WARNING: There are A LOT of photos in this post! I loved them all too much to cut it down and I can’t stand to use more than one post for a single event! Don’t worry I’ve kept the commentary to a minimum so you can just scroll through the pictures.
Our mini summer vacation started with a trip to the Natural History Museum. We were keeping Eleanor out of school that day. But, as part of their summer camp activities, they were having an animal show that morning. So we dropped her off for a couple of hours while we ran some errands and got ourselves a special vacation breakfast treat of donuts and a blended iced mocha. We got a couple of donut holes for Eleanor to eat on the way to the museum. As any child who is regularly deprived of enjoying sweets would, she loved them! And then screamed for more for about 10 minutes!
First off we visited the Pavilion of Wings, a greenhouse just outside the museum that is filled with a variety of butterfly species with caterpillars and cocoons everywhere. It was pretty neat. It will be there through the first week of September and then in the fall it will be converted to the Spider Pavilion. We’ll have to come back for that.
Eleanor was pretty excited about all the butterflies! But we had to stay on our toes to make sure she didn’t touch any of them or step on any of the ones that would land on the ground.
Then we headed into the museum.
The hall of African Mammals:
Gems and Minerals:
Fin Whale Passage:
Hey look, I was at the museum too:
The new Age of Mammals exhibit:
The Dino Lab:
You actually get to watch scientists at work! But remember DON’T TAP ON THE GLASS. Like at the zoo!
They have this cool new show, Dinosaur Encounters, with a life-sized baby tyrannosaurus. It was very cool, the actress was great.
Eleanor loved it! She cried when it ended and wanted us to go find the dinosaur for her.
The Insect Zoo:
And that was our trip to the Natural History Museum! We were there for about three hours and didn’t even see half of everything there was to see. Eleanor loved every exhibit. We definitely have to go back soon!
Tomorrow: the Aquarium of the Pacific!
