Right in Our Own Backyard: The Alabama Natural History Museum

One of the exciting things about our move to England is all of the exploring to be done in a new place.  When everything is new it feels natural to explore.  Our first few years of living in Tuscaloosa were marked by having a baby who needed and wanted to sleep a lot, but now that we're slooowwly growing out of needing a nap we're able to do more exploring in the place we live now, and it has been fun.

I knew as soon as I saw a picture of this room online that it would be fun to take the kids to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.

Ella and I have been studying dinosaurs for Science so it seemed an especially good time to check this place out and invite the cousins along for the experience.  The museum's rates were unbelievably inexpensive:  $2 for adults and $1 for kids.  With Katie being an alumnus and two children under the age of five,the six of us only had to pay $4.  

All of those teeth!

I don't know about you, but we called these arrowheads.

Did anyone else love studying Alabama history like I did in 4th grade?  I loved that class.  My parents probably wanted to die through it, though, because of the extraordinary number of dioramas we were required to make.  I'm sure they still shudder at the word.

When you study Alabama history, you'll always learn about the only recorded instance of a meteorite falling from the heavens and directly hitting a human being.  It happened right outside the little town where my father and husband grew up, so Katie and I were really excited to find out this much-famed piece of Alabama history had been donated to the museum!

Poor Mrs. Hodges was napping on her sofa when this rock came crashing through her roof hitting her radio and then her thigh.  Yikes. 

Ella orchestrated this shot; I don't think John David was very into it. :)  

 
I'm not sure you were supposed to sit inside this dinosaur track, but I turned my back, and James was in it.

The amount of crazy sea creatures and whales found in Alabama was really eye-opening to me, like maybe there was a world-wide flood or something.  It was so fun to see.  I think our other favorite thing was this big mammoth skull found in Wisconsin.  No, James, you may not climb on the tusks.

We really like Phineas and Ferb around here, so it was a little disconcerting to see the bones of this platypus...PERRY THE PLATYPUS?!?

We had lots of fun, and if you ask James what his favorite part was he'll say, "The goggles," by which he means the binoculars set up at a window where you could do some bird watching.  

A frozen treat on a hot day was the perfect end to our Saturday outing.  Here's to exploring and enjoying the place where you live.