So Long Denver

After two fun weeks in Denver, as we were preparing to hit the road, we discovered some hitchhikers.

Yep, a little mama bird made her nest in our hitch. We had no choice but to 

relocate it to the nearest tree with her watching us. Hopefully she was ok with that.  

Since the kids had stopped napping, they became cranky little things and for the first time started irritating each other in the car. They were still rear facing (yes still, because it is THE SAFEST way to travel), and seated right next to each other. Well all of a sudden we started hearing complaints of, "she's touching my seat", "his foot is on my seat" and so on. Well after a couple weeks of that, Daddy demanded that it was time to turn them and separate them. We ordered brand new seats to be delivered to Grandpa's house and paid less than half price, woohoo! So here we are with the old seats turned forward for the drive to Ohio.

Of course now they complain that their legs hurt from hanging off the seat. 

Oh well, there's no more fighting and they are very content with their new view!

 

I research the zoos and museums that work with our membership, and use those as good stops to break up the driving on travel days. Our first stop was in Hays, Kansas at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History, part of Fort Hays State University. We were pleasantly surprised by all this museum had to offer and we ended up spending a few hours discovering it all.

This 14 foot long Xiphanctinus was fossilized with another 6 foot long fish in it's belly, right here in Kansas! Pretty incredible find!

They have a large collection of live rattlesnakes featuring 22 different species! Each has detailed info including a picture showing their typical coloring along with their lightest and darkest variation. I hadn't realized each one's coloring can very so widely. Asher loves snakes, so this was a fun exhibit for him.

And they have animatronic dinosaurs! 

Asher has been asking to see some of these since we left Vegas and their Natural History Museum behind. While in Vegas he would be so excited to see them, but then would get scared. This time he was nervous and kept his hands over his ears, but he didn't run from the room when they roared and moved, so that's a big improvement.

Just when we thought we had seen everything, we found The Discovery Room. 

It was packed full of all kinds of miscellaneous items from playthings like puppets 

for the kids to play with, to skulls, to a live bat- in a display, not loose or anything. 

We could have spent a few more hours in that room alone! 

A couple hours up the road, we figured Milford Lake was a good place

 to stretch our legs and we were right. Kansas has some beautiful lakes.

And then back into the truck to drive thru the plains of Kansas....

with their windmills and farmland and not much else.

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

The Museum of Nature and Science in Denver is a really fun place, so fun in fact, that we spent two consecutive days here! I'm LOVING our museum membership (we get free or half price entry into most AZA (zoos) and ASTC (science and technology centers) affiliated places!

Our first stop was the space exhibit where you can talk with an "astronaut" on 

Mars and ask her questions (she's behind glass in a Mars background 

and communicates to the kids thru a mike system). It's a neat setup.

You can even become an astronaut yourself!

The museum's dinosaur exhibit was incredible! This was the first time that I've ever seen a whole REAL dinosaur skeleton, and they had a good number of them as well as fossils of creatures that are hard to imagine actually existed. The size of the bugs and creatures just blows my mind.

We observed scientists meticulously chiseling rock from a 

fossilized mammoth skull that was recently discovered in the area.

Then the kids made their own discoveries in the dig area.

Rode and yes, kissed the dinosaur.

They just opened a small children's museum inside this 

museum and the kids spent hours exploring, learning and playing.

Asher's favorite was this tube track. Each piece connects to the wall with magnets which you have to arrange so the ball continues thru the track. He played with this for almost an hour.

More than 90 wildlife exhibits featuring real, preserved animals in large, domed displays are so incredibly realistic that Asher and I both banged our heads on the glass when leaning in, ha!

If we had antlers...

They have the largest rock and gemstone exhibit we have seen, including the only collection of  gemstone sculptures by Vasily Konovalenko that are on display outside of Moscow. The detail on these are incredible and makes it hard to believe they are made from gemstones. He includes the details of the materials he used on each plaque.

Wings Over the Rockies, Denver

The kids LOVE airplanes, so we got them super excited to visit Wings Over the Rockies air museum...and then a sign on the door notified us that they were CLOSED for two days for a corporate meeting, ugh! Cue the tears:

Luckily we found a park nearby that had this fun stream running thru and the kids played away their frustration.

It also made for a nice quick impromptu Daddy & Asher shoot:

When they reopened, we returned on our way out of town. The kids learned about and tried morse code, sat in a play cockpit, and enjoyed looking at all the planes.

They have a replica of the Star Wars X-wing fighter! This was created in 1996 for the release of the Star Wars Trilogy release and has remained at the museum since 1999, except when it's traveling the US for events. It has been signed by many of the actors and people involved with the films.

While we had fun here, I'd say it's more geared for older kids as there are not a lot of planes and most of the exhibits require reading to really understand appreciate what you are looking at.