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Monday, November 13, 2023

While in Houston, I walked between my hotel and the classroom, for 2 reasons: 1) it was only about a 20 minute walk and I enjoyed the sights along the way, and 2) people in Houston drive like maniacs! Haha, or at least it seemed like it the few times I actually took a cab. So the first picture is of me at the building where the classroom was setup. It was an oil building, although I don't recall now the name of it or anything. The next 3 pics are images of interesting things along my route, including the Greek restaurant where I had several of my meals that week. The picture of the 4 towers was from my classroom window. I had others, but when you've seen one city, you've pretty much seen them all. All the rest of the images are from my last full day when I went to the Natural Science Museum, except for the very last 3, which are borrowed from the web.

Insects and arachnia are the first museum images I placed below. The pics, I think, are pretty much self-explanatory. The Butterfly Exhibit was awesome, consisting of a huge atrium filled with tropical plants and kept at a constant warm temperature. The link says it's 3 stories tall and has a 50 foot waterfall. My trip was sixteen years ago lol, so of course I don't remember all those details now! I do remember the insect snack machine, where you could get various flavored insect snack boxes. Crickets, larval worms, etc, with sour cream and onion, cheese, barbecue, etc, flavors added. I don't think I bought a box, but it was so long ago I don't remember now.

After that comes the warm-blooded exhibit, with various mammals and birds, then some seashells and rock crystal formations. Definitely beautifully done, and my cheap camera at the time was unable to capture the true beauty of those! I'd love to go back now with the awesome cameras we have now! After the crystals come the dinosaur exhibits. Man, I've loved dinosaurs since I was a kid, and it was so wonderful being around these fantastic fossils! However, the big thrill for me was the Lucy Exhibit!

The traveling Lucy Exhibit was at the Houston Natural Science Museum coincidentally when I was, and man was I stoked! Being a former anthropology student, of course I was very familiar with Lucy the austrolopithecine and her story. Taking pictures of her skeleton was forbidden, so unfortunately I didn't get a chance to do that, but I did take pictures of the signs leading up to her exhibit, and I did buy a tshirt with her face and the date of the exhibit on it. I included that picture as well. The last three pictures below are images from the web, 2 of her skeleton and then a rendition of how she and her male companion most likely looked. Next year, in this month, will be the 50th anniversary of her discovery! Fifty years since her skeleton was discovered, fifty years that we've made such strides in the field of anthropology thanks to her remains!

And with that, I leave y'all to look at the images. No model images today, I figured I'd included more than enough Houston pictures as it was! Have a great day and until next time, love y'all!

George