The Friday Five

Last Friday, The Kennegeeks  made the annual pilgrimage to the Museum of Science, Boston. We decided to go before The Young One returned to college, Himself had to go back to his classroom, and The Eldest had to return to her job at the lab. We picked a good day as Christmas vacation was over, and the kids were back in school. It was too early in the season for field trips, so the museum wasn't crowded. We didn't have much of a wait to purchase tickets so we felt as if we had the place to ourselves.

1. The Eldest wanted to see the new planetarium show about Moons. The planetarium shows are always exciting, but the new camera made the show spectacular. You almost felt as if you were on the surface of the Earth's moon, or hopping from one moon of Saturn to another.

2. The Young One wanted to see the 3D film Flying Monsters. We donned our 3D glasses and traveled back in time to soar with the pterosaurs. The Young One analyzed the quality of the animation.

3. Because there were no lines, we were able to take a nice break in the Butterfly Garden. Himself was the one who noticed a Blue Morpho butterfly hanging out on the window. If you moved a couple of steps to the right, the butterfly looked as if it was climbing the Prudential Tower. I wrote about the butterfly terrorizing the Back Bay the other day.

4. We saw the Shipwreck! Pirates and Treasures exhibit. Learned how treasure and artifacts are collected from a wreck. Saw lots of gold and silver coins, and pottery and bottles without so much as a crack or chip. There were tales of famous pirates, a robotic arm to try your hand at gathering treasure, and a wind tube so you could feel hurricane force winds.

5. We stopped by to see Sue, the lovely, life-size T-Rex model. It was a chilly day so museum staff had wrapped Sue in a long red and white scarf. Outside her permanent exhibit, we happily fed quarters and pennies into the machine to emboss the penny with dinosaur images. The disclaimer on the machine said it was not illegal to deface legal tender, and was a lot safer than placing pennies on the subway tracks which The Brother and I did as kids. Thanks to Fraue for teaching The Young One about the penny machines when she took us to visit the Minnesota Zoo almost 7 years ago. We decided the next trip, we need to bring more pennies and a boatload of quarters to hit all the machines outside of the big exhibits.

The only disappointing part of the trip was we didn't have time to see my favorite exhibit, the lightning show with the singing Tesla coil. Oh well, next trip.