It's a New Day in Vegas

There was not so much as a cup of tea served to guests at the Palms Place, so we found a great restaurant for breakfast and then went in search of what we actually came to Vegas for:  a museum.

Let's see what there is to choose from...

Carroll Shelby Museum
Atomic Testing Museum
Boulder City - Hoover Dam Museum
Bruno's Indian Museum
Clark County Heritage Museum
Imperial Palace Auto Collection
Las Vegas Natural History Museum
The Mob Museum
Thunderbird Museum

Central Nevada Museum
Downtown Neon Gallery
Goldwell Open Air Museum