Communing with Nature - and Science



Center of a slab of petrified tree trunk

After our morning at the zoo, we headed over to the Museum of Nature and Science, which is right next to the zoo.  We got there around 12:45 p.m., just in time to see an IMAX movie at 1:00.  It was called "Born to be Wild," about two women who rescue orphaned animals - a woman who raises orphaned elephants in Kenya and a woman who raises orphaned orangutans in Borneo.  They take care of the animals until they can be released in the wild.  Morgan Freeman was the narrator.  We all liked it., although both Ruth and I got headaches from the 3D glasses.



Mammoth head and tusk fossil

By 1:30, we were starving, and had a nice lunch at the cafe in the museum.  The kids saw the salad bar and the pizzas out where you took the slice you wanted and thought it was a buffet.  I caught Henry before he made his salad to go with his pizza, and explained how it worked to Ruth. (The salad bar was sold by weight.)  In the end, both kids got pizza, Ruth got a salad that she shared with Henry and I shared some of my salad with him too.



It's a great museum - interesting for both kids and adults.  You paid for what you wanted to do:  either museum only, museum plus IMAX, and/or add the planetarium.  Since we went to the planetarium in Indianapolis, we just did the museum and an IMAX movie.



Henry driving a spacecraft.



The prehistoric life exhibits showed how earth evolved starting at about 600 million years ago.  They showed trilobytes, ancient fossils that look like flat beetles that can still be found in Colorado and Wyoming today.  Since the museum is in Colorado, the exhibits showed how Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska would have looked millions of years ago.  Many areas were under water and full of prehistoric sea life.  The fossils of plants, like this palm frond to the right, were also really interesting.

 

They had a really cool assembled cast of a mammoth fossil - it was gorgeous.  There's a picture of it in this post.

Fish fossils

We also toured the space exhibit and the kids got to try driving and docking a space shuttle.  The kids were fascinated by a real mummy in the Egyptian Mummies exhibit.  Henry studied Egypt in school this year, and when he saw how a woman who wasn't rich was mummified, he told us she must not have had any money, because it was done wrong.  They didn't remove her organs and her wrapping wasn't right.  



We wandered around a bit more, but we had pretty much pushed our feet to the limit with the two trips in one day.  It was time to head back to the campsite to relax, swim in the pool, and make dinner.



It was a beautiful day to be out and about in Denver, and a perfect day for the zoo and museum.  Sunny, warm and a little breeze.