The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia
Last summer Carl suggested that we take the boys on a historic discovery tour and vacation. Generally we make our summer plans based on theme park and adventure journey contexts and to be honest most of our vacations are based on those kind of thrilling experiences that are pure commercial spectacle and entertainment. Of course we’ve also done things that are more educational or outlook enhancing such as going to Sea World in San Diego. It’s not all just outdoor sports thrill and adventure, though our boys do have a lot of energy and it’s always nice for them to get to spend it in this way. That would generally guarantee that Carl and I could have a little quiet time in the evening, which was also an important part of our own vacation. So, after a bit of deliberation we decided that the boys were definitely old enough to appreciate some of American history and we decided that booking a room in one of the Philadelphia hotels would be a great place to start.
One of our first destinations was the Academy of Natural Sciences. We decided to begin with the dinosaur exhibit because we felt like this would be a good introduction to the appreciation of history. The boys love dinosaurs and the life size Tyrannosaurus Rex was almost as thrilling for us as it was for them. We wandered through the dinosaur hall and the boys were completely intrigued the entire trip. After we finished with the dinosaurs we walked over to the live animal center which also seemed like it would hold some intriguing creatures, though of course these were live. And sure enough we and the boys had a great time there too. We compared some of the reptiles to the various dinosaur we had just scene and felt like we were getting a bit of evolutionary understanding out of it. The boys, however, seemed to be more thrilled with the idea that these were actual living dinosaurs than with noticing similarities and differences from the past. At any rate the next stop was the George Washington Carver temporary exhibit. This also turned out to be interesting to the boys and they were particularly attracted to the life size reproduction of the Jesup Wagon. Ultimately we knew our stop at the Academy of Natural Sciences was going to pave the way for a great rest of our trip.
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