We went mini golfing for Nora's birthday. Originally, she had invited me saying we were going to Mt. Atlanticus, but she changed her mind and chose Ripley's Crazy Golf instead.
Ripley's Crazy Golf turned out to definitely live up to the crazy in its name with a variety of unique hole designs. Several of the holes are designed to resemble playing games such as Skee-Ball, Plink-O, billiards, and pinball. The most unique hole is Hole 16 with a swing that you can ride on to try to drop your ball in the hole as your first stroke on the hole. The hole that you have the ball go down a giant toilet is also fun.
As we rode the elevator after Hole 3, we noticed a sign that you could do the scoring on your phone, which we then switched to as we enjoyed when we did that at City Mini Golf in Chicago.
Overall we had a lot of fun playing Ripley's Crazy Golf. Definitely a course we would play again, but only in the off season like this could easily get too crowded and slow. Only complaint is that they accidentally rung us up for the Mirror Maze instead of Mini Golf, which meant the ticket did not let us go through the Mini Golf turnstile and we had to wait about 10 minutes for the manager to come fix the problem (and pay the few dollar difference due to their mistake...).
Game of Putts Photo Op by Hole 1
Hole 2 - 360 Loop
Hole 3 - Plink-O
After Hole 3 you go up the elevator to continue on Level 2
On my walk around the Tidal Basin, I ended up spending some extra time at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial because the bookstore opened later than I thought and I wanted the National Park stamps from there. To kill time, I did a sketch.
As I had a late afternoon flight home, I spent the morning walking around the Tidal Basin and National Mall collecting a few of the National Park stamps I did not have or at least had not gotten in a few years. I mainly wanted to visit the US Park Police Horse Stables as I had never been other than we had saw it when we were walking the Mall the previous weekend after it had closed for the day. I also visited the Japanese Pagoda and Floral Library part of the National Mall and Memorial Parks.
Japanese Pagoda
Japanese Pagoda w/ Thomas Jefferson Memorial in background
United States Park Police Horse Stables and Education Center
Horse at the Park Police Horse Stables and Education Center
On our walk back to the hotel on the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial, I noticed the JFK Hockey Fields sign, which neither Dad or I had never seen before.
We started our day at the National Museum of the American Indian. While it was a long walk to the other end of the National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial was a good ending point for the day as Lincoln is Nora's favorite president. She even enjoyed reading the Gettysburg Address and 2nd Inaugural.
This day we were mostly focused on getting Nora stamps in her National Passport book, which I got her the day before when we went to the top of the Washington Monument (was too focused on showing her the different landmarks and forgot to take any Ranger Dan photos then). Since we wanted to make sure we got to the Lincoln Memorial before the stores closes, we just crossed the street and got on the block as the President's Park to take a photo with the White House rather than go up closer.
