Native Art and a Walk on the Wildside

While staying at the lovely Williwaw Campground we ventured out a few times/ We went back to Anchorage to visit the Alaska Native Heritage Center. We had visited the excellent  Anchorage Museum which had a large collection of Native Art plus contempory art of Alaska. on our previous trip. The Heritage Center is  also very interesting. . First we checked out the Welcome House. It has the Hall of Cultures with displays of the five cultural groups. There were also local artists showing and selling their work.

There is also a cafe and gift shop. We bought a couple of mugs with a native design on them and had a salmon sandwich at the cafe. There was also what was called the Gathering Place which was an open auditorium where there are scheduled dances and music as well as story telling. There is also a theater though we didn't see any of the films while we were there.

Outdoors there are the village sites representing 11 major cultural groups of Alaskan Natives. We took a tour of the sites which are arranged around a lale.

Another day we made a return trip to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center which is a short drive from the campground. The Center is a non profit wildlife refusge located on a 200 acre preserve. It is dedicated to wildlife conservation and education. It is also a place for wounded, sick and injured animals from the wild. They also have reintroucted elk to the wild and are now in the midst of a project to reintroduce the wood bison to the wild as well. It is a great way to see some of the wildlife of Alaska in a close up and safe environment.

There was a large raised walkway where you could observe bears below. Some of the animals we saw we wood bison, caribou, bears, musk ox, moose and a sleeping lynx. Then there were these two wild animals below. Pretty scary.

We had a great time. We were at Williwaw over a quiet fourth of July. We were going to go into Anchorage. However we changed our minds for a few reasons. As it never really gets dark, they have the fireworks at midnight and it is an hours drive from there back to our campground. Also on the third we had gone into anchorage and the traffic was terrible. It seemed that everyone in Anchorage was leaving town. We thought after our trip to the Native Art center it would have died down but it was still backed up and took an extra hour or more to get back. We found out later that part of the problem was a bad accident that caused the huge delays. Anyway we had a great time in the area and are now headed to Seward and the rest of the Kenai Pennisula.

Last Days in DC and a Few More Museums

Friday was another day spent in our beautiful Capital. After our usual bus/metro trip, we walked over to the National Mall where the Smithsonian Institution Building or the Castle as it is called is located. It is the Information Center for the area. As you can see from the pictures below, you can see why it is called the Castle. It is surrounded by lovely gardens and sculptures.

Below you can see a skylight from the part of the building that's roof is covered with a garden.

The National Museum of African Art is right next to the Castle and we explored it.

The Museum began as a private educational institution in 1964 to promote cross cultural understanding of African art and social studies. It later became of the 19 Smithsonian Museums in DC, which are all free to the public.

The Museum has the largest contemporary collection of African Art in the Nation.It includes over 9,000 objects from almost every African country, both current and ancient.

We went across the Mall to the Museum of Natural History. Thus was the most crowded Museum we have been to. The reason is that this is probably the most family friendly and there were lots of children here with their parents.In fact it is the most visited Natural History museum in the world and the most visited of any type museum in the US. The Museum's collection totals 126 Million specimens of plants, animals, rocks, minerals and fossils. It includes a lot of information on evolution and even climate change.

"Lucy" is one of the most complete skeletons found to date from the early hominids that flourished between 4 and 2 million years ago. The skeleton consists of bones from a single individual, presumably female, who stood well under 4 feet tall.

Discovered by scientists in 1974, the 3.18-million-year-old Lucy was named after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," which the researchers listened to as they celebrated their remarkable find.

It was then time for a late lunch and we decided to go over to the Source, the Wolfgang Puck restaurant by the Newseum that was closed the other day. Well, it was three for three as we had another great meal this week in DC. Most of the people there seem to be business people. AS you walk around this tourist area with people in shorts and other casual weather, you are reminded this is also a working city as people in their business attire walk around the city as well.
The food was wonderful. It has a definite Asian flare. We shared a calamari dish with red thai curry vinaigrette that was one of my favorite calamari dishes I have had so far. I then had the duck curry with a coconut reduction with kefir lime and roasted peanuts. Joe had a crispy  soft shell crab banh mi with pork terrine pickles and herbs. Sound like Top Chef fare?  We even had a desert, a Tahitian sour cream cheesecake with mango and a pine nut crust. Oh my, along with a few glasses of wine we had a relaxing and enjoyable lunch. Their menu is quite extensive and includes a dim sum tasting. This would be a favorite of mine if we lived in this area.
We did our metro/bus journey back to Cherry Hill Resort in College Park, Maryland and got our usual happy greeting from our little pup.
Saturday we didn't do much except a little shipping. The day we left we had  rain. I don't mention the rain we have gotten on this trip that much. We do seem to average a day or two a week it seems. That's why you see so much green in the east. Lots of large grass areas with no sprinklers ever. They don't need it even in the hot summer. Well we say good bye to DC and start our way south with a first stop in Virginia.

Another Museum in DC

We hopped the bus to the Metro and back into DC. Love this way of exploring a big city!! Another museum we missed on our last trip to DC that we hear was a great Smithsonian museum to see was the National Museum of the American Indian and so that was our destination for the day. It features the history, art, and life sstyles  of the indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. The art collection is one of the largest and most diverse of its kind in the world. There are a number of films in various theaters and guided tours. We just did a self tour as we have been doing this week.
First off, the building itself is very interesting. It is built to be as close to nature as possible with curved walls and the entrance facing east and a dome that is open to the sky.

The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) has one of the most extensive collections of Native American arts and artifacts in the world—approximately 266,000 catalog records (825,000 items) representing over 12,000 years of history and more than 1,200 indigenous cultures throughout the Americas. Ranging from ancient Paleo-Indian points to contemporary fine arts, the collections include works of aesthetic, religious, and historical significance as well as articles produced for everyday use

We ate lunch at their restaurant, the Zagat rated Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe. It is a cafeteria style restaurant that serves foods based on the indigenous foods of the Americas. It was hard to choose, but I got Salmon with a tapenade sauce with a wiild rice salad and Joe got Buffalo Loin with potatoes. Both were very good. We sat at a nice spot by a waterfall treatment,

More curvature inside as you can see below.

 The bottom floor has a large area where Native American people sell their art, jewelry, etc. I bought a silver ring. There was also music which we listened to from the floor above.