Trips and Bits: museums and stuff

Well ,the outside temperature was hardly conducive for walking, regardless the sunshine.
So an inside day it was, with a morning visit to the National Geographic museum . . the guys that leave you those nice magazines in doctor and dentist waiting rooms :)

Well they have a brilliant presentation on Spinosaurus, the lost giant of the Cretaceous, a good 15 feet longer than T-Rex . . thus now the largest dinosaur yet discovered.

I mean, like, am I impressed, really?

Well, actually I am. But I get a little worried when Mar says she fancies fish for dinner . . .

So I have to remind her that prehistoric fish might mean prehistoric supper for others . . .

And ya better watch out . . . one bird could pick up another.

So, onto more sober subjects, the mystery of flight, as presented by the Smithsonian Institute, who have a stunning museum of their own.

At which point Mar abandoned me for the pleasures of the National Botanical Gardens, and I pressed on with trying to understand flight . . . more successfully achieved by the Wright brothers, whose original aircraft is carefully preserved by the museum :

Other pioneers of aviation are rightfully acknowledged . . . .

along with the overwhelming might displayed by the US Navy, and their first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise and of course, the air power that goes with it.

The warriors of World War 2 are remembered, through the machines they fought in :

The Japanese Zero

The British Spitfire

the German ME 109

and the air warriors of the Great War

But it was the pioneers of flight in the 1920s and 30s who struck me as the real heroes, unsung perhaps, but who paved the way for air travel as we know it today.