Dozin' with the Dinos
So last night, E and I went out to the special event at The Field Museum in Chicago called Dozin' with the Dinos. We got there about 45 minutes after the museum had closed for regular patrons and checked in. I brought my sea bag full of all our stuff to sleep in/wish: air mattress, cordless pump, sleeping bags, pillows, nighttime reading, flashlights, other small items.
We brought our stuff to the room we were designated to sleep in. Where was that? In the Hall of Dinosaurs! How awesome is that?! We were able to actually pick any place in the Evolving Planet exhibit to set up camp, but we chose one of the outer walkways, near some windows and also near the Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus fossils. We laid our stuff out at first, but I didn't unfold our air mattress completely, just long enough that you could tell how much space we needed along the wall. I didn't want to inflate it right away because the hall is open to everyone there until 12:30 am!
So orientation was at 6:30, so it being 6:25 by this point already, we headed downstairs to the ground floor (two BIG stories down) and to the far west side of the museum (our sleeping space was on the far eastern side of the middle upper floor). We got there, changed seats once so E could be in the middle of the theater and settled in for orientation and to watch the informative slideshow (did you know The Field Museum only has about 1% of its collections on display? The rest is in storage, mostly in the basement, the sub-basement and the sub-sub-basement). But at any rate, it got to be 6:40 without orientation starting and I really had to use the restroom. That and we had a guided tour that was going to happen at 7:00 back up by where our sleeping bags were!
So we decided to leave the theater and I hoped that I could play the evening by ear. Turns out I have a pretty good ear. We stopped by some lower-level restrooms, then headed upstairs. We dropped off some stuff by our sleeping bags and walked around trying to figure out exactly where we were supposed to meet. While walking near the front, I saw Jim Holstein, a geologist on staff at the museum and someone I'm acquainted with. He was inside the fossil prep lab. He came out and said hi to us, recognizing us and knowing E and I by name. Coolness. Even better? Turns out, he was the one who was going to be giving us the tour! He joked that E had already seen all this on a private tour he'd given us a few months ago.
So we waited around and chatted with one of the Field Museum's fossil preparators until everyone showed up for the tour. First we went into the fossil prep lab where he joked and quizzed the kids about dinosaurs, showing us all the tools they use to chip rocks off the fossils. He also showed lots of the fossils they've worked on and how he cleaned off a fossil fish (hint: it took 80 acid baths and over 8 months). A highlight for me, personally, was he asked me to grab a fossil out from under a microscope I was a couple steps away from and I held it up for the kids to look at while he talked about it. Sweet! On our way out of the lab, he pointed out their a piece of prehistoric coprolite (look it up).
Then we got taken upstairs to the level where most of the researchers have their offices and original laboratories and libraries. As Jim said, the museum is just a big library of dead things. He showed off a pelvis in one lab and in another showed us the travel mold of Sue the T. rex's skull. Then we took a freight elevator down to the main level, then stairs down into the sub-sub-basement.
At that level, we were below the level of Lake Michigan. He told us that a lot of care had been taken to make sure no water could get into the sub-basements when they were built about 7-8 years ago. Also, due to the biology labs and such, there's a lot of alcohol down there. In case there's an explosion of that alcohol, there are huge reinforced tubes going up to the ground outside the museum which will channel the explosive force up and out into the air and keep the museum from exploding.
Then he took us into the large fossil storage room. He'd taken E and I (and others) on a private tour through this space before. The kids all loved touching actual fossils of animals like brachiosaurus and camarasaurus. Then he took us around the shelves and shelves of fossils. He showed us the gray research cast of Sue's skeleton. He explained the first cast taken of the bones is the research copy because it still has so much detail on it. Also, they make it out of gray plastic as opposed to the brown because visually it retains far more information. Then we continued on and E was looking at one of the big handles on the side of a shelf. Jim said "I know what you're thinking, E, go ahead and turn it." She did so and it turned easily, moving the shelf and letting us get into the space between it and the next shelf. He asked E how old she was and she answered six. He said to everyone, "Everyone, E here is 6 years old and weighs...how much does she weigh, dad?" I answered and he said, "E here weighs 54 pounds and is right now moving about 3,000 pounds worth of fossils. He explained that a lot of the fossils still in their field jackets are left from the 1920's or even earlier. This is because back then, museums were looking for the big, flashy, complete skeletons to put on display. So the individual bones and smaller pieces are still sitting on shelves. About 10 years ago they started opening some of these old fossils and even as recently as a couple years ago, they managed to discover a whole new dinosaur, so they're even making new dinosaur discoveries in their own basement!
