Museums & Mountains

 What an incredible day! We spent almost 5 hours at the Denver Museum of Art. It is wonderful! It's so child friendly - lots of hand-on activities. And, this was the weekend of spring break, so they had some extra things going on.

We were excited to see an exhibit of the Impressionists!!! And, I could take photos! Wish I would have taken 2 photos of each as some turned out and some didn't. Above is a Mary Cassatt.

Alexandra was thrilled to see Andy Warhol's soup cans. She LOVES the soup cans and seeing what types of soup he's painted. I love that now she has a picture of herself with the cans!

I loved this photo of Alexandra and the sculpture she made of colored pipe cleaners and straws. They had little paper monkeys you could hang from your creation. Alexandra played here for a long time and could have stayed a lot longer.

Next, we went to the Colorado History Museum. We particularly liked the Native American exhibits as Alexandra is Cherokee (from her dad's side) and is very proud of that fact. We were pretty tired at this point and went pretty quickly through the museum.

Lastly, we went out to Golden, CO for dinner and then drove up the mountain. This first photo was from the parking lot where we ate in CO. The sun was just starting to set behind us.

The highlight of the day was running across a large herd of deer on the mountain! There were at least 30 of them and they were so beautiful. We saw the deer both as we went up and came down the mountain. I took a video of them and will see if I can figure out how to load it.

I will try to post more pictures, especially of the Denver Museum of Art, when I return. I'll leave you with this last photo of the mountain.

Driving to Colorado

Alexandra, my mother-in-law, and I are on vacation now! We drove through Kansas to Colorado today. The weather was great, unlike yesterday.



We stopped at the Limon Heritage Museum & Railroad Park in Coloardo. This is our 3rd year to take a spring vacation - just the 3 of us. One of the things we love about traveling together, is just stopping whenever and where ever we want to stop.



We also stopped at Burlington's Old Town Museum which was built like a city from the turn of the century. One of my favorite buildings was the barber shop/beauty salon. Can you imagine getting a perm with this contraption???


I also enjoyed the one-room school house. My grandmother used to teach at one in Kansas!

I was also excited to see some tumbleweeds... and... some wild turkeys!!! I know this is not a very good picture, but I got so excited when I saw them that I had to stop the car and get out and take a few photos. There was one male (I think - he was all puffed up) and 5 or 6 others (females?). They were actually going "gobble gobble gobble" and running around. I was just so thrilled!

Driving North

Alexandra and I made it north through Texas and Oklahoma up to mid-Kansas. It was beautiful in Texas and we enjoyed the wildflowers along the road - especially our state flower, the Bluebonnet. If you're not from Texas, you might not know that it is traditional to take your kid's photos in the bluebonnets each spring. I did it faithfully for 3 years, I think, and now I've missed a couple. I'll try to get Alexandra's photo on the way home. I just took these photos from my car after stopping & rolling down the window.

It was rainy and then stormy in OK and KS. In fact, there were tornado warnings following us and my wipers were having problems, but thankfully we passed through before the worst of the weather.

Tomorrow, we're off to Colorado!!!

Pony Express Muesum in St. Joseph, MO

In St. Joseph, MO, we visited the Pony Express Museum. Again, the camera wasn't working properly, so unfortunately I don't have photos.

This museum was wonderful! It had a great handout that you carried with you that explained some things and told you special things to look for. We all enjoyed moving the mochilas (mail bags) from one pony to the next. You were supposed to time yourself.

Alexandra loved the play area where she got to dress up and play like she was a pioneer lady. They had a neat, handmade wooden kitchen area & some pretend food, etc.

Altogether, we spent about 2 hours here. I highly recommend it. (Photo is of 2 postcards and Alexandra's Pony Express horse, Brownie.)

Independence, MO

Besides the Truman Presidential Museum, we did the following in Independence last week:

• rode in a covered wagon pulled by 2 mules through historic Independence - including riding in a swale made by wagons in the mid-1800's - very nice, but it was very cold
• ate a delicious lunch at Clinton's, an old-fashioned soda fountain that Harry S. Truman worked at when he was young - we also had delicious shakes
• visited the Frontier Trails Museum - I was not impressed with this museum as it had new things mixed in with it's artifacts, but it didn't tell you that - we did like the hand-on part: you got to load a wagon with whatever you thought was essential for your trip west & it would tell you if it got too heavy. You also got to pack a mule. Their gift shop was great - we spent a lot there.

For all the souvenir photos, I had placed a pink jacket over a chair. Well, Alexandra wanted to get in this picture, and she put the jacket on while it was still on the chair. The photos include a postcard & button from the covered wagon ride we took with Pinoeer Trails Adventures.

Union Station in Kansas City

We also went to Union Station in Kansas City. Last year was the first time we'd visited KC and we went to Union Station that time, too.

We did 3 things at Union Station:

• IMAX film called Olympic Glory - Amazing! We almost didn't go to it, but Alexandra really wanted to, so we did. She really was hooked on the Olympics this year. Anyway, I'd highly recommend this film!
• Science City - very good hands-on children's science museum. We'd went there last year and spent a lot of time, so this year was a little quicker. They had added a new part to their dinosaur exhibit. Real scientists are there, behind glass, working on real dinosaur bones! One was there cleaning some bones while we watched. Pretty neat!
• KC Rail exhibit - about the history of trains in KC. We got to walk through quite a few cars on a couple of different trains - that was our favorite part

Toy & Miniature Museum of Kansas City

The first museum we went to while visiting Kansas City this year was the Toy and Miniature Museum. We had never been there and we weren't sure what to expect. It was wonderful! I highly recommend it.

It was very large. I think we were there 2 hours and didn't see everything. What I enjoyed most were they tiny china dishes & crystal glasses. The detail was amazing. And, I also loved the miniature woven rugs. Who could make such a thing? Wow! My souvenir was a pair of very inexpensive miniature muffin tins to remember those beautiful dishes.

Alexandra's favorite part was the marbles. There were many on display and drawer after drawer to open and explore. She spent a long time looking at them. Her souvenir was a miniature ceramic box that has a table, a little girl, and a teddy bear sitting at it having a picnic. Also in the picture is a souvenir "smashed" penny. She got those from several places we visited.