The Ark Encounter and Creation Museum

The Ark Encounter and Creation Museum are both located in Kentucky, about 45 minutes apart. They each take a full day to go thru, so I wouldn't try doing both in one day! I would also highly suggest that you go on a weekday as this is a super popular place and the weekends tend to be packed.  Extensive reading is required to get the most out of your visit. As a result it's not necessarily the best for little kids, though mine did ok and learned some things. My parents came down from Columbus to stay with us and take us to the ark and museum. We stayed at Indian Springs Campground with three other fulltime families that we've known for a couple years now. So not only did we get to see the museums together, we were able to spend time with our friends at night. One of our friends travels with an outdoor movie screen, so they kids enjoyed a movie night while we sat around talking.

First up, the Creation Museum. We walked thru a life-sized recreation of the Garden of Eden where animals, including dinosaurs, lived in harmony with each other and Adam and Eve.

I love seeing how the world looked before the flood.

Historical documents like actual Torah scrolls are on display.

The fossilized skull of an allosaurus, one of the most complete ever found, is here. They have his full skeleton on display, some with fossilized bones, some replicated.

Outside there are some fun trails to walk. 

The ark exhibit at the Creation Museum was a good preview explaining how the ark was built before we arrived at the Ark Encounter the next day.

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Now, the Ark Encounter. Seeing this enormous structure up close and then being able to walk inside and see how it may have been setup was a really fantastic experience. The Bible gives details about the size and structure, but not about how the inside was arranged. So while I feel they did a great job with the design, we have no idea of how it really looked inside.

I've always wondered how it could be possible to hold all of the animals on the ark. After walking thru, I can absolutely see how they had plenty of room for them all. Wooden cages were built for animals of all different sizes stacked in rows and columns. Even big enough for these wild animals!

Noah's family had no idea how long they would be in the ark, 

so they probably brought their best things and as much food and water as possible.

The door to the ark! Big enough for any animal to enter.

We really enjoyed our visit with friends and family while learning more about God and our world that he created. The ark is something that we'll never forget and my kids will never have to wonder how it was all possible.

*Thanks Heather for letting me use some of your photos!

Sleeping at the Skating Rink

We decided Bloomington, Illinois would be a good stopping place between Iowa and Ohio. We wanted to visit the zoo, but wouldn't arrive until they closed. I looked on Google Maps to see if there was anywhere nearby that we could stay for the night and noticed the Skate 'n Place roller rink. I called ahead and gained permission to park there overnight. It was a great opportunity for the kids to experience their first skating rink. This was the second time they've ever tried skating, the first was in a friend's driveway a couple years ago.

We were relieved to find a practice area that was good for the kids to learn without experienced skaters buzzing by us. Of course, as soon as I talked Asher into trying out the big rink, the lights came up and the rink closed down. Bummer. Next time he'll be ready!

In the morning, I caught Asher standing in the doorway just staring at the rink. He LOVED this place and told me that when he's an adult he wants to live in the parking lot of a skating rink. 

Before we left, Asher slipped this drawing of him and Journey skating under the door of the rink. The owners have a sweet story. The husband began skating there as a child and later met his wife there when she was working behind the skate rental counter. When it shut down a few years ago they were brokenhearted for the kids in the area to not have this great place. They bought it, renovated and recently reopened with a good following. We hope to return someday.

Before we hit the road, we used our AZA membership to visit the Miller Park Zoo. We walked thru the wallaby walkabout with nothing separating us from them. There's one in the top left of the photo.

We learned the prehensile-tailed porcupine has a tail like an opossum that 

allows him to hang from branches! We've never seen one of these before. 

White-faced Saki

Cotton-top Tamarin

Upon entering the aviary we grabbed animal identification cards and had

 fun locating and identifying the birds, monkeys and other animals we saw.

Saylorville Lake, Iowa

We spent a few days relaxing at Saylorville Lake near Des Moines. This was the sunset view from our campsite at Cherry Glen Campground!

We had planned to come here so that we could meet up with our friend Stacey and her twins (another Fulltime Family). We met at the San Diego rally in January so it was really nice to have the chance to reconnect with them again. Photo creed: Asher with his selfie stick

I enjoyed an early morning birding walk thru Red Feather Prairie. 

As the heavy fog slowly lifted, it revealed thousands of dewy spiderwebs all over the place.

Big Creek State Park has a super fun wooden castle playground next to the beach.

We also went to Jester Park so I could go birding while Daddy and the kids walked around the park.

The Most Incredible Zoo in the USA

We have been to countless zoos across the country including the top rated San Diego and Columbus Zoos, however, I must say that the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha is the best in the country!  I love that throughout the zoo, I felt like I wasn't looking at animals in enclosures but instead felt that I was in their natural environment with them. We first entered the Lied Jungle and ended up spending more than an hour there watching monkeys, bats, birds and a hippo, among other things, seemingly run loose around the place. They use natural barriers (water, levels, etc) so that while it looks like the animals could just walk over to you, they can't.

A white-handed gibbon.

There were so many different species of monkeys here and most of them all live together. 

A common squirrel monkey.

Birds would walk right by us like this Victoria Crowned-Pigeon 

whose feathery crown is huge but disappears when he looks right at you because it's thin as a knife.

Of course I loved walking thru the aviary among so many new species of birds!

A crowd of kids gathered to watch this gorilla and then she suddenly started "binging and purging" we'll say. Ewwww!

This baby orangutan was so adorable to watch! 

They used to have a very sneaky orangutan named Fu Man Chu who was an escape artist. After finding him and others loose multiple times, someone noticed that he was hiding a piece of wire along his gum line. It turns out he had taken metal wire from a light fixture and was able to manipulate it until it opened the lock of his enclosure! He then kept it hidden in his mouth for future use! Wow, such an intelligent creature!

Our other favorite area of the zoo is this Desert Dome. It's really three worlds in one building. First you experience the desert and it really felt like being back home in Las Vegas.

Another thing I love about this zoo- while most zoos have one type of animal per enclosure, here many different animals live together in an area much like their natural environment. I really enjoyed the feeling of adventure while searching for animals and birds around me.

Here we found a cute swift fox in a log. We missed seeing one of these at the Badlands, so this was neat to see up close.

Next we ended up on a different level that transported us to a cave. We really felt like we were in a cave! So many varieties of bats live here as well as other cave dwellers like blind fish. 

Finally we ended up on yet another level of the dome, the bayou. We walked across 

wood and rope bridges with alligators underneath us. It was another amazing immersive experience!

A mama tiger with her 3 month old cubs.

The largest aquarium we've ever walked underneath. 

A very large yellow-green moray eel.

If I were a bird, I'd be a puffin; she can fly, swim and walk on land. Face to face with my kind of bird.

There's a really cool Alaska-themed splash pad for kids to cool off on hot days. 

Lastly the kids and I walked thru the butterfly and insect pavilion to see all kinds of little critters.