At that point, he took us back out to the main public areas and said goodbye, making a special point to say goodbye to E and I by name. We headed back up to the main museum level where workshops were going on. First we made an origami butterfly (with working flapping wings!), and then we cut out a butterfly from construction paper and used pipe cleaners for antennae. We also checked out the fossil table and impressed the staff member behind the table with E's knowledge of what makes a dinosaur and what doesn't.
Then it was snack time. Apple juice, chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, and an apple. I would have been happier with water as a drink choice, but other than the drinking fountains, I realized there's nothing unsweetened to buy in the museum. They need more healthier drink choices. Anyway, I dropped my apple and it rolled across the floor which was being walked on by hundreds of people, so I tossed it, since there was no nearby place to clean it off...not that I think a water shower would have disinfected it from whatever people had walked in. Right afterward, we found one of those machines that crushes pennies flat and she made one stamped with an apatosaurus in honor of the one we were going to be sleeping next to.
By this point, it was almost 9:00, which is when we were told we needed to get in line for the 9:15 showing of Dinosaurs Alive 3D! So we headed up and waited for it in line. We'd seen it once before, but the 3D really is pretty cool and E jumped at a couple of appropriate places, so it was fun for her too.
After the movie, it was times to head down to the main level for shopping! Well, maybe not really, but E and I both got Dozin' with the Dinos t-shirts and she got an iron-on patch as well. We took a trip up to drop off our purchases with our sleeping bags and other stuff, then headed down to the second round of workshops.
This time, E made a flip book of Sue walking which is pretty cool. We also went to a table where they would use stamps to make a cartouche of your name (spelled phonetically). E got one and I did as well and then, since the woman was so good and very fast, we got two more for C and D as well. We ducked behind the elephants on display so I could snap a quick pic with my phone to email to D for her to see E with her cartouche.
Once again we headed upstairs to drop off our swag. We were getting pretty familiar with the Evolving Planet exhibit, having gone through it so many times! We went out the other side, seeing all the ice age animals and hominids this time, taking our time going through it. After all of this, it was approaching 10:30. Every time we had another event coming up, I would tell E what time it was and ask her if she knew what was coming up next. I must have asked her this seven or eight times. And every single time she answered "Lights out?" It was pretty funny. I think she was fearing it being time for lights out already. But I figured if she ever went from being afraid of it being lights out to seeming eager for it, then it was time for bed.
At 10:30 we were waiting around outside the Evolving Planet because they were going to turn off all the lights in the exhibit and you got to walk through it lighting your way with only your flashlights! It was pretty awesome, though I have to admit a model or two looked pretty freaky lit by nothing but flashlights! The ancient Egypt exhibit also turned off all the lights and you could walk through that as well. Once with finished with Evolving Planet, I asked E if she wanted to go see the ancient Egypt exhibit. No, she told me, she wanted to do Evolving Planet again. Hey, it was her night, so in we went again. We actually went through the exhibit three times using just our flashlights!
Finally though, it was 11:00 and it was time for story time down by Sue. A girl was sitting on what was obviously (to me) an amplifier, since she was wearing a headset. She told some creation myths from the Pacific northwest, South America, a fable from Africa and we only caught the tail end of a story about a giant who thought his house was haunted from the Philippines. Then I figured that it was about 11:30, so it was time for bed, right?
Wrong. E wasn't ready for bed yet, so we grabbed the sheet of paper I brought with us with the lyrics to a song on it. It's from a TV show called Dinosaur Train, and this song is a dinosaur alphabet song. They have a dinosaur name for every letter of the alphabet in it. E and I walked around through Evolving Planet trying to see how many of the dinosaurs listed in the song we could actually find in the museum. The search took us back and forth all throughout the exhibit one more time. Finally I said it was time for us to head to bed.
