Christmas Trees of Washington, DC: A Panoramic Sampler

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We went out on a Washington Christmas Tree Walk on Saturday afternoon, visiting various public Christmas trees around the touristy parts of DC, where I made good use of Stitch Assist to make some panoramas. Amy guest-stars in some of these.

Capitol

Christmas Tree Panorama: Capitol

This year’s Capitol Christmas Tree is a tall, thin subalpine fir from Montana, decorated with crafts from just about every 4-H club in the state.

Botanic Garden

Christmas Tree Panorama: US Botanic Garden

The USBG’s Christmas Tree is part of a larger “Wonderland” exhibit, featuring fantastical scenes and replicas of DC landmarks made from plant materials, with detailed model train sets crisscrossing the miniature landscapes.

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

Christmas Tree Panorama: American Indian Museum

I was surprised that the NMAI even had a Christmas tree, since that might be a sensitive topic, but there it was, a somewhat sparse fir tucked into an outside corner behind a pillar, decorated with native American crafts.

Smithsonian Castle

Christmas Tree Panorama: Smithsonian Castle

Not sure what kind of tree that is, but wow, it’s wide, nicely lit with LEDs and decorated with silvery pine cones and glitter-frosted glass balls. We couldn’t stay long, though, as the Castle was being set up for a reception of some sort.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Christmas Tree Panorama: American History Museum

Hey look, they set up a tree in the central hall! It’s, well, a tree. With Christmas tree balls and white frosted sticky-outy-twig things. It hadn’t been lit yet, though.

The National Christmas Tree

Christmas Tree Panorama: White House

I hadn’t expected that the National Tree (on the Ellipse behind the White House) would have so much stuff around it — a smaller tree for each state and territory, a stage for performances, an open fire pit, and a cute little Santa’s Workshop (where I got yelled at for taking photos). The DC-themed tree had been decorated by Children of the American Revolution.

Norwegian Christmas at Union Station

Christmas Tree Panorama: Union Station

And finally, the Union Station tree, decorated with flags as part of their annual “Norwegian Christmas” program, which also features model trains winding their way through a miniature Norwegian landscape in the West Hall.

Full photoset from Saturday’s Christmas Tree walkabout here.

Caturday!

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Pandora really likes lying down on my jeans. I couldn’t stand up while she was luxuriating on my thigh.

Update: Now she is sitting on my gray sweat pants, which fell out of the laundry basket onto the floor. She looks very much like the cloud of steam that rises from a lava flow when it reaches the ocean.

Pandora on Sweat Pants

Capitol Visitor Center

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Primary Capitol The new Capitol Visitor Center began construction shortly after I arrived in DC, so the whole time I have lived here the whole East side of the Capitol has been hidden behind unsightly construction walls. The project had initially been slated to be done for the 2005 inauguration (that turned out well, didn’t it?) but went so late and over-budget that I seriously wondered if they’d even make the 2009 ceremonies. I’ve always been something of an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mindset about the whole thing: why spend money on a hole in the ground for tourist lines when just going in and out through the doors on the upper terrace has served for 200 years?

Capitol Visitor Center Panorama

Against my expectations, the Visitor Center finally opened last week, and it’s lovely. The space is much prettier and roomier than the concrete bunker I thought it would be: rather, we found ourselves in “Emancipation Hall,” a grand plaza of marble and granite with glass skylights viewing the dome, accessible via a finely landscaped approach of grassy terraces. There’s an exhibit hall with the history of the Capitol and its resident legislature, a cafeteria-style restaurant serving various cooked and prepared meals, two gift shops, two theaters, ample restrooms, staging areas for tourists about to tour the Capitol itself, and even a winding underground tunnel leading to the Library of Congress. More photos:

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Full Capitol Visitor Center photoset here. A nice place, possibly even worth the time and expense it took to make it, and the restored East Capitol plaza and drive is also good to have back open.

Snake-urday!

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Am I doing it right?

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(I didn’t have a cat photo to show today but I do have this snake we saw basking atop a tree stump in the sun by the boardwalk during our last Roosevelt Island hike. Isn’t it a cute snake?)

Thanksgiving Weekend 2008

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We spent Thanksgiving up in the Albany, NY area with Amy’s uncle. For some reason I was a lot more snap-happy on the road than at the house itself. Some oddities from the trip, including a Mayflower on wheels, a wooden bear “holding” a trout, a real dead bear on top of someone’s truck, a head mug from 1973, and a fortune cookie typo:

Mayflower on Wheels Bear
Bear on Truck Bear on Truck Assets Protection, Target Head Mug Fortune Fail

Full Thanksgiving weekend photoset here. I also got a time lapse of the trip on I-87 going back down to NJ, and some fuzzy video of the world’s tallest water sphere.

National Museum of American History Reopens

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Sunday after church, we checked out the newly reopened Smithsonian National Museum of American History. I was there on its last day before renovation and was eager to see the changes — and was somewhat disappointed.

IMG_0516 Most of the changes took place in the middle of the museum, where a special exhibit chamber for the Star Spangled Banner had been constructed and the grand central hall was redone as a large, sweeping atrium in “Apple Store” white glass. Exhibits off to the sides were largely unchanged: “America on the Move” and “Within These Walls” were the same as always. Sadly, the “Information Age” exhibit with its Stephen Hansen carousel sculpture was gone, as were Foucault’s Pendulum and the red-carpeted hall. The museum didn’t even really get the full “U.S. history” treatment I thought it would get; the renovation concentrated mostly on getting the Star-Spangled Banner into its new display chamber, while leaving the old “History and Technology” exhibits mostly the same. I wouldn’t mind that so much if they’d just kept “Information Age” where it was.

On the up side, the renovation finished on schedule. That definitely deserves a Smithsonian high-five.

Anyway, I took pictures:

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More stuff: “Farewell” photoset from before they closed up for renovation, photoset from this trip for the reopening weekend, and some fuzzy cellphone video of a quick Friday night jaunt to see the museum on Reopening Day itself.

Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Fall

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These photos are from a week before our Rock Creek hike, so we didn’t catch the island at peak color, but it was quite lovely nonetheless. I experimented a bit with upside-down reflections in the marsh water, got a nice closeup of Teddy Roosevelt’s bronze face, and we caught a bit of tense drama between a fire ant and a daddy longlegs.

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