So many airplanes

I did it again: I took the kids on a field trip to Washington, DC. 

Despite driving once through downtown in the middle of rush hour, it was a laughably easy trip compared to last time.

Even Lizzy said, when we were calculating how many years it’s been since we last did this, I can’t believe you took four kids to DC.  

Neither can I, my dear. Neither can I.

Honestly, I saw a woman with four young kids at the playground recently and thought, Is she crazy? How is she managing that? And then I started estimating her kids’ relative ages compared with my own and thought Oh…

So, yeah, this field trip isn’t worthy to be compared to the infamous Adventure of Foggy Bottom. This time my students were 14 and 12 years old, instead of 12, 10, 7, and 5. 

This time, my kids know [far] more about airplanes than I do.

Guess which one has the excessive fascination with aircraft?

We stayed up in the observation tower for at least forty minutes, watching planes take off and land at Dulles. The kids had Flightradar up and were calling out the cities where each of the arrivals was coming from. It was pretty cool.

Caleb had researched days before to see what time a 747 was expected to land. We had to make sure we were in the tower in time to see it, and it was close, since it landed a few minutes early. But to the happiness of all, we were just in time. Even without the app Caleb could identify it from three miles away.

Also we fit in a single hotel room, which is a lot easier to find than a two-bedroom condo.

On day 1, we explored the Air and Space Museum at Udvar-Hazy. On day 2, we walked to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and did the tour of where they make paper money. I found the tour fascinating, but I took no pictures, since the tour guide said if you do that, “you’ll get a different kind of tour.”

We had some time to kill before our entry time at the main Air and Space Museum, so we wandered over to visit Mr. Jefferson.

Not sure who was inside this but it seemed like someone special 

The Wright brothers’ actual first plane

Caleb was disappointed at the lack of metro rides, but I was relieved by the simplicity of being able to walk everywhere we needed to go.

We had the hotel valet retrieve our car right at 5:00 on a Friday evening…what could go wrong?

Lizzy and Caleb amused themselves by taking pictures of Ears while I navigated traffic. Despite only a couple of missed turns and one near miss wherein I almost killed the person in my blind spot, we got home safe and sound.