At 5am, it was time to wake up. Mah boo and I took the metro into DC, and split up for an hour (it was a sad time) to get our free tickets to see the Bureau of Engraving & Printing and the Washington Monument. He was waiting in the money line (said there were 200 people an hour prior-but we later found out tickets were still selling until around 10am) and I was #60 for the monument (because tickets come at 8:30, not 8am like the Bureau). The monument easily sold out, we got our precious tickets, and were excited.
But the monument view was 'eh (the postal museum has a better one and requires no tickets-with a tiny crowd, it's not barracked over tiny windows that clusters of people are looking at, so go there instead. And the Bureau had some guy want to defy the tour and go off on his own (causing us all to wait half an hour until we exchanged our tickets for later times). So we had to kill time 'til we came back.
As we were walking to the Postal Museum, something caught mah boo's eye. It was so intriguing that, we went back to see it. It was by the Holocaust Museum (people kept mistaking it for the museum itself) but it was buried under some construction, with none other than a cut out of Smokey the Bear.
We go inside and are greeted by the friendliest staff. I jokingly ask where Smokey is, and they point him out. A huge Smokey is all dressed up, lying with his feet up on his desk of info and fan mail he receives. He speaks to us too, and we take a couple of cute pics with him.
We walk around the place-it's small but informational about how only YOU can prevent forest fires. It's cute, it's informational, it's resourceful, and it's very well air conditioned for those hot and humid DC summer days. There's also a nice bench, and we're so sleepy from waking up so early, we take a quick nap and it felt great. No one yelled at us to get out, we felt so comfy it was like our new home, etc.
So as we leave, the guy asks us if we want any complimentary thangs-we get stickers of Smokey, postcards, and there's even posters! The lady takes out all 5 kinds of posters, unrolls them and lays them out for me-wow. I take the cutest one (of course) and the whole time they are both so friendly. Go Smokey! read more