Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Keeping History Alive!

During our time in Ohio, Pris and I had pretty full days of visiting family and friends and dealing with the business end of things, which didn't leave as much time as we'd hoped for visiting actual sites. Luckily, we did manage to squeeze in an afternoon at the Natural History Museum, no doubt my favorite in Cleveland, though there's definitely no shortage of other museums in the area. If you have more time than us, you might want to add a few more hours and check out the Art Museum and Botanical Gardens right within a few minutes walk of the Natural History Museum.

The highlights of the museum are always the same for me, so a good 2/3 of our pictures were taken in the dinosaur and animal exhibits, but there are also rooms dedicated to geology, space, gemstones and the like, so you can definitely spend a few hours wandering, very worth the $10USD entrance fee.

(this beauty greets you right at the entrance)

There's one other pretty interesting (and hard to miss) exhibit permanently showing in the museum worth a look at, called the Foucault Pendulum. Used to visibly demonstrate the Earth's rotation, the pendulum makes a complete turn every 36 hours, so if you're willing to stand around a few minutes to watch you'll see a few dominoes falling over which the staff constantly has to put back standing. 

(we're way too restless for that though, so we didn't see anything fall)

Although I may be biased, I'd wager the best exhibit is the dinosaur room, by far. The museum puts up a good show with plenty of life sized models and a few rare artifacts to boot. If you're not interested in the shifting of tectonic plates or soil, this room alone makes the whole trip worth it, and is pretty much the reason we chose this museum as our only stop of the sort, since both Pris and I have a soft spot for old bones.

Alright, the more recent animal room is pretty likely to impress as well. But c'mon, look at that gorgeous beast up there.

(yeah it's nice looking, but there's no t-rex here)

I'm afraid to say we more or less breezed through the rest of the exhibits, because as interesting as natural history is, we just can't spend long looking at soil samples and gemstones.

(a little peace offering to those who do like this stuff)

All in all, it was a nice relaxing way to spend an afternoon considering most of the rest of our trip we barely had time to breathe. Just be thankful we haven't given into the temptation to talk all about all the great US foods we brought back. (...yet.)