Oh Man!

We made a trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City yesterday. It was a day of trains and dinosaurs. We planned this trip with L in mind, but I have to say that I had a good time at the museum too. We started with the lizards and snakes exhibit since it is a temporary exhibit that we had to see during specific times.

This is a chameleon, but there were geckos, gila monsters, iguanas, and a few snakes. After some lunch we headed to the top floor to see the dinosaurs that L had been so patiently waiting to see at this “dinosaur museum”.

The apatosaurus is BIG even without muscles and skin. It was amazing to hear L name the dinosaurs just from their skeletons. If you look you can see L on Lowell’s shoulders for scale reference. Both Lowell and I had wondered if L would really get anything out of skeletal forms of dinosaurs, but we heard enough Oh Man’s to guess that he was having a good time.

In case you didn’t know this is the Tyrannosaurus Rex. After the dinosaur hall we worked our way down the museum’s floors. The museum has halls of peoples and animals. Even though the animals are only stuffed they are portrayed so realistically that it was almost nicer to see these displays then the real animals in a zoo.

There is also a 94 foot replica of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling in the ocean hall. It awed me. We haven’t see blue whales on our whale watching trips but the humpbacks and fin whales aren’t that much smaller and yet there is still so much animal that a person doesn’t see from the surface.

Yesterday was a beautiful day in New York City 20 degrees Celsius. We stayed at the museum until it closed at 5:45 but at that point we felt that we had spent the whole day underground. That wasn’t quite true but almost. We went outside and walked along the edge of Central Park until we found a place to have some supper. We grabbed slices of New York style pizza and headed back to Grand Central Station by subway.

We drove, rode the train, the subway and walked. At the end of the day we were foot sore, hot, tired and ready to head home, but all in all it was a great day.