Day 2: International Wildlife Museum

after we went to the Air and Space museum, we took a break for lunch and then headed to the International Wildlife Museum right before dinner.

I seriously loved this place.

It was all dead animals, but it was pretty hands on, and it had tons of displays that compared things from one animals to others . 

There was a room full of horns and antlers, and a display about 50 different bird eggs, and something showing eyes of a bunch of different animals so you could see all the different types at once. Such a cool way to compare and contrast.

Outside

Parker and Aria checking out one of the displays

Corin checkingout some of the Antlers

Aria with the bird eggs

With an alligator:

Fun to see it (and it's teeth) up close

You can walk under this giraffe to really get a feel for how tall they are:

My beautiful family with a statue outside:

Day 2 Air and Space Museum

After going into Colossal cave we went to the Pima Air and Space museum.

The kids in front of the smallest plane

With a replica of the plane the Wright brother flew

Inside the pit of an old warplane:

Just a pretend plane the kids can play in:

Photo with a prop:

A plane with the side taken off so you can see the internal structure

What a big tire!

In front of a really big plane

In front of an even bigger plane.
They are so small in front of that thing!

They have a building there dedicated to space travel.

Goofy pictures with the props there:

Seeing Mars in 3D

My family on the moon, with the Earth in the background

Day 2 Colossal Cave

On our second day in Tucson we visited Colossal Cave.

But first we showered.

Jason wrapped the hand towel around Corin after he got out and I thought it was so cute!

We drove out to Colossal cave and we walked around the grounds nearby for a bit first.

The kids found this cat and wanted to keep it:

Our family in front of the map to the park

With the mountains and some mist behind us

Getting ready to go inside

On the inside:

It was cool, the kids liked it for the most part.

Except poor Aria she kept bouncing around and trying to swing from the rails and such. Unfortunately some of the rails were next to huge drop-offs in the cave so we had to keep her "reigned-in" and she did not enjoy that.

And Corin was ready for a nap by the end.

But it was fun to go inside a cave and walk though.

A few months later we learned about animals with the girls and they definitely remembered going through the cave when we talked about animals that lived in caves.

Biosphere

Last February we took a short trip down to Tucson for a few days.

On the first day we went to Biosphere 2.

In front of the biosphere

Terra wanted to carry my diaper bag. It's as big as her.

The kids loved this hands on activity about the water cycle while we waited for our tour:

They could pump balls up the tube on the left and they would fall own through the water cycle via the PVC pipe things on the wall.

Then the tour began

My monkeys in front of a banana tree

In the desert biome

In one of the "lungs" of the biosphere.

To deal with Air expanding and contracting as it cooled or heated they have these expanding rooms, where the ceiling is haning with weights so it will go up or down depending on the air pressure. 

The ceiling dropped as we all went outside, and it was like walking through a storm to get out the door as the air was pushed out with us from the weight of the ceiling.

Our guide was a bit too talkative, so our tour took a  lot longer than they had said and the kids got bored in a few rooms, but it was still cool, we enjoyed it overall and we had fun and learned a lot.