Union Station charges for parking, so I parked at Crown Center figuring we'd walk the habitrail over. I saw the sign for the Fairy Tale Village at Crown Center, so we checked that out too.
It wasn't as cool as, say, the Lego thing they did awhile back, but it was neat. Geared to kids younger than mine, really.
Coming into Union Station we met a dinosaur that turned out to be motion activated. When the girls got in front of it for a picture it came to life and menaced them. They weren't scared, but I saw a toddler who shrieked and burst into tears.
Dinosaur at Union Station from Chixulub on Vimeo.
Science City was cool. Not as crowded as it was when we were there on St. Patrick's Day. I wanted to ride the tight wire bike, but even when I was a senior in high school, I'd have been over the weight limit.
We learned that neither Em nor I are instrument ratable to land a Space Shuttle even on the easiest simulator setting.
We also sucked at mini-golf. And after Em easily defeated her sister and was all cocky about whether I could avenge the loss, I cleaned her clock, took her to checkers school. First time I'd played in probably 30 years, so I'm glad I was able to pull it off since she was talking smack.
I got weighed and measured by sonar, and I gotta recommend it, it's totally the best way to get this done. It put an inch on my real height, presumably because of shoes, but the part that rocked was it took almost 70 pounds off my real weight. I'm apparently dense or big boned or something because when I stood on the feet, even when I tried to puff myself up, it refused to put my weight over 215 lbs (and at that weight, for some reason, it shrunk me an inch to my actual height).
The best thing we found at Science City, though, was the tilted room. You lay on a bed and look at a white spot on the 'ceiling' then one on the 'wall' and then look at the bookshelf over your head, and when you then look back at, say, your kids standing at the foot of the bed it really seems like they're walking on the freakin' wall. Very disorienting.
When the girls both got on this bed to do it, when Mo started looking at me I jumped and she cracked up.
Out a window I spotted a steam locomotive and passenger cars. I think I saw this same train about 15 years ago when Union Pacific was running it coast to coast full of bigwigs. I just happened to be driving along K-32 by the tracks and there were all these people pulled over and out of their cars, waiting for it. I waited too, and was rewarded with the sight of this thing hauling ass and belching smoke. Environmentally, I'm sure it's right up their with an oil well fire, but as a spectacle it's probably on a par with a KISS concert.
The tour of it turned out to be a separate, $7 ticket (I discovered after we accidentally toured the model train exhibit trying to get to this). $21 for the three of us and twenty minutes until it closed? Not happening. I did drive by and get a shot of the locomotive. Learned, too, that it pulls out at 8:00 Tuesday morning, which makes me think I need to work out an arrangement with my boss so I can be downtown to see it off. It's such a rare and remarkable sight, if I can swing it, I promise to post video.
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