Whirlwind Smithsonian Micro-Adventure

You find yourself in DC with 3 free hours of sunlight....quick, find something free and amazing to explore.  Adventures don't always to have to be epic, arduous and life changing.  Sometimes you get word of a live insect exhibit at the Natural History Museum and have to stop by on your way to the Smithsonian Museum of Postal History.  The important thing is to calculate possible gaps in your schedule for adventure (when you are on a work-focused mission, gaps are in play, otherwise adventure is the priority) and that way if you get a chance, bam, you are rolling to your adventure instead of trying to figure out where to go.

The live insect exhibit at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum almost made up for the fact that the dinosaur bones are temporarily out.  No worries, found skeletons anyway!  Also had the opportunity to watch a tarantula feeding.  I'm not saying I was underwhelmed, but it was no feeding of the sharks type exhibition.

The color on this beetle is absolutely true.  I dig beetles.

It's a leaf, its a bug, oh snap, it's really a bug with epic camouflage!

Child mummy -- As disturbing in person as in the photo.

Cool comparison of the river otter and sea otter skeletal structure.

What is scarier than an actual spider monkey?  A spider monkey skeleton...NOPE

The Hope Diamond

The first bizarre taxidermy of the day.  I love the stoic nature of the big owl and the dreadful pleading eyes of the one in the foreground.  He seemed so devastated to be stuffed.

After a 30 minute cruise through, you see, I'm actually not much of a museum person, I bounded off to the American Postal Museum.  It's a bit out on the edge of the DC core, but worth it!  The best part is that I anticipated a line, a la the Natural History Museum, but apparently my excitement about postal history is unusually strong....

I am fortunate to have spent 4 years as a rural letter carrier while I was in college and grad school.  I love the mail and send letters and postcards to myself, family and friends from all over the world.  It's archaic, sometimes challenging to find stamps, post boxes, etc., but worth it.  The museum did not disappoint.  For being someone who really doesn't get excited about reading every exhibit marker and watching every informative video, the time crunch was a little pressing, but so worth it.  They were hosting a special exhibit on the Postal Inspection Service (what I want to be when I grow up), the National Park Service and Post Secret, where people anonymously mail post cards to an address and then they are posted on blogs, Instagram and in books.  It was a hoot to have so many exhibits that genuinely interested me.  Nerd level 11 on a scale of 1 - 10.  

Why is there no line of people waiting to get in?

The information on Amelia Earhart made me dig her even more.  I'm pretty sure she would have blindsided you with a left hook if you told her she shouldn't be doing what she loved.  

Early Postal Inspectors carried Thompson Sub Machine Guns, Tommy Guns.  One word, yes.

Post Secret Exhibit - Go to PostSecret.com to get the full scoop and see this week's secrets.

Great exhibit on how mail was moved on the railways.  They explained how they snagged mail off of the hooks along the railway very well.  Sounds harrowing and like some mail might have had some big adventures.

Owney the Post Office Mascot - Weird Taxidermy #2

This is my full happy nerd face as I talked to another former mail carrier.  I literally sat in the museum for 20 minutes filling out postcards so I could have them mailed about with National Park Stamps, a National Postal Museum postmark and a lot of excitable punctuation describing my feelings about the National Postal Museum.  

Micro-Adventures, squeeze them in if you have to.  Plan for potential gaps.  It's so much better than hanging out with Netflix when there is bad taxidermy, neat bugs and nerdy exhibits out there.