# Denver to Washington D.C.

Source: https://sumnerevans.com/posts/travel/2021-dc-montreal/2021-09-10-denver-to-dc/
Published: 2021-09-10
Travel, Trip to D.C. and Montreal, Washington D.C., Denver, National Natural History Museum

Next week, Beeper is having a company retreat in Montreal, Canada. Since I
haven't really done any sort of leisure travel that requires air travel since
the pandemic began, I decided to tack on a weekend getaway to the east coast. I
decided to meet up with a few fellow Mines graduates to hang out in DC for the
weekend.

Today I flew out of Denver to Washington D.C., and I'll be flying to Montreal on
Sunday. My roommate kindly took me to the airport at around 05:00 this morning.
I have Global Entry, so I got TSA Pre which made security a breeze. It took me
15 minutes from arriving at the airport to get through security! And that was
despite having to walk across the airport because only south security had a TSA
Pre line (I went in the north side of the airport).

Currently, I'm on the plane, and the captain just announced that we are starting
our approach into Ronald Reagan International Airport (DCA). The plane is not
full; lots of aisles with only one or two people on them. I am in the window
seat, and there's nobody in the middle seat next to me which is great. I was
able to put my backpack there for most of the flight for more leg room. (It's
the little luxuries that count on a plane these days...)

I didn't check any bags, so I should be able to get out of the airport and to my
hotel pretty quickly, and then have the rest of the afternoon to sightsee.

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After landing, I figured out how to get into D.C. via the Metro. Finding how to
get to the metro station from the airport was quite an adventure. It is not
obvious where you have to go to get to the platform, even though the platform is
in sight of the terminal. I ended up finding the path through what seemed to be
an under-construction part of the airport.

I made it to Union Station, and met up with Sam Sartor who came up to D.C. from
College of William and Mary where he is getting a PhD in computer science.

After leaving our bags at my hotel, we walked down towards the mall and went to
the museum of natural history for a few hours. We spent a while looking at a
whole lot of gems in the geology part of the museum. It was an impressive
collection. At Mines, we have a fairly large geology museum, but this one was
larger for sure. We joked that if Mines' museum was going to be second place to
another museum, at least it was the Smithsonian.

There was another exhibit all about water and its affects on geography and
geology. One display showed all the areas around Washington D.C. that used to be
water. The entire National Mall was once a waterway and there were many streams
throughout what is now the city!

After that exhibit, we wandered through some other exhibits including a dinosaur
exhibit and an exhibit featuring a bunch of different mammals. I especially
enjoyed the exhibit about Australian animals. I think it's cool how diverse the
ecology is there because it was geographically isolated for such a long time. We
went fairly quickly through the exhibits, mainly looking at the various objects
rather than trying to read everything.

After we finished at the Natural History Museum, we decided to go over to the
American History Museum. We went to the flag display where they have the flag
that was flown over Ft. McHenry during the attempted invasion of Baltimore
during the War of 1812. That battle is what inspired Francis Scott Key to write
the Star Spangled Banner.

We then went through another exhibit about various American inventions. By this
time in the day, we were both fairly tired since both of us had gotten up early
for travel, so we went fairly quickly through the exhibit. It was neat looking
at the various objects and learning a bit about them, though.

After leaving the history museum, we walked over to the Washington Monument and
relaxed for a few minutes while we waited for Jo to get off of work and come to
meet us. I decided to get a photo of myself doing a side kick in front of the
Washington Monument to show the people back at my taekwondo school.

[Watch video](https://sumnerevans.com/posts/travel/2021-dc-montreal/2021-09-10-denver-to-dc/images/side-kick-washington.mp4)


Sam and I walked around the WWII Memorial, and then headed back to Union Station
where we met up with Jo. She recommend that we try a nearby pizza place so we
walked over there. It was a nice place with Italian-style pizza. It was a
beautiful evening as well, and it was nice getting to catch up with friends. We
all had gone to Mines together, but both of them have since moved to the east
coast for work and school.

We headed back to my hotel after dinner so I could check in. My room is quite
the experience. It has RGB lights everywhere, and you can control them with a
little screen thing. None of us quite knew what to think about it. But hey, I
got it for $80/night.

![A photo of my hotel room](https://sumnerevans.com/posts/travel/2021-dc-montreal/2021-09-10-denver-to-dc/images/yotel-room.png)


After a while, Sam and Jo left for her apartment so that they could let Robby
(who was flying in from Denver) in when he arrived.

Tomorrow, we are all going to meet up and go to the Air and Space Museum. I have
been there before, but I don't think I'll ever get enough of looking at rockets
and planes.