The Museum of Life and Science

 Hi all!  Guess what?  We're in North Carolina!  Well, actually, we've been here since Saturday.  Anyway, we came here mostly for my mom and dad's work, and also partly for vacation. Yesterday afternoon, we drove over to the Museum of Life and Science.

 After we bought out tickets, my family and I discussed where we wanted to go first.

"Girls, since it looks like rain, I think we should start outside." Mom said.  "Is that okay with you?"

"Sure!" I replied.

"Absolutely." Elizabeth added.

 "Than let's go!"

 Our first stop was "the farmyard".  There were pigs, a donkey, a cow and other such things.

 The cow was just standing in the corner of it's pen, in a slightly strange position, as you can see.

"I wonder why it's doing that." Elizabeth pondered. "That seems unnatural."

"Maybe it's stuck." I offered.

"No, that cow isn't stuck, it's exercising." Dad joked, making us laugh.

 Here's my sister and I in front of the butterfly house.

 It was kind of hot inside, but the prettiness made it worth it.

Almost everywhere you looked, butterflies were floating and flying thought the air.  Some of the pictures we took were a little blurry, but most of them were just fine.  Elizabeth stood still for nearly five minutes, (how, I'll never understand), and a butterfly actually landed on her shoulder!  It flew away before we could get a picture, though.

 After the butterfly house, we went on the Dinosaur Trail.

 One thing I noticed while we were walking is that North Carolina has many more trees and bugs than Florida.  On the bright side, there's less humidity.  It's still pretty hot here, though.

 You can't see it in the picture, but by this time, I was sweating.  When the trail ended, we moved on to the "in the wild" section.

 This is the black bear area.  We didn't really see any bears, but the waterfall was pretty.  I think if the bears were out in the sun they would have overheated.  I sure felt like I was.  

We couldn't really see any of the wolfs, either, except one whose head was sticking out of a cave.  By then, my whole family was ready to go back into the air conditioning.  There was a deep leather sofa next to one of the indoor exhibits (called "Falling Sand"), where we sat down to rest for a couple minutes.  It felt so good after the heat.

 "Falling Sand" was basically a projected screen with a little stream of particles going from top to bottom.  Every so often, a stream would 'dry up' and a different color would start falling.  What made it so cool was the "sand" would interact with your shadow.

 You can move your arms to throw the sand up, or gather it on you shoulders.

 It's so fun!  I could just stand there and do it all day!

 Next, we moved on the the "science" part of the museum.  Both Elizabeth and I thought the Cloud Basin was really neat.

"I feel like Elsa." my sister commented, lightly blowing on the mist and making it swirl.

 "This is fascinating and fabsome!" I laughed.

 After that, we walked over to the flying area.  The museum had a paper airplane launcher, so of course I tried it out.  We checked out some other fun stuff too, but I kind of forgot to take pictures of that.

Over all, I had a great time.

Where would you want to go on vacation?