Museum-ing

We made it to the museum today. Everyone's choice was to go to the Field Museum of Natural History, so that's what we did. We have been there many, many times, just not since 2021, based on when my last membership card expired. 

We got up, got a lunch packed and headed out the door at a time which should give us an hour or so at the museum before lunch, but still miss the worst of rush hour traffic. 

At least that was the plan, and it has worked well before, but not today. The highway the heads directly into the city from the west (290) is bad under the best of circumstances. We just plan for those fourteen miles to take at least a half an hour. (That would be non-rush hour times, and rush hour begins well before 5:30 am which we discovered when we were stuck on it heading to the hospital for one of K.'s surgeries. We've never spent so little time in pre-op ever.)  Today it took a lot longer than thirty minutes. It seems that some genius decided that scheduling pot hole filling during rush hour was a good idea. It wasn't. So eventually we made it downtown. I was happily driving when I come out of the loop planning to hop on Lake Shore Drive when I realized that Michigan Ave. is completely closed and you can't drive across it. As I was sending my way back through downtown to try a different route, children were looking up why. It seems they are setting up for Taste of Chicago. Clearly I live in the past when Taste happened over the Fourth of July. 

We made it eventually, but the close parking was already full, for some reason all the street parking along Solidarity Drive was off limits... just for today, and we finally ended up in the parking lot next to the Adler Planetarium. And it was 11am. The whole trip took nearly two hours. 

I decided the last thing I wanted to do was to have to keep walking back and forth to the car for lunch stuff, so we opted for an early lunch in the park by the lake. We all needed a break from the commute from hell. 

I did discover a lovely little beach next to the Adler that I didn't know about. Pictures from out lunch:

The sad sign about my preferred parking lot being full.

And for those of you not familiar with Chicago, this is Solidarity Drive, which runs from the Field and Sheds Aquarium on the west end all the way down to the Adler Planetarium on the east end. You can't even see the Adler at the end in this picture.

But as you can see, we had a beautiful day for a walk.

We did eventually make it to the museum. We saw two special exhibits, The Firsts Kings of Europe with special collections from museums in Romania and Bulgaria and Imperial China. Both were very well done. And of course we saw some of our permanent favorites. It was a good visit.

This was our first group picture. I was trying to get everyone and the entire dinosaur in the photo. They are all there, but you may have to zoom in.

See? Here they are up close, though some are only barely tolerating my requisite photo.

This is the head of that dinosaur from the balcony. It has replaced Sue, the T-Rex, which some of my children were not pleased about.

A view of the great hall for those who haven't been here.

Along with exhibits, I think we also saw every gift shop. People would show me cool things and I would tell them I wasn't buying it. Over and over and over. 

A couple of people had their own money, though. 

K. with the dinosaur hat he bought and then wore throughout the rest of our visit.

And L. with her stuffed dinosaur she has named Kyle. 

One other thing we found were dermestid beetles. They would be the flesh eating beetles referenced on the sign and on the t-shirt.

Now, while the t-shirt might be cool, I decided that what is even cooler is to be a child whose mother mail orders them their very own dermestid beetles to clean a skeleton they had. And yes, that's me. I would be that cool mom. (The child was W.  if you were trying to decide between him and L.) But if you were ever tempted to try it yourself, know in advance not to use amphibian skeletons as the beetles will eat the whole thing. Amphibian bones are too close to cartilage it seems.

And with that little bit of knowledge, I'll finish with the drive home only taking a little over an hour, which is what I expected for the first half.