Scottsdale, Day 3

Ginger is still happy (Leia too), the food at Butters is still excellent (2 days in a row!) 

and we found a great place - the Western Spirit Museum - that us elders enjoyed and Leia plans to visit with her teen pals too. 

The gift shop lady said they’ve been open 12 years but almost nobody has heard of them. 

They have a new marketing person who will hopefully get the word out - this is a quality, quirky place to spend an afternoon. 

There’s a little bit of a lot of things on display along with an excellent selection of bronze sculptures. 

The current show, due to rotate soon, is western movie posters and artifacts, with snippets of the actual movies playing on screens around the exhibit. 

I bet hubby has seen over 90% of the films - he does love a good (or bad! He’s not picky😆) western. 

 An actual Remington bronze from 1901! And a photobombing teen.

Leia made us feel really old - we’d say ‘oh look, there’s Ernie Borgnine’ or Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Raquel Welch, Burt Reynolds??? and she’d say ‘who??’. She did know John Wayne though…

A docent said there's a town parade the first weekend in February, with all the horses sporting their best silver finery. 

It goes right by the museum and you can hear the silver clanking from blocks away. We may need to visit Leia again about then…

Just realized I didn’t take any pics of the jewelry! The pieces were stunning, with a selection of traditional and modern. Definitely want to see them again. 

I did get pics of some of the weaving (gorgeous)

and a pottery bowl circa 1700. (That Blogger won’t let me upload. 😡) It was broken, then repaired and is still beautiful. I’ll try uploading when we get home…

Neat landscaping around the exterior. Wonder if we have enough slate left to try this…

Museum Day

Me: do y’all want to go to the trampoline park tomorrow?

Leo: I’d rather go to a museum….

So we did. 

Touching sharks and rays

First stop was the Sea Center on the Santa Barbara pier, 

always a favorite with its hands-on exhibits 

Exploring sediment from the ocean floor - Jac found a tiny live crab!

and friendly docents (mostly college age kids).

We thought about going to SB’s Natural History museum next … 

The octopus was the most active I’ve ever seen - fun to watch

before I remembered the Moxie kid’s museum (here) that we’d talked about visiting but never got around to.  

So fun! Another great place for hands-on exploration (the third floor roof top exhibits were especially fun.)

Me, Jac and Grape, the lavender octopus 

We let our membership to the SB Zoo lapse, thinking the kids were getting too old to enjoy it… guess where else Leo wants to go? 

Gotta re-visit all the fun places before the girls move in late August. 😭

Music, Motion and Butterflies

As hoped, the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery was a big hit but not nearly as big as The Butterfly House. 

 Adding a butterfly, ferret, baby bison and hedgehog to the stuffie collection. Her parents will be so pleased. 😜

To ensure we had enough energy, we started with lunch at Querks Eatery, a fairly new place that serves…. mac n cheese made with bacon and pimento cheese! I was in heaven 

Sound and energy waves made by dancing to music

The Discovery exhibits are all kid friendly and touchable (and pound-able; these kids are not gentle.) Jac enjoyed the small collection of live creatures - 

The algae-cleaning suckerfish was her fav. 

fish, lizards, frogs and an entire bee hive, with an observation window, behind one of the walls - 

but she also liked the keyboards, 

drum sets!

lifting a piano, the tornado machine, 

wall of gears and so much more. 

The “skin” exhibit also got high marks with Jac, 

while I especially liked the wooden water pipe. 

(I never thought about underground pipes being made of wood.

Am I the only one who didn’t know this??)

Visiting the butterfly habitat was Rachel’s idea

and Jac said it was her favorite part of the day. 

Unlike the “pop up” seasonal exhibits near us, 

this is a year-round sanctuary for butterflies, 

a few moths 

and beautiful plants. 

We did three complete circuits of the (fairly small) building, 

discovering more flutterbyes each time. 

Jac would happily have stayed here all afternoon. 

The nursery. As soon as the wings of newly hatched butterflies have dried, they are released into the habitat.

A few more of the 115-ish photos I took, plus some of Jac’s and Rachel’s … (to see a bigger, more detailed pic just click/tap on any photo.)

Camouflaged