We got back and settled in for the night, getting pillows all set, fine-tuning the firmness of the air mattress and tucking all our valuables away. E said she wished she had a book to read (she always reads when she goes to bed) and I just happened to have a brand new book we bought her for this very occasion. I dug out the book and she read it by flashlight in the dinosaur hall, then laid down to sleep.
It was an amazingly restful sleep. I honestly thought it would be worse. I don't know, maybe for the people around me it was bad, because I know I can snore pretty bad sometimes, though I didn't get any dirty looks, so who knows? I managed to wake up, find my cell phone and finally fumble it on by 6:30am. E woke up about the same time and, climbing out of her sleeping bag, climbed up on a windowsill and watched the sun rising up over Lake Michigan. I got a couple pics of her and of the sunrise and had to admit it was pretty. We made our way out of the exhibit to visit the restroom and realized the lights in the exhibit were still out. After the second corner, the morning sunlight no longer helped and it was VERY dark. E said, "Oooh! I wish we'd thought to bring our flashlights!" Well, I had thought to bring my flashlight, so I pulled it out and flipped it on, making for a very happy little girl. After taking care of business, we came back to our sleep area. I started deflating the air mattress and while I did, they turned the lights back on and all the video displays came on as well. E asked to go watch videos and I let her while I folded everything up and packed it in my sea bag.
We set our things in a neat pile and headed down to the lower level area to have breakfast. We ate frosted mini wheat cereal and E also had a blueberry muffin, though she didn't finish either one. I had the cereal, a bagel with cream cheese and a banana. We also had orange juice to drink, though it wasn't fantastic, so we stole a cup from the coffee line and filled it at a drinking fountain so we could have water. After that we headed back upstairs to get our stuff, stopping to look at displays and for E to watch a how-to video on becoming a fossil. Then, after hoisting the sea bag onto my back and getting on her light jacket, we headed out into the brilliant morning sunshine in downtown Chicago.
This was an experience I wouldn't trade for the world. It was wonderful, awesome, and through the eyes of a six year old girl, it was truly magical.
We brought our stuff to the room we were designated to sleep in. Where was that? In the Hall of Dinosaurs! How awesome is that?! We were able to actually pick any place in the Evolving Planet exhibit to set up camp, but we chose one of the outer walkways, near some windows and also near the Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus fossils. We laid our stuff out at first, but I didn't unfold our air mattress completely, just long enough that you could tell how much space we needed along the wall. I didn't want to inflate it right away because the hall is open to everyone there until 12:30 am!
So orientation was at 6:30, so it being 6:25 by this point already, we headed downstairs to the ground floor (two BIG stories down) and to the far west side of the museum (our sleeping space was on the far eastern side of the middle upper floor). We got there, changed seats once so E could be in the middle of the theater and settled in for orientation and to watch the informative slideshow (did you know The Field Museum only has about 1% of its collections on display? The rest is in storage, mostly in the basement, the sub-basement and the sub-sub-basement). But at any rate, it got to be 6:40 without orientation starting and I really had to use the restroom. That and we had a guided tour that was going to happen at 7:00 back up by where our sleeping bags were!
So we decided to leave the theater and I hoped that I could play the evening by ear. Turns out I have a pretty good ear. We stopped by some lower-level restrooms, then headed upstairs. We dropped off some stuff by our sleeping bags and walked around trying to figure out exactly where we were supposed to meet. While walking near the front, I saw Jim Holstein, a geologist on staff at the museum and someone I'm acquainted with. He was inside the fossil prep lab. He came out and said hi to us, recognizing us and knowing E and I by name. Coolness. Even better? Turns out, he was the one who was going to be giving us the tour! He joked that E had already seen all this on a private tour he'd given us a few months ago.
