Chihuly and Dinos
This past weekend I took my daughters, Emma age eight and Chloe age six, to Indianapolis. We spent most of the day Saturday at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which wasn’t too far from the middle of downtown. If you have kids and are looking for something to do on a boring mid-winter, Midwest weekend, I highly recommend this entertaining and educational venue. Of course the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton is just as good of a choice, but we were there last January and wanted to see something new.
The Indy Children’s Museum has one of the best dinosaur exhibits I’ve seen, complete with surround sound and lighting effects that put you right in the middle of the Cretaceous Period, and on-site Paleontologists (my first career choice back when I was eight years old) who do a great job of interacting with the kids with games and hands-on demonstrations on fossil recovery.
The one thing about the Museum that blew me away was the Dale Chihuly “fireworks” glass sculpture that spans all five floors of the museum. On the lowest floor you can actually walk underneath and take in the incredible array of color and light that Chihuly is so well known for.
And there’s so much more. So much that it can easily tire a six year old out to the point of sleeping through the afternoon planetarium show, with head back and mouth wide open.
Here are a few other tidbits I learned during our trip:
1) Never try to get a table at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Indy on a Saturday night when monster trucks are performing at the nearby RCA Dome.
2) Other restaurant choices are quickly limited due to the “you can smoke in this restaurant but no one under 21 allowed inside” law.
3) Be prepared when your kids ask why that homeless man had blood all over his face, the one you pass when walking from the hotel to the restaurants.
And I’m not talking about just a little bit of blood here and there. I mean all over his face and all over the sidewalk. The ambulance did arrive. My guess is that’s the one thing they will remember the most about our weekend trip. Kids are funny that way.
