Wednesday, June 27, 2007

bill nye was not there today


bill nye was not there today, originally uploaded by ellajohn.
Today we went to the Danville Science Center and to The Virginia Musuem of Natural History. Not bad for a day trip. John had a business meeting in Danville tonight, so we spent the day with him before dropping him off at his hotel. I've never been to either town. Ella had built up the Danville Science Center to the point of myth because of the blurb on Bill Nye the Science Guy. It didn't fail her. They have a modern interactive building, and then there are two large galleries in their vintage train station. Behind the train station is a butterfly garden. The Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville is a striking building in a quaint old fashioned town. In the atrium they have a model of allosaurus as well as a fourteen million year old balaen whale. Ella and I have been talking about fossils, and she was having a hard time understanding how a fossil is removed from the rock. Today we saw a working paleontology laboratory in which they were removing the skull of a whale from a rock found in Caroline County, Virginia.
I'm the back road queen so we took the southern route back to our mountains. That piedmont was scorching today. We took 58 to 57 to 8. I've always wanted to go to Woolwine. We crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway at Floyd and floated home.

2 comments:

John Provo said...

Miss you guys.

The Mater said...

My grandkids would have been fascinated with the fossils and the butterflies out back. Hannah goes to sleep jabbering about butterflies and her favorite wing colors.

My own memories of the beauty of the Blue Ridge Parkway and Luray Caverns bubbled up as I read this piece.

Your kids are growing up in a lovely party of the country.