LEGO Travel Adventure & More

Day 5 (continued): Children's Museum of Indianapolis, LEGO Travel Adventure

My parents executed an amazing week-long getaway that had already taken us to Whitewater Canal, Clifty Falls State Park, Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, Jackson county and Renfro Valley Kentucky, and Fort Boonesborough.

And now we were spending a day at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. For the sake of time and space, I split our museum stop into two posts. If you're interested in pictures from the Dinosphere exhibit or the Chinese Terra Cotta Warriors, you'll have to go back to my previous post.

There really is so much to see!

If you have a LEGO lover, be sure to hit the LEGO Travel Adventure. This was one of DT's favorite exhibits. There's a bit of history, but mostly just fun!

At one o'clock visitors gathered on every floor to watch this enormous water clock drop 70 gallons of a water/methyl alcohol mixture that had been climbing all day, to accurately reflect the time. With more than 40 specially blown glass pieces, they say it stands at 26.5 feet tall and is the largest water clock in North America. It's an amazing focal point of the museum.

Fireworks of Glass. I'd say this is an appropriate name for the display. It's a 43-foot tall tower that rests on top of the glass ceiling of the lower level of the museum. You can circle it from the museum's ramps and view it from all sides, and even from underneath! You can't possibly comprehend the enormity of this sculpture from this picture, but try to imagine more than 3,200 individually blown, brilliantly colored, smooth, twisted glass horns and goosenecks.

Plan on spending some extra time here in Science Works. There's a construction site where you can design and build simple machines and experiment with physical science. DT tackled this architectural feat and was so proud to put that final keystone in!

If you have a science kid like DT, you'll be here for awhile. This hydrology feature was one of his favorites. He had way too much fun adding dams, changing water levels, and sending his boat down this 30 foot winding water table.

Sorry for the terrible quality of this photo (behind plexiglass), but for the amount of time DT spent here, I'd better include this Rube Goldberg machine. It's like The Song That Never Ends. It was torture for him to be pulled away.

This visit to the museum was a hit! And better yet, we ALL enjoyed it. Plan on loving it just as much as your kids do!

If you're ready to plan your trip, click here:
http://www.childrensmuseum.org/

Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Day 5: Children's Museum of Indianapolis

What a cool entrance to the museum!

If you're in Indianapolis, you've got to visit the children's museum. We happened to find some great coupons online which made it very affordable, but we certainly would have gotten our money's worth even if we had paid full price. There was just so much to do that a full day wasn't enough to take it all in. So we priortized and saw all that we could.

Link to the museum website here: http://www.childrensmuseum.org/

First stop...Dinosphere. Cretaceous Period. 65 million years ago.

This exhibit is impressive. It's one of the largest displays of real juvenile and family dinosaur fossils in the United States, and includes a functioning lab and hands-on activities for the kids.

A close-up view of a tiny dinosaur.

Second stop...Treasures of the Earth by National Geographic. It was an accidental discovery. In 1974 a group of Chinese farmers in danger of losing their crops to dry conditions, began digging a well. After digging 13 feet deep, the ground was still dry. A shovel struck something hard. And they discovered a human body made of baked clay!

An excavation of the site unearthed what many call the Eighth Wonder of the World. A full army of terra cotta warrirors of China's first emperor. Nearly 8,000 of them.

The exhibit shows how archaeologists unearthed and pieced back together the life-sized army, unraveling the mystery of the warriors. Each, individually sculpted, with unique facial features, hairstyles, and clothing details.

Although there is some debate about the origins of the Terra Cotta Warriors, most archaeologists believe they were created as part of a massive underground city for emperor Qin. To guard and protect him for eternity due to the proximity of his burial mound.

We explored two more Treasures of the Earth (the Tomb of the Ancient Egyptian and the Shipwreck of Captain William Kidd), but I I'll limit myself to this. And next time I'll share some pics from the LEGO Travel Adventure exhibit. I wasn't planning more than one entry on any single vacation stop. But clearly, the museum was a big hit!