Travel Diary

 

While at the rain forest, we took a side trip to ancient Egypt. Admittedly, both those things happened within the walls of the Museum of Natural Science in Houston. We spent a full day at the museum - one of our extra stops after the K-State bowl win over LSU earlier this month.

The museum is hosting a traveling exhibit, Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs. It added some cost to the general admission ticket, but we decided to fork over the "gold" anyway. When else are we going to "go" to Egypt?

The exhibit transported us back 3,200 years, across the sands of the Sahara Desert. It included 181  artifacts, including Egyptian treasures and one-of-a-kind relics. 

The exhibit included sarcophagi ... 

mummies ...

animal mummies and crypts ...

 

 jewelry ...

 royal masks...

 

 and other treasures of the tombs.

Presented by World Heritage Exhibitions and Cityneon, the world premiere exhibition is in its limited run at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through May 23, before embarking on a multi-country, worldwide tour.

Another favorite exhibit at the museum took us back even further to prehistoric times. 

Do you think Randy could put up a fight against this giant ground sloth?

As usual, I took too many photos. What am I really going to do with a bunch of dinosaur photos?

 

I told Randy it was reminiscent of vacation photos I took on a family trip to California when I was a fifth grader. I had gotten my own camera for Christmas, and I took dozens and dozens of black and white photos of floats at the Tournament of Roses parade. Black and white lost a little in the translation ... but it was cheaper for my parents to develop the film. No digital images, way back when.

 

The one below was Mammut americanum or Giant Bull.

 

Colonial naturalists were fascinated with Mammut. Thomas Jefferson had Mastodon bones on display in the White House when he was president, along with ground sloth specimens and parts of mammoths. Jefferson was sure that such a creature must have been alive, somewhere in the unknown American west. He instructed explorers Lewis and Clark to find a herd of live mastodons in the Rocky Mountain region. However, the explorers came back empty handed!

This display was the only one we found that mentioned Kansas. Here's what they had to say:

Kansas today is full of wheat, corn and prairie grass. In the late Cretaceous, warm ocean waters covered the state. Shallow seas spread across immense areas of the other continents as well, generating a new wave of ocean-going reptiles. The newest reptiles were giant sea lizards - the Mosasaurs.

 ***

We took the roundabout way home from Houston and did a side excursion to the Magnolia Silos in Waco. 

 It's the "kingdom" of Fixer Upper stars Chip & Joanna Gaines. 

Photo of the silos taken through the windows of the old church

 

 

We did not experience a Chip & Joanna  sighting, but we still enjoyed our time there.

Instead of waiting in line at sit-down options, we ate at the food trucks in the Silos courtyard. I decided to go with the motto, "Eat dessert first" (and only) with this hand pie with caramel ice cream. Yum! Randy had "biscuits" and gravy. In this case, the biscuit was cornbread. It was alleged to be a Chip Gaines favorite.

I couldn't resist a photo of the Brinks truck, making an afternoon pickup. It's mind-boggling to think about how much cash flows through that place!

I may have contributed just a bit to the cash pickup ... but not too much.

Tropical Getaway

 

There's a certain satisfaction in realizing that you're in the middle of a tropical rain forest (or - at least the citified version) and missing the polar express temperatures at home.

 

For the past two winters, Randy & I would have been in Kansas, trying to stay warm as we fed and watered cattle. My January photo on the family calendar has a snowy scene of a water delivery last winter. We didn't have hired help the past two years, so we had to stay fairly close to home since cattle seem to want to eat every day. Our cattle herd's Uber Eats was powered by Kim & Randy.

It's probably no surprise to anyone who knows me that the Butterfly House at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston was my favorite exhibit. And that's where we found the "rain forest." 

Because we aren't caring for our cattle ourselves this winter, we took advantage of a few extra days away after K-State's game.  One of those days, we visited the museum.

It was a lot easier to take a photo of our "tour guide" than it was the flittering and fluttering guests of honor. He didn't move the whole time we were in the exhibit. But he doesn't have quite the visual appeal as his flighty neighbors.

 

These rice paper butterflies were abundant. With their wafer-paper thin wings, it was easy to see where they get their name.

Rice paper butterflies

The blue butterflies were much more elusive and much less cooperative. I never saw them away from the windows of the solarium.

Their inelegant perch didn't make for beauty shots.

Cornflower blue is probably my favorite color. I would have loved to get a better shot of this blue beauty.

While the colors on the other butterflies were more reminiscent of the Monarch butterflies who travel through our area each fall, there were many more varieties.

The museum estimates there are 1,500 to 2,000 individual butterflies in the exhibit at any given time. There are 60 or so species of butterflies from tropical regions such as Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central and South America.

Leopard lacewing

A sign told us to watch for numbered butterflies. A couple of butterflies photobombed the sign as I was taking the photo!

 

Randy's sharp eyesight spotted one. It wasn't the prettiest photo, but we saw No. 23, nonetheless.

Advice from a Butterfly:

Let go of the past
Trust the future
Embrace change
Come out of the cocoon
Unfurl your wings
Dare to get off the ground
Ride the breezes
Savor the flowers
Put on your brightest colors
Let your beauty show.
-Unknown

 

That seems like good advice on this first month of the new year!

While it wasn't as warm as the rain forest, the moderate Houston temperatures also led to an expedition on the Hermann Park Golf Course. We don't have skyscrapers visible on the Stafford golf course - unless you count our prairie skyscrapers - grain elevators.

We'd been to another part of Hermann Park for K-State's pep rally before the Texas Bowl. 

 

 We won the game vs. LSU, 42-20. (I had more Texas Bowl photos on my Facebook page.)

But the next day, we were back in Hermann Park for golf.

I rode along. Randy's golfing companions were a trio of guys who regularly play the course. They provided lots of free advice.

It was still shirt-sleeve weather when we checked out another Houston attraction, the Waterwall, later that day.

 

Designed by SWA Group and completed in 1985, the 2.77-acre park in the Uptown District features a 64-foot-high, sculptural fountain popularly known as the Waterwall.

The Water Wall pumps 78,500 gallons of recycled water every 3 hours and 20 minutes.

 

Another stop that warmed our hearts was a visit with Randy's Aunt Lorene, Uncle Gary and cousin Garrick. It had been awhile since we'd seen them.

 

The whole getaway was fun - with the exception of the Houston traffic. Randy only got honked at three times. We'll call that a success!

More from the museum in an upcoming blog!