Monday, August 4, 2008

More Arting and More Zooing

One more art gallery and one final trip to the zoo. Our time in DC is winding down. Last weekend, we stopped by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum, the last art museum that we will probably go to. Unfortunately, this was one of those weekends where my camera battery faked me out and decided to bail on me. So the pictures are kind of sparse.

The Portrait Gallery is exactly what you think it is: lots of portraits of famous people. One of the cool things about the gallery was that each portrait had a lot of information about the subject. So we learned a lot. This is a self-portrait of Kurt Vonnegut.

A large portrait of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain.


This portrait of Mary Cassatt is done by Edgar Degas, which means we've gotten a lifetime's worth of Degas on this trip.

The one picture from the American Art Museum, Thomas Hart Benton's Achelous and Hercules. I'm not really familiar with Benton other than Jackson Pollock studied under him for a time. His works are very interesting and stylized and very large. This one must have been about 20 feet long.

A shot inside the Portrait Gallery. Pretty cool building.

We made a second trip to the zoo to get some souvenirs and to see the animals that we didn't get to see the first time.


Man, hippos really are fat. You should've seen his jowls quiver while he ate.


We got to the elephant house just in time to see the male elephant get a bath and scrubdown.


We were also lucky enough to see a training demonstration with the elephants. This video shows the elephant practicing their balance.


A video of the elephants getting a dental exam. I know they are trained elephants and all but I still would be a little leery on sticking my head and hand into an elephant's mouth.

And the elephants get a treat at the end of their workout.

The elephant on the left is 60 years old. I had no idea that elephants get that old. The elephant on the right is actually the mother of the male calf we saw getting a bath. He's still considered a calf even though he weighs almost 5000 pounds (we saw him weighed right after his bath). Of course he's still much smaller than mom; she is 9000 pounds.

1 comment:

Tara said...

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE elephants! they are probably my favorite animal. they are SO social and have great memories....I feel like they are gently giants....

thanks for sharing!!!!