Adventures of the Hill Family: Day at the Museum

Last Friday I took the children to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. It is in the Exposition Complex, which includes the L.A. Swimming Stadium and Sports Coliseum used in the Olympics back when I was in high school!

Here are the Olympic venues...you can see how old (and relatively SMALL) they are compared with the 21st century stadiums built for the Beijing Olympics! (I still wonder where they parked all the cars during the Olympics???? Remember the last time we came here in June, they parked us on the grass!)

The swimming stadium...not nearly as beautiful as Beijings Water Cube, but still full of wonderful historic value! (And it is still in use daily!)

Enjoying the shade and tree climbing in front of the museum.

Blake was thrilled to walk in the doors and see the Sharptooth Dinosaur display in the center rotundum!

Mark and Jocelyn in front of a Sharptooth (T-Rex) skull. You literally could be a T-Rex's lunch!

The Aviary exhibit was world-class. There were literally 100's of birds on display. Here are just two photos of a much larger collection. Forrest would be thrilled to see the DUCK display. I had no idea there were so many varities of ducks in the world! My camera does not do these exhibits justice. The birds were so beautiful and so colorful!

Here are some owls:

Brent and Jocelyn in front of a birds' nest display. I was amazed at the different varieties of nests the many birds of the world can build! Brent kept saying how big the nest was in front of him!

Blake enjoyed visiting the Rainforest room. A sloth was on display hanging from a tree vine. The sloth does have the long claws that Mark and Jocelyn learned about in 1st grade. Now Blake is very excited to start 1st grade and work on his Rainforest project!

Blake in front of the Rainforest levels display:

The California seashell display included this enormous clam shell. Brent did NOT want his brothers or sister to share the spotlight with him!

Mark could not get enough of the Gemstones Exhibit. He would love to have his Grandpa Woodward or Great-Grandpa Woodward take him through the exhibit and explain how each stone is formed.

This is the personal display of a young gemologist. The biography explained that he had won several awards for the perfection of his stones and the incredible samples he managed to collect from around the world. His family had donated the collection after he passed away at the young age of 27. Thank heavens so many people are generous with their treasures and are willing to share them with the world, such as this family did!

"The Quagmire Sapphires" - who knew sapphires came in so many different colors? We are enjoying reading the books "A Series of Unfortunate Events" and part of the story involves triplet children (the Quagmires) whose family fortune are sapphires.

Now that is what I call a gem stone! It is bigger than Brent!!

The North American Mammals exhibit room had over 20 gorgeous displays of famous mammals in their natural habitats. These photos are taken with my camera's flash turned off. (After taking many, many photos that did not turn out, I am even more convinced that I need to buy a great DSLR camera where I can control the exposure!)

Seals

Grizzly bears...and are they HUGE! The Grizzly on the left stands nearly 7 feet tall! He literally filled the exhibit floor to ceiling!

The Alaska Moose....now that is one BIG animal! His antlers were amazing. A full grown Moose will stand taller than a horse.

Some playful cougars....

Here are sea lions. The large bull really captures how imposing (and enormous) these sea mammals are. In the book "Island of the Blue Dolphins", Katrina, the girl on the island, must fight a bull to obtain its teeth to use for her spears. What an amazing battle she must have had!

Buffalo on the plains...wow, are they large animals!

I can't remember what animal this was...does anyone know?

The beautiful, carved wood ceiling of the museum's rotundum.

Now on to the African Mammals Exhibit room:

Ostrich with eggs....

A lion pride...what a beautiful display

The amazing Elephant display included several babies. WOW! The tusks were huge. This definitely gives you a better appreciation for how valuable tusks would be -- enough ivory for many pianos!