DC Part 2 - Metro and ZOO

On Saturday morning, we woke up and headed up to the city. After a pseudo-check-in at the hotel (they parked our car for us and put our bags in storage until we could check into our room in the afternoon), we walked to the Marthon Race Expo.

We did our thing there for a little while and then headed out to locate lunch.
At that point, the rain hadn't come in yet, so we decided to make the treck to the zoo and take our chances with the weather.

The kids were very excited about the "train ride"....
Here is Lucas looking for it.

The draft blew their hairs as it rolled by.
After a few short stops, we walked the rest of the way to the
Smithsonian National Zoological Park.

We tried this photo shoot a while before we got a decent one.

Inside, the animals were hiding, or inside or something. Regardless we couldn't find them.

Now I know it is a fabulous zoo, and they do a wonderful job of keeping the animals in a simulated environment, but for a kid Lucas' age, it made things very difficult.

Here was the panda bear that came out in plain sight for a few minutes.

Lucas jumped on his back for a photo

The Elephants were closed for maintenance, and this is as close as we could get.

FINALLY! Animals confined to cages so my child can actually see them!

A beautiful sight

Lucas sitting inside a dinosaur footprint.

Lucas and Daddy

We picked a random passer-by to take our photo, and our persons came out a little blury.

At this point, the bottom dropped out, and it was pouring. We thought we could just use an umbrella and make our way through the exit and back to the metro station. We were sadly mistaken and very wet.

We stopped off in a gift shop for a while to stay out of the rain.

Meredith stayed busying putting on every bracelet they had.

The rain never let up, so Richard went into the bathroom and we made ponchos out of trashbags. How inovative. We didn't pay $10 for a thin poncho with animals all over it!

We still got a little wet, but Lucas didn't mind. He fell asleep from the excitement of the day.

Meredith refused to wear a poncho, and got SOAKED. We stripped her of her shirt and put her jacket on her once we arrived at the metro station.

The day flew by! Time goes by so much more quickly when you have children!