Perils of the Lost Jungle

Friday night we went with our friends Ben and Kaylyn (Ben was one of Nate's old roommates and is also doing an internship out here. They live about 12 minutes from us, so we play with them a lot.) to a really awesome mini-golf place called The Perils of the Lost Jungle(mucho thanks to the Hartwell's for letting us know about it!). Yes, it was quite a pretty penny for mini golf, but WAY worth it.

All four of us just so happened to be wearing green that night, so of course we had to get a picture of that. And it was fun because we were in the middle of the jungle-we blended right in.

Ben and KaylynGo team green!

As you might guess, this is definitely no ordinary mini golf. It came complete with quicksand, witchdoctors, spitting frogs (which was so funny!), and many other various challenges. Here are a few of our faves:

This guy pops up out of nowhere and is supposed to spit fire darts at you if you don't hit the ball the right way. I did not hit the ball the right wayThis alligator is hiding in the pond and as you walk down to where you just hit your ball on the green, it comes up out of the water and spray LOTS of water on you. It was so cool!

Needless to say, I don't know if we can ever go mini golfing anywhere ever again! This is rated one of the top five in the nation; I can't imagine what the other four are like!!

Saturday we went to DC again with Ben and Kaylyn. W e are basically pro's with this whole traveling downtown thing. All week we'd been hearing that there would be rain on saturday, so we were trying to plan what we could do inside. On saturday morning, we heard tornado watch and thunderstorms for DC. So we went to DC! (Sorry Mom! :) ) We wanted to go to some of the smithsonians on the east end of the mall and go to the capitol. We came up the escalator off the metro and weather seemed nice, took about five steps and were suddenly in the middle of a monsoon!!! It was POURING, like I'd never seen pouring rain before! We ran to the nearest building to get in some shelter, but it was a small doorway and there was no room for us because everyone else had the same idea. We ran to the next building which put us still outside but with some shelter. We were wanting to go to the Air and Space Museum which was about two buildings away from where we were, so we planned our escape route and bolted. I couldn't help but laugh the whole way. It was madness! It was still warm outside, so atleast we weren't freezing, and we were trying to jump over the huge puddles in the street, but we were already soaking wet! Oh, what an adventure. We made it in the air and space just sopping, ringed out our clothes a little, then went on our way around the museum!

This is looking up into the _______________________________You could see the burn marks and stuff on the outside, pretty amazing.

Here is THE first plane created by the Wright Brothers. I really liked this section of the museum dedicated to them; I learned a lot and I liked the way they had things done in there.

I took this picture for Trayson who LOVES planes and helicopters and propellors. This is only one of about 7 HUGE displays of aircrafts. It's so cool.

I couldn't believe how big the Air and Space was and how much stuff was in there! I really liked the World War 2 part and going inside the space exploratory lab, which was inside a rocket and you could see how they live in there. I don't know how people come to DC for vacation and try to see everything. It would be exhausting! I'm so glad we are here for awhile. After Air and Space, we walked through the national sculpture garden over to the national history musuem. (The rain stopped by now by the way, but it was really muggy like it was going to come down again.)

This is what you see when you very first walk in the doors. A GIANT elephant. It was way cool.

We made our way to the mammal house and saw every stuffed mammal ever imaginable. This hippo one was our favorite though.

Th fish, fossils and bones section was next. We really liked this guy

Of course we had to take a pic of the t-rex. It was pretty spectacular. The dinosaur part was really neat.

Next came the minerals section of the musuem. I LOVED all the topaz we saw in the gems part, but there were some really amazing jewels we saw too. They were just behind glass, so dificult to get good pics, but this giant topaz made my day.This is the Hope Diamond. It is the largest blue diamond in the world, and the most pure and clear I believe, surrounded on a chain that totals over 50 carats. I wish this pic showed that deep blue, but atleast you can see the size of it!

Interesting tidbit, I thought.

So we completed the entire national history museum. This is just looking down onto that big elephant; I just really liked it!

We were feeling pretty tired and hungry(and we get excited to eat on the weekend because we are making it a goal to try something new every weekend, and it can't be somoething that's in Utah. It's a really fun adventure!) and decided to call it a day.

This is called the Smithsonian Castle. We haven't been in yet, so we don't know what's in there, but it's just an incredible building, so I needed a pic, and yes, it did turn out to be a beautiful blue sky day, jut as we were leaving downtown.

There is a couple that lives in our neighborhood who are the only other church members on our street, and they invited us over to their house for dinner tonight. We got to make potstickers with them (which were wonderful!) and play a way fun game, which they totally whooped us on. It was a lot of fun to get to know them and learn more about "out here". He is originally from Utah, graduated from Ogden High, and she is from New Orleans. They've been here since about the late 80's, nd they are a really fun couple. We got lots of new ideas for places to eat, and they gave us the scoop on cheap grocery stores. We are excited to get to spend more time with them, and really appreciate them taking the time to consider us and befriend us. Thank you so much, Clark and Kathy! We look forward to Time's Up rematch!

Well, another long week is about to start and I am just putting it off. I live for the weekends more than ever. My work is keeping me busier than I planned on, but the more earned money the better I suppose. Nate is really getting into his current project he is working on for the government and loves all of the free meals tha Orbital keeps providing. He got his first paycheck and was so excited until he was how much he'd actually earned and how much taxes came out! yowzah, but he's still making much more than he would've been back home, so we'll take it. I look forward to visiting more smithsonian's; I'm actually really learning a lot about a lot of stuff! In fact, it won us a point in our game tonight to know who Yuri Gagarin was! (look it up, or come to the national air and space museum and learn about him) :)