The Natural History museum has to be my favorite museum, and I’m pretty sure it has been my favorite museum since I was a little kid. It’s definitely a bonus that it’s next to the California Science Center (which is where I went to see the Body Worlds exhibit when I was in middle school). Having to go again for one of the events for this class was definitely one of my favorite assignments that I’ve had all year. Needless to say, I was very excited to see dinosaurs.
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| Body Worlds Exhibit at the California Science Center |
I’m not super good at public transportation so I called my grandma and asked her if she wanted to come with me to the museum. Knowing her, she would want to spend hours in the gem gallery exhibit that they have there, and having been there myself already, I figured she was the perfect person to ask to come with me. We headed in, after finding parking (which was a harrowing experience), and much to my dismay, there were much less dinosaurs than I thought there were. There was the main one in the beginning right after the ticket scanning place, but other than that, I couldn’t really see much, so we decided to go explore the rooms that show you different wildlife exhibits. My grandma likes pretty little animals so we stayed by the otters and the deer-like animals for a while while my grandma expressed her concerns on whether or not the baby animals in the exhibit were just really good recreations or taxidermied. I had no idea, so I told her it was the former to lighten her mood. Despite not really knowing, the exhibits themselves were fascinating and just so impressive. I’ve been to the wax museum in Hollywood where they make recreations of celebrities and you can hardly tell the difference unless you look too close and see where the wax has been touched or looks a little obvious, but these animal exhibits were so full of life, like they had to be put together by artists that know everything there is to know about the anatomy of these animals, and they were placed to look like they were in their natural habitats, which takes knowing how said animal would behave in order to place them so accurately. I just found it fascinating how these little exhibits which I was entering with disappointment from not seeing the big dinosaur bones, had so much work and artistry put into them. We looked at those little (and big) critters for what was at least an hour and a half.
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| Pictures I took of the raccoon exhibit (I really like raccoons) |
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| A picture I took of (what looks like) the wild boar exhibit |
We climbed up the museum in search of more dinosaur bones, but I must be the world's worst navigator because I could not find them for the life of me. Instead, we marveled at the little ceramic or bone animal carvings along the walls, and the bird exhibit upstairs. I made sure to ignore any area that I feared there would be insect based displays because I’m like ghastly afraid of them, so we started moving with caution back down the museum to go to the gem gallery.
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| A picture I took of a small ceramic ram sculpture, exhibit name not recorded |
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| A photo I took of a Papustyla pulcherrima shell, commonly known as a tree snail |
There was an odd smell coming from the gem gallery when we got there, and a security guard seemed to be running into the room looking very annoyed and disappointed as we arrived, and then it hit me… somebody was getting stoned next to the precious stones. I thought it was really funny, and the smell kinda reminded me of a lowly frat house dayger (day rager/party, also known as a darty), though I admit it was in poor taste whoever did it. My grandma thought it was much less funny, but anyways we waited outside the gallery until the smell wafted away and entered, and immediately I knew it was a hit with my grandma. Every gem, whether it was a big geode or a small little shiny rock, had her ooh-ing and ah-ing, and seeing her eyes light up when we entered the more secluded and better part of the gallery with the more jewelry type gems was worth the $36 dollars spent on tickets to come. We were definitely in the gem exhibit as a whole for like two hours, and we loved every second of it.  |
| Gem & Mineral Hall at the Natural History Museum |
After this we took a stroll in the pretty rose gardens outside of Expo Park, sat in the gondola for a bit admiring scenery, and then got Popeyes on our way back from her dropping me off at the dorms. We talked about the sea otters and the gem gallery the entire car ride.
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| Exposition Park Rose Garden |
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