So we waited around and chatted with one of the Field Museum's fossil preparators until everyone showed up for the tour. First we went into the fossil prep lab where he joked and quizzed the kids about dinosaurs, showing us all the tools they use to chip rocks off the fossils. He also showed lots of the fossils they've worked on and how he cleaned off a fossil fish (hint: it took 80 acid baths and over 8 months). A highlight for me, personally, was he asked me to grab a fossil out from under a microscope I was a couple steps away from and I held it up for the kids to look at while he talked about it. Sweet! On our way out of the lab, he pointed out their a piece of prehistoric coprolite (look it up).
Then we got taken upstairs to the level where most of the researchers have their offices and original laboratories and libraries. As Jim said, the museum is just a big library of dead things. He showed off a pelvis in one lab and in another showed us the travel mold of Sue the T. rex's skull. Then we took a freight elevator down to the main level, then stairs down into the sub-sub-basement.
At that level, we were below the level of Lake Michigan. He told us that a lot of care had been taken to make sure no water could get into the sub-basements when they were built about 7-8 years ago. Also, due to the biology labs and such, there's a lot of alcohol down there. In case there's an explosion of that alcohol, there are huge reinforced tubes going up to the ground outside the museum which will channel the explosive force up and out into the air and keep the museum from exploding.
Then he took us into the large fossil storage room. He'd taken E and I (and others) on a private tour through this space before. The kids all loved touching actual fossils of animals like brachiosaurus and camarasaurus. Then he took us around the shelves and shelves of fossils. He showed us the gray research cast of Sue's skeleton. He explained the first cast taken of the bones is the research copy because it still has so much detail on it. Also, they make it out of gray plastic as opposed to the brown because visually it retains far more information. Then we continued on and E was looking at one of the big handles on the side of a shelf. Jim said "I know what you're thinking, E, go ahead and turn it." She did so and it turned easily, moving the shelf and letting us get into the space between it and the next shelf. He asked E how old she was and she answered six. He said to everyone, "Everyone, E here is 6 years old and weighs...how much does she weigh, dad?" I answered and he said, "E here weighs 54 pounds and is right now moving about 3,000 pounds worth of fossils. He explained that a lot of the fossils still in their field jackets are left from the 1920's or even earlier. This is because back then, museums were looking for the big, flashy, complete skeletons to put on display. So the individual bones and smaller pieces are still sitting on shelves. About 10 years ago they started opening some of these old fossils and even as recently as a couple years ago, they managed to discover a whole new dinosaur, so they're even making new dinosaur discoveries in their own basement!
At that point, he took us back out to the main public areas and said goodbye, making a special point to say goodbye to E and I by name. We headed back up to the main museum level where workshops were going on. First we made an origami butterfly (with working flapping wings!), and then we cut out a butterfly from construction paper and used pipe cleaners for antennae. We also checked out the fossil table and impressed the staff member behind the table with E's knowledge of what makes a dinosaur and what doesn't.
Then it was snack time. Apple juice, chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, and an apple. I would have been happier with water as a drink choice, but other than the drinking fountains, I realized there's nothing unsweetened to buy in the museum. They need more healthier drink choices. Anyway, I dropped my apple and it rolled across the floor which was being walked on by hundreds of people, so I tossed it, since there was no nearby place to clean it off...not that I think a water shower would have disinfected it from whatever people had walked in. Right afterward, we found one of those machines that crushes pennies flat and she made one stamped with an apatosaurus in honor of the one we were going to be sleeping next to.
By this point, it was almost 9:00, which is when we were told we needed to get in line for the 9:15 showing of Dinosaurs Alive 3D! So we headed up and waited for it in line. We'd seen it once before, but the 3D really is pretty cool and E jumped at a couple of appropriate places, so it was fun for her too.
After the movie, it was times to head down to the main level for shopping! Well, maybe not really, but E and I both got Dozin' with the Dinos t-shirts and she got an iron-on patch as well. We took a trip up to drop off our purchases with our sleeping bags and other stuff, then headed down to the second round of workshops.
This time, E made a flip book of Sue walking which is pretty cool. We also went to a table where they would use stamps to make a cartouche of your name (spelled phonetically). E got one and I did as well and then, since the woman was so good and very fast, we got two more for C and D as well. We ducked behind the elephants on display so I could snap a quick pic with my phone to email to D for her to see E with her cartouche.
