made a mistake typing I told her there was no way to correct it and she would just have to wad up the paper, throw it against the wall and start over. She just stared at me like I was speaking German.

We all spent the next few hours learning about journalism and how to get the scoop. We also learned about the ethics and legalities in reporting tough or revealing stories as well as conflicts of interest. The best part was watching the kids be a breaking news reporter with different stories happening in the city.

 

Once they finished their report they could come down from the green screen and see the report as if it were live on the news. I practically had to tear them away after they'd all had several turns.

Our culminating experience was a game we could play against each other trying to decide if we should print certain stories or pursue certain leads. We played several times and mixed up the teams learning all about real life journalism situations. It was perfect end to our visit for this game family to show what we'd learned!

After a quick visit to the gift shop we hopped on the train back to the campground to play and have a quiet dinner. We'd be leaving the next day after we went to a little surprise I had for the kids!

Day 20

As the girls and I walked home from the train station the night before, I tried to prepare them for sleeping with the city sounds. They have stayed in hotels in larger cities before, but living in a tent is a whole new level. After they had a snack and played a little we all climbed in the tent and 7 seconds after we closed our eyes fireworks started! I think I might have even said out loud, "Oh you're kidding me right?"

At first the girls were nervous it may have been gunfire until they heard the whistling firecrackers. We eventually just got back out of the tent and enjoyed the part of the show we could see.  They only lasted about 15 minutes and once we got back inside the girls were asleep almost instantly.

The spot I'd reserved turned out to be the only spot that was covered by a shadow the whole night from the bright security light. The city lights were already bright enough! I woke up this day pretty refreshed and ready to get our day going.  We were camping on an itty bitty spot with room for only 1 tent and a picnic blanket. It was nice to be able to picnic and chat in the coolness of the early morning.

We met Grammie and Brayden a little later at the train and headed into the city. First up was the One World Trade Center Observation Floor. I was very excited about this stop as I'd been into the Empire State Building before and I knew it would pale in comparison.

I was absolutely blown away by this experience - so much so that I don't want to say anything about it and hope everyone gets to experience it for themselves. Suffice it to say the view was breathtaking!

   

Brayden took a few breaths and even relaxed on the glass floor while I took a picture!

Grammie got us the ipad extra that gave information about all the buildings as you pointed it in the direction you were looking. We had fun spotting the buildings after we learned a little bit about each one.

Next we headed in search of the hop on/hop off bus to take us around the city and help us figure out where things were. We had quite a time finding the area, but finally we were on the bus and learning the history of this wonderful city.

     

About 5 or 6 stops in we decided to get off at Chinatown to walk around and find some lunch.  Ryan was amazed by the grafitti we were seeing everywhere and inspired to paint the bridge in Pensacola again!

   

Most of the stores were closed so we ended up eating some pizza in Little Italy at Lombardo'a. The pizzas were huge and delicious! We ended up walking a ways into SOHO then hopped in an UBER to Battery Park to go visit Lady Liberty. The line for security was incredibly long and hot, but once we got on the ferry it was a cool and quick ride to the island.

We climbed the 195 steps up to the pedestal and walked around outside for our second beautiful view of the day. It was very crowded so we didn't stay on the deck very long.

  

  

  

Grammie took a picture of all of us to prove that I actually do exist!  I have a picture of me similar to this one with the Twin Towers in the background. I hope these guys never have to experience something like that in their lifetimes.





We peeked into the museum so the kids could see some of the parts of the statues of the past. We didn't have time for the whole museum, so the kids settled for one picture instead. They couldn't help themselves being so close to her nose!

We hopped back onto the ferry and headed to Ellis Island next. We walked through some of the rooms to read about the experiences of some of the people who were there. We didn't have much time for the audio tour so we ended up watching the movie which was a nice overview of the hope, struggles, and disappointment many of the people experienced there.



Once we got off the ferry we headed to Times Square to let the kids see the madness. For the first time the kids understood why I wanted them hanging on to us! For my people-watching kids this walk was overwhelming and wonderful all at the same time.  Once Ryan spotted this guy, we had to stay for the entire painting of the New York skyline in 5 minutes with spray paint. Dave might need to pull out our left over spray paint cans when we get home as she has been inspired!

We visited the 3-story M&M store that was just about as crazy as Times Square. The kids were ecstatic to try all the different kinds of M&Ms. We had no idea there were strawberry flavor, but everyone's favorite was definitely the mega size of course with 3 times more chocolate!

Once we'd had enough of all the stores we headed back to our spot and talked about all we'd done that day. Our feet were tired, our bellies were full, and our brains were overloaded.