Smithsonian Air and Space Annex

Well, what an awesome activity for a very cold day (about 23F with a bitter wind when we arrived). The Air and Space Museum has a second location near Dulles Airport (W side of Washington DC) for all the air craft and rockets they can't fit in their other location on the mall. One thing they couldn't fit was an entire Space Shuttle - the Discovery was retired here. Oh, and the entire Concord Jet (and, the Iroquois helicopter with its propellors folded for easy storage. How handy is that?).
I like these museums, because you can just wander and look, there isn't a whole heap to read, and it is more or less child proof - no super vigilance required around historic glass vases, for example.
I think I now understand the whole reason America got involved in space travel - the achievement levels of watching something take off - into space - that you built, with lots of fire and smoke must be so rewarding. The video of the Discovery taking off, strapped to the biggest fuel tank ever? Just poetic. Makes me want to do a victory dance, and I wasn't even there.
The downside of these museums - accidentally introducing your child to the imaginative ways that people do war on each other from aeroplanes, because invariably, 60% of the museum is war planes and helicopters and munitions to drop/launch.