Once again we headed upstairs to drop off our swag. We were getting pretty familiar with the Evolving Planet exhibit, having gone through it so many times! We went out the other side, seeing all the ice age animals and hominids this time, taking our time going through it. After all of this, it was approaching 10:30. Every time we had another event coming up, I would tell E what time it was and ask her if she knew what was coming up next. I must have asked her this seven or eight times. And every single time she answered "Lights out?" It was pretty funny. I think she was fearing it being time for lights out already. But I figured if she ever went from being afraid of it being lights out to seeming eager for it, then it was time for bed.
At 10:30 we were waiting around outside the Evolving Planet because they were going to turn off all the lights in the exhibit and you got to walk through it lighting your way with only your flashlights! It was pretty awesome, though I have to admit a model or two looked pretty freaky lit by nothing but flashlights! The ancient Egypt exhibit also turned off all the lights and you could walk through that as well. Once with finished with Evolving Planet, I asked E if she wanted to go see the ancient Egypt exhibit. No, she told me, she wanted to do Evolving Planet again. Hey, it was her night, so in we went again. We actually went through the exhibit three times using just our flashlights!
Finally though, it was 11:00 and it was time for story time down by Sue. A girl was sitting on what was obviously (to me) an amplifier, since she was wearing a headset. She told some creation myths from the Pacific northwest, South America, a fable from Africa and we only caught the tail end of a story about a giant who thought his house was haunted from the Philippines. Then I figured that it was about 11:30, so it was time for bed, right?
Wrong. E wasn't ready for bed yet, so we grabbed the sheet of paper I brought with us with the lyrics to a song on it. It's from a TV show called Dinosaur Train, and this song is a dinosaur alphabet song. They have a dinosaur name for every letter of the alphabet in it. E and I walked around through Evolving Planet trying to see how many of the dinosaurs listed in the song we could actually find in the museum. The search took us back and forth all throughout the exhibit one more time. Finally I said it was time for us to head to bed.
We got back and settled in for the night, getting pillows all set, fine-tuning the firmness of the air mattress and tucking all our valuables away. E said she wished she had a book to read (she always reads when she goes to bed) and I just happened to have a brand new book we bought her for this very occasion. I dug out the book and she read it by flashlight in the dinosaur hall, then laid down to sleep.
It was an amazingly restful sleep. I honestly thought it would be worse. I don't know, maybe for the people around me it was bad, because I know I can snore pretty bad sometimes, though I didn't get any dirty looks, so who knows? I managed to wake up, find my cell phone and finally fumble it on by 6:30am. E woke up about the same time and, climbing out of her sleeping bag, climbed up on a windowsill and watched the sun rising up over Lake Michigan. I got a couple pics of her and of the sunrise and had to admit it was pretty. We made our way out of the exhibit to visit the restroom and realized the lights in the exhibit were still out. After the second corner, the morning sunlight no longer helped and it was VERY dark. E said, "Oooh! I wish we'd thought to bring our flashlights!" Well, I had thought to bring my flashlight, so I pulled it out and flipped it on, making for a very happy little girl. After taking care of business, we came back to our sleep area. I started deflating the air mattress and while I did, they turned the lights back on and all the video displays came on as well. E asked to go watch videos and I let her while I folded everything up and packed it in my sea bag.
We set our things in a neat pile and headed down to the lower level area to have breakfast. We ate frosted mini wheat cereal and E also had a blueberry muffin, though she didn't finish either one. I had the cereal, a bagel with cream cheese and a banana. We also had orange juice to drink, though it wasn't fantastic, so we stole a cup from the coffee line and filled it at a drinking fountain so we could have water. After that we headed back upstairs to get our stuff, stopping to look at displays and for E to watch a how-to video on becoming a fossil. Then, after hoisting the sea bag onto my back and getting on her light jacket, we headed out into the brilliant morning sunshine in downtown Chicago.
This was an experience I wouldn't trade for the world. It was wonderful, awesome, and through the eyes of a six year old girl, it was truly magical.