Vacation Part 1 (Subtitled: Day 1 in DC)

We got up very early on Saturday morning and drove as fast as was safe with the trailer to make it to the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade.  We missed the beginning of it, but we saw enough of it.

I think the front of this float said these people were the council for the festival.

The Lone Ranger!

The next float had a band on it, and all seemed fine at first.  But you might notice a bit of gray smoke coming from the back of the SUV towing the float, and many in the crowd looking in that direction.  At first we all wondered if it was somehow part of the show, as it was a rock band.  But when the people in the SUV started scrambling out of the SUV, it quickly became clear that this was not a planned thing.

Before long a small fire could be seen under the hood that they had lifted.  They had found and brought out a fire extinguisher but decided it might not be good to use it on an engine.

 So it continued to burn and the fire got bigger.

And it got bigger still.  And I started looking around at the other parts of the parade that were held up behind this excitement.  I heard a large boom, and quckly looked back.  Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the explosion, but my mom saw it and said it was impressive.

The explosion caused the hood to fall, but the fire kept burning.



 The fire truck soon arrived to much applause.

They quickly went about putting out the fire.

 This was as they were towing the SUV away.  You can see the large hole that was melted into the hood from the heat of the fire.

They got the band another truck and got them back on the float and the parade proceeded.

 This shot would have been better with the batons they were looking up at in it, but I still like it.

 If you were lucky enough to be next to this guy during the fire, then you got a show for the entire time.  He was diagonally across from where we were.  We could see that he was caring on with his beat-box performance, plus there were dancers on the other side of his float.

 Here was one of the two ballons that we got to see.  I didn't have the camera out in time to catch the other one.

I took many, many band shots but this one is my favorite.

And this was my favorite one of the flags.

After the parade, we went to the Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival.  I didn't take many pictures here, but I thought this little girl who was about to sing with a group of other young children was just too cute.

This was the other picture I really like.  It was my first view of the capitol building and it also shows the large mass of people at the festival.  Part of the reason I don't have many photos at the festival is that we didn't stay that long because it was really cold outside.  So after watching a few performances and walking the length of the festival, we decided it was time to go to the closest Smithsonian museum.

 I actually took this photo later, but it was the first thing we saw when entering the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.  This museum was just as cool as I remember it being when I was 10.

They had a special exhibit there right now with a coral reef display that has been knitted by people from all over the world.  It was a really cool display.

These were shining and sparkling in the light more than the photo displays.

This is actually my favorite shot.  Just looking at this large animals they have hanging from the ceiling really makes you feel like a kid again.