That Summer We All Went to Washington

The Cobb/Rudy family, ages 11 to 49, is down from Syracuse on summer vacation. Four kids, tweeners to teeners, Mom and Dad. They're looking to hit the city's museums. It's late August.

Mom and Dad -- that's Mike Cobb and Colleen Rudy -- are on the steps of the National Air and Space Museum, looking at a map of the Mall. Smithsonian, Metro, the Capitol . . . which way does this thing . . . where's the hotel again? Okay! Here we are!

Lookitall these museums! And national monuments and icons! They've been here three days, and they're not even making a dent!

"We haven't stopped moving!" Colleen says.

Mom and Dad are piggybacking the vacation around a health care conference here (they both work on the business side of medical offices). In tow are their kids from earlier relationships: There's Matt Cobb, 15, Makenzie Rudy, 14, Michaela Rudy, 13, and Sarah Cobb, 11. The two 17-year-olds, Michelle Cobb and Margaret Rudy, were far too cool for this, of course, and stayed home.

But they've been energetic, this crew. They drove down Sunday, went directly to an after-dark tour of the city and didn't call it quits until an hour before midnight. In just a couple of days, they've checked off the Vietnam Memorial, a tour of the Capitol, the top of the Washington Monument, the top of the Old Post Office, walking through downtown.

Now they've got a touch of museum fever, which overtakes a lot of the 15 million tourists who visit the Mall each year and belatedly realize the volume of the city's museums (more than a dozen in the Smithsonian alone) is overwhelming. It suddenly seems there are 80 gazillion works of art, historical significance or natural wonders to see before closing, it's your last day in town, the kids are fidgety. And. There. Is. Just. Too. Much. To. See. The National Gallery of Art? The Corcoran? Holocaust? Newseum? They won't be able to even darken the doors!

It's not like they haven't tried. Day 1, they hit No. 1 on the kids' list, the International Spy Museum. They walked the four or so blocks from the Grand Hyatt to Eight and F streets NW and immediately discovered . . . there was a whopper of an admission charge! They paid $118 for the family. Talk about scalping a good mood.

The kids played with some of the interactive stuff, but there were no guides. There didn't seem to be an organized process. It all went flat.

"These guys were bored halfway through," says Mike, nodding toward the kids.

"It was kind of fun," says Colleen, trying to make the best of it, "but not $118 worth of fun."

The kids: