July 10 Museum Mess

I won’t bury the lead. We didn’t do the American Museum of Natural History justice.

Oh, I knew it was a big museum. I sent everyone a video on things to do. But the heat, humidity and charging around NYC over the last few days had got to us. We had simply run out of energy.

The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World certainly had reached her limit. Personally, I think she used it all up last night jumping up and down at the prospect of hugging Jinkx, and The-Oldest still had the remains of a cold, so we didn’t get off to the museum until late. Even The-Youngest wasn’t super keen on this one.

The weather said it would rain so it didn’t. It was, can you guess? Sunny, hot, and humid, again.

When we arrived at the museum, we inadvertently entered the wrong way. Not the main door, anyway. All the videos I’d watched started from the main entrance. Go this way. Over there are the dinosaurs. Over to the right is the neat architecture. Down those steps is the food – real food – not pictures of mastodon steaks. Past the gift shop is the rocks exhibit. Far to the left is the ocean.

That made finding out where we were and planning how we would navigate this massive maze of things a little hard. No, ok, massively hard.

I quickly loaded up a map and gave it to The-Youngest to interpret. He complained there was nothing worth seeing in the museum…. until we got to the first exhibit, one which we had planned to just race through.

It wasn’t a cool exhibit per se. It was something we could see in Canada: The animals of North America. But The-Youngest had decided he wanted to read every word on every plaque and look at each display with wonder and awe usually reserved for a Michaelangelo sculpture or a hot onlyfan girl.

We had to drag him away. Literally. There were rocks to see. Dinosaurs. Oceans. And at least one of us needed food. Like now. Food.

Actually, I think everyone needed to eat. So we found the cafeteria, which was a grab-what-you-want-and-pay-by-the-pound thing. The Oldest loaded a plate of mac and cheese so high, it looked like he had built a full-scale Egyptian pyramid. The-Youngest, always the smartest shopper, loaded up on meat with a side of meat and some meat on top. If they had a meat drink, he would have gotten that too.

The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World filled her plate with healthy things, while I took a bit of this, a bit of that, and did my best to avoid anything healthy. Much to my disappointment, there weren’t any mastodon burgers or Paleolithic shrimp.

After eating, everyone felt better, but we had only 2 hours left and about 16 hours of stuff to see. So, I said we have to see the neat architecture of the Richard Gilder Center right by the rock exhibit.

The Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation didn’t disappoint. It was a flowing, wave-like piece of art that was, you know, actually functional. But we couldn’t spend much time admiring it. Nope. We had some rocks to see.

The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World loved the rock exhibit. They called it The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals which was far better than my ‘room of rocks.’ She could have spent hours in there. Huge glass cases were filled with crystals. Even huger glass cases were filled with sparklie rocks. One massive Amethyst dominated the center of the room, looking like it was filled with thousands of tiny stars.

The-Youngest started to read every plaque on every case and stare at each display with wonder and awe while The-Oldest wandered around and pretty much saw everything, using a quantity-over-quality way of viewing the hall.

I stood at the base of that big amethyst a little gobsmacked (yes, gobsmacked), my mind wondering if this was a portal to another world which if I stared long enough, I could open it with my mind, then step through to a land filled with three-breasted women.

Still tired though, we gave up on a few other halls or exhibits (or to quote The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World, there is no way in hell you’re getting me in the live butterfly room.) Instead, we decided to go see a planetarium show. On the plus side, a huge plus side, we got to sit down. On the minus side, nearly all four of us fell asleep.

When we left, we still had a bit of time. Somehow. We raced to the dinosaurs, which turned out to be at the main entrance, then raced through the history of the first nations and stopped in the ocean hall with its giant whale hanging from the roof.

Sadly, The-Oldest failed at his one job. Keep an eye on Joe.

I went down the steps to take a cool picture and when I turned around, the family was gone. I had thought I’d lose them in Times Square or in the crush of crowds leaving Broadway plays, but no, I lost them while shooting a whale.

Luckily, I found them on the upper balcony – though they seemed completely unconcerned that I had disappeared. I think they thought that without me, they could finally get out of the museum.

However, that wasn’t the case. They were all just tired and wanted the day to end. In fact, they all asked, why didn’t we come here earlier? Why hadn’t we allotted more time? Why did no one tell them how much there was to see?

Sigh.

We saw what we had time to see.

But if you ever get to New York City and want to see this museum, book at least half a day. More if you want to read all the freaking plaques.

We went home and prepared for our next adventure. The Book of Mormon on Broadway.