Natural History Museum, Providence Rhode Island

And I’m back with another great CHEAP museum! Only $2 for admission! Unless you wanted to splurge and buy a planetarium ticket of course. We would have but it’s only open certain days and times which didn’t happen to be when we showed up.

Today’s destination had been chosen not just because it was free but because it was the home of a very unfortunate lioness and her cubs which… I’m honestly not certain they weren’t horrifically deformed prairie dogs. Such is the guesswork that goes into bad taxidermy.

But before we even got to the museum we first had to find it near the Roger William’s Zoo which… consider this the afterlife for random zoo animals and wildlife. The parking lot wasn’t very big and only had one tiny entrance that if you missed it you’d literally have to loop around the entire goddamn block to get back to it. Ask me how I figured that out!

It was surprisingly bustling. We were met by a clerk who told us if we wanted there were several treasure hunts we could enjoy, which were usually for kids but came in three levels of challenge. We’re big kids at heart so we each took one sheet with our questions, a clip board, and a tiny pencil. I haven’t written in pencil in decades. And between the fact it was a pencil and barely big enough to hold my hand writing came off as quite serial killer-esque. No matter I had the hardest treasure hunt and I was going to complete it!

The treasure hunt paper told us which room worth of displays each question’s answer could be found it so it was mostly easy peasy pudding and pie.

First off we had the dinosaurs because… well they deserve to always be the first thing you see as they’re awesome. There was the obligatory T-rex skull (complete with janky teeth!) Some dinosaur egg shells and for reasons I’ll never understand a marble statue of a beautiful woman and her baby.

The wildlife room was next and filled to the brim with taxidermy coming from all skill levels! The perfect ones were lovely but I was most endeared to the ones who looked like they were melting and malformed including one morbidly obese squirrel I’m positive got that way eating cosmic brownies. He just had that look. This room was just local wildlife but other parts of the museum had everything from a polar bear, to a koala that looked like a crumpled bit of fuzzy newspaper, to the aforementioned lioness who was the coup d’etat of bad taxidermy, Jesus Christ was that something.

But my favorite bit of taxidermy was the kakapo, otherwise known as the world’s chonkiest parrot. So fat it can’t even fly. I laughed and then sadly sighed because this parrot was the same kind that was featured on that Stephan Fry nature documentary that went from a sweet segment about a nearly extinct parrot to some poor bastard getting savagely humped for 15 minutes while Fry and crew just laughed. It’s here if you need a chuckle today. My sigh was because I’d recently had an out with the friend who would have known why this particular specimen was so funny.

But anyway, parrots with no grasp of consent aside, this museum also had a section for all things outer space, a room of curious bark textiles, more taxidermy, and a geology room with a map of Rhode Island and what it’d look like if all the ice caps melted. RIP Providence, Newport, and most of the rest of the state. May you sleep sound with the fishies. Amen.

This was a happy fun little museum if you happen to be in the area or are coming back from the zoo and are wondering what those animals look like stuffed.

April 26, 2025 0

Beneski Natural History Museum – Amherst Massachussetts

You know with the economy crashing as badly as it has been I have a feeling more of y’all will be joining me in finding the best FREE entertainment New England has to offer! On this particular day it was the Beneski Natural History Museum attached to the university in Amherst Massachusetts.

This is one of the things I love about New England is their colleges and universities are usually quite proud to share their discoveries and collections with people, even people who do not attend said institutions, which is great because even though I was once academically inclined I now do not have a cent to give towards such lofty endeavors but that doesn’t mean my love for the sciences has waned.

The Natural History Museum is attached to an active science building. There are classes going on in the back but there’s pretty rocks in the hallway just outside said classrooms to enjoy if you’re quiet. I was hoping to eavesdrop on a paleontology lecture as I was surrounded by the aforementioned pretty rocks but instead my eyes glassed over at the sound of someone trying to make unsolvable math problems exciting in two different classrooms. Math. It’s never liked me and I never liked it. But the rocks were cool… there was even a display on rocks and minerals found here in New England and I had NO IDEA were here but now I’ll be looking! And the variety… my god, I’d never heard of most of these little earth treasures.

However I didnt swing by today to tell you about hallways, the main part of the museum was probaly more notable! It had more fossils than anything. Most of the big displays were brought back during one exhibition the college hosted in the 1920’s when all you needed was a $100 car, a pick ax, and a vague destination out west somewhere. The colorful details if this story were everywhere to be read and enjoyed.

But there were also drawers, so many drawers! Each just asking to be opened with all sorts of fun stuff… everything from trilobites to turtle fossils. My favorite displays included an Irish elk, two beautiful archapteryx complete with fossilized feathers, and a sea scorpion which is the state fossil of New York. Also the basement which had dinosaur tracks and dinosaur skin imprints lining all the walls.

And since I seem to be writing this entry backwards I will say the exhibits in the entry were very well displayed and even included a cute little dinosaur I’d never heard of and the school’s mascot: the mighty mastodon. A very excitable student greeted us and told us to ask any questions we had. I didn’t ask anything but I did learn the US used to have tiny camels running around and there’s a rock called wulfinite that’s is a gorgeous orange…

I guess that’s where I’ll leave you until tomorrow when I’ll tell you where we walked from here.

April 24, 2025 0

National Petrified Forest – Arizona

I didn’t know what to expect from the National Petrified Forest. I knew I wouldn’t be walking into a bunch of trees, then again, maybe these trees were really scared.

I drove into the gift shop first. It was not actually in the park but outside of it. This place was a huge gift shop filled with every sort of fossil, mineral, rock, and shiny thing you could have ever asked for, all at double the prices as Sedona. Still, they had neat things like marbles, (for $4 per marble…) and lots and lots of petrified wood in every variation…. Big pieces, little pieces, polished pieces, rough pieces, pieces with bark, slices, giant slices made into tables, whole segments of tree, and in every color and series of colors under the sun. I looked around and walked out again.

I drove on to the Petrified Forest, paying $10 for the Jeep. I was told not to take any of the petrified wood and given flyers stating that taking any would result in $375 fine and that they could search our cars. Its just as well, most of the pieces lying on the ground here were enormous stump-sized chunks. You couldn’t drag one of those off without a forklift. It was basically a field of these shiny pretty rocks lying dead on the ground. There were paths weaving in and out you couldn’t leave. All and all it was rather unimpressive. I returned to the gift shop and bought a few tiny colorful pieces, both rough and polished. I left realizing the gift store was far more impressive than the actual forest (not to mention it had a virtual graveyard of geodes in the back, I mean thousands upon thousands of the suckers all thrown in giant piles.) It was interesting, and I was rewarded by seeing a teeny tiny jackrabbit baby springing away from me. Real cutie. SIGH.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

June 3, 2011 0

Meteor Crater – Arizona

Alright, this time I was guilty of seeing a sign and going, “let’s go!” It’s not my fault though, as it was something I wanted to see, just something I had completely forgotten about. Apparently Arizona is the home to one of the most well preserved meteor craters on the globe. It’s 50,000 years old and absolutely huge. I paid $15 to see it and peruse their little museum. That was a bit pricey but whatever. Might as well see it now I’m here.

The place was huge, I walked around it on the little concrete steps and tried to grasp the enormity of it all. It was so wide I had to take two photos, one of each side, in order to get the whole thing. There were little periscopes labeled with different things. I looked through the one that said “house sized rock” and indeed, on the other side there was a house sized rock. They claimed the meteor that hit was 140 feet in width when it struck.

As with any of these attractions it was full of children. I didn’t stay long but it was very neat.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

June 3, 2011 0