Lisa's Log: Washington D.C. (Day 3)

Wednesday morning started the same way as Tuesday morning. Got up at 6:15 and had a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee with Chuck at the Starbucks in our hotel.

He left for "work" around 7:15, and I piddled around in the hotel room and got myself ready to go. I had a 10:00 ticket for the Ford Theater and I was pretty excited about this one. I think this was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip.

I left a little early so I could make sure I got there in time cuz it was more of a walk (it was not inside the National Mall as most everything else was that we saw).

But I was glad to go for a walk on the city sidewalks again and see something different. It's interesting to look at all the different buildings with their intricate architecture.

I arrived at the Ford Theater about 15-20 minutes early, so I just sat down on the steps and waited.

This is the Ford Theater where Lincoln was shot.

Directly across the street is the Peterson House where he died.

I will get to that later.

When they finally let us in, we were directed to go in the basement of the theater where they have the museum. They had a lot of stuff in there that made the whole event seem more real to me. It's one thing to read about it in history books, but to see the actual relics from the event really brings it alive.

Here are some of things I saw in the museum:

In the picture it looks like Booth is shooting him in the back of the head, but it was later narrated to us that the bullet entered behind Lincoln's left ear and lodged behind his right eye. But the picture still captures the impact of the event really well.

We were told by the narrator that after Booth shot Lincoln, he had a scuffle with Rathbone, severely cutting him, and then he jumped off the balcony onto the stage, but his spur got caught on the curtain, which caused him to fall awkwardly and he injured his leg. After yelling something to the audience from the stage, he escaped out the back where an accomplice was waiting for him with a horse. He escaped and was on the run for 12 days, but needed medical help for his leg.

The plaque that went with this medical kit didn't come out so good, so I will paraphrase what it says:

"Medical kit used by Dr. Samuel Mudd at the time he administered aid to Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Though Mudd protested his innocence, he was sentenced to life in prison and sent to Florida. In 1867 there was an outbreak of yellow fever at the prison. When the prison doctor died, Mudd took over the position, halting the spread of the disease. In 1869 he was pardoned by President Johnson.

Perhaps this is where the phrase "my name is Mud" comes from??

Did he know he was helping a wanted criminal?

(Sorry these pictures are kinda hard to see. It was really dark in that museum.) In case you can't see it, the boot has a big slit cut open in it. Dr. Mudd had to cut the boot to get it off Booth's swollen ankle.

So after being on the run for a couple weeks, he encountered some Union soldiers who trapped Booth in a barn with one of his accomplices. They wouldn't come out, so they set the barn on fire. His accomplice came out, but Booth still refused to surrender.

One of the soldiers managed to get a shot at him through some slats in the barn and shot him through the neck (as was narrated to us in the theater).

A picture of Booth's fiance and 4 of his actress friends that they took from him:

Of course there was a lot more to see in that museum, but I have to restrain myself from putting everything on here.

So when it was time for our group to go up into the theater, we were escorted upstairs.

This is the inside of the theater:

After we were all seated a guy came onto the stage and narrated to us everything that happened.

I sat there imagining the event taking place in that very room about 150 years ago.

After the narration, we were escorted across the street to the Peterson House.

They didn't want Lincoln to die in the theater, so they carried him across the street to this boarding house, where Union soldiers often stayed.

I only took this picture cuz I thought it was interesting to see the layout of the inside of an old house, especially if it played a part in all the commotion of that dramatic event. I'm sure all the wallpaper and refinishing and whatnot isn't from that time era, but the structure and layout of the house would be.

Here is the parlor where Mary Todd sat, waiting for the inevitable.

Here is the room where Lincoln died. The bed is a reproduction, but just being in the same room where he died was very sobering to me.

I just wish that I had more time to stand there and contemplate everything, but I was part of a group that wanted to keep moving. So frustrating.

Later, I found something in another museum where someone had drawn a quick sketch of that room after Lincoln had died and everyone was gone. According to his sketch, the room was a mess, but that sketch was used to reproduce everything in this room as accurate as possible.

Also, I learned that there was a Union soldier occupying that room at the time, but he was gone for the night, unaware of what was going on in his room. When he came back in the morning, everyone was gone by then, but he crawled into the bed and went to sleep, even though it was still full of blood. Interesting.

Anyhoo, this was probably the most interesting thing I did that will stick in my mind for a long time.

I just wish I could've spent more time there, but this is one of those things that you can't do unless you are part of a group, which means you can't dilly-dally.

This is why I hate group tours.

So after I was done there, I grabbed a bite to eat at "Abe's Cafe", right next to the Peterson House. You can see part of it in the above picture of the Peterson House at the very beginning of this post. The restaurant actually shares a wall with the Peterson House, so while I was eating, it was hard to not think about what went on on the other side of that wall 150 years ago.

This is the picture of the street. It was a muddy street at the time, but I tried to imagine this street crowded with people and President Lincoln being carried out of the theatre and across the street to the Peterson House. It's mind-boggling to actually be there where it all happened.

Anyhoo, after I ate, I still had some time left before Chuck got off, so I wandered back to the National Mall and decided to stop at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It wasn't one of my priorities to go there, but since it was so popular, I figured I should stop in there just to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything special.

They had this Easter Island statue, okay, that's pretty cool I guess.

After looking at a few exhibits of ancient stuff, I moseyed on over to the ever popular "Fossil Room".

It was okay I guess, but I was getting irritated with all the kids running around. That place was so crowded it was hard to get any pictures of anything, always trying to stay out of someone's way, while always having someone in my way. Plus I didn't like all the evolution propaganda.

So I went into a different room where they had stuffed animals.

I didn't stay in there very long cuz it was just like going to a zoo, except all the animals weren't moving. It's a great place for kids, but I got bored in there so I moved on.

There was another hall called "The Origin of Man", and I could see a giant model of a single-cell organism hanging from the ceiling. I knew I didn't wanna go in there and be fed a bunch of lies about where I came from, so I kept looking for something else that might interest me.

I saw a sign directing me upstairs to see the butterflies and insects. Hmmm......

It would've been nice to see some butterflies, but I wasn't interested in bugs, and I knew there were spiders up there, so I decided to just leave the museum altogether.

I probably didn't spend more than 15-20 minutes in that museum, but at least I can say I went there.

The next Smithsonium I went to was the Museum of American History.

Now that place was awesome! It was full of all kinds of neat treasures for me to find!

There was so much more, but I will be here all day if I don't stop.

Before long, it was getting close to Chuck's quitting time, and we hadn't planned to meet anywhere, so I had to go back to the hotel and meet him there.

But there was still so much more in this museum for me to see, so I was determined to come back!

So after Chuck got off, we decided we would walk around by Capitol Hill some more, to see some buildings we hadn't seen yet.

This is the Library of Congress, one of those places that I wanted to get inside yet.

Then we went to see the Supreme Court building:

The pillars on that building were absolutely HUGE.

The front doors were also really huge. You can see by the darker area where people usually push the doors open. The pictures were interesting - I don't know who they were trying to represent on them, but they were textured, I guess they call it "frieze" sculpture art?

While we were hanging around there, the sky was getting dark and the wind got cold and real gusty. And we didn't have our umbrellas with us, AND we were getting hungry, so we walked into a different part of town near Capitol Hill and found a pizza joint. It started raining right after we got there, so that was good timing.

After we ate, we waited for the rain to weaken to a sprinkle and then we headed out, back to the other end of the National Mall to find the Korean War Memorial, which Chuck wanted to see yet.

It was actually pretty neat. I heard that it was really awesome to see at night, and I can see why. I wish that we had seen it at night, but we didn't.