The Cleveland Museum Of Natural History

Today we visited the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. I don't recall if I've been there before, but I did recognize the statue of "Steggie" the Stegosaurus in front from a picture my Mom took long ago.

In all fairness, this is a picture of "Steggie II". He apparently replaced the original in 1997.

Publishing pictures of displays is prohibited, so I am trying to be careful of which pics I actually post. Since the kids were all going in different directions, I didn't get many- make that ANY- of the boys in front of the dinosaurs skeletons or anything great like I had envisioned.

I highly recommend visiting your closest museum of natural history if you can. If you do, I also suggest that you do a scavenger hunt like we did. Now, the one we did was a little difficult because the items were almost too specific to find without a regular guide or docent. Being the obsessive-compulsive type that I am, I found everything on the list.

Maybe if I had concentrated more on the kids and less on finding three different pieces of

teak furniture for my scavenger hunt list, I'd have those shots I wanted.

Here is a link to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History if you'd care to give them a look. I really enjoyed myself and the kids had a lot of fun, too.

So we continued through the different exhibits and displays, me fervently scribbling answers on my scavenger hunt paper, and finally ended up outside for a wildlife lecture on owls. We got to meet a very active Great-Horned Owl named "Big Mama" who wouldn't sit still long enough for me to get a steady photo of her. Then, we wandered around the path and got to see deer, fox, turkeys, vultures, frogs, falcons, bobcats and more.

On the way home, I saw a few more places I'd like to visit. There were several other museums nearby and the kids made a game of finding sculptures all over the city as we drove.

Have you visited any attractions that kids would like recently?