A week working at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC

Last Wednesday I got back from an amazing week long trip to Washington, DC. It was a work trip, and myself and the 6 others in our group spent a majority time working in the National Museum of Natural History's Lepidoptera collection identifying some of the moth specimens from our molecular collection, but also made some time to have fun outside of the NMNH and explore the city.

It was great exploring the Smithsonian behind the scenes, but we also made sure to do a full exploration of the Museum of Natural History and see all of it's exhibits, including the skeleton exhibits, the insect zoo, the beautiful gemstones, mammal hall, the evolution of humans exhibit and many more.

We explored the National Air & Space Museum, made our way all the way over to the zoo (on the other side of town) ... checked out some of the animals, although I personally have mixed feelings about zoos in general, and then towards the end of the trip explored the National Botanical Gardens (which were AWESOME!).

The metros were a very convenient and easy way to travel all around town and were not hard to figure out. They got us everywhere, and always back to our AirBNB house which was a good value and in a great location.

We made a day trip out to McKee-Beshers Wildlife management area where we did some collections of both butterflies by day and moths at night.

By the end of the trip we had successfully identified almost 900 of the wing vouchers in our collection!

It was a fun yet productive visit, and although we didn't have enough free time to see everything, we did see plenty and I would definitely recommend checking out these places we went, especially the botanical gardens which were by far my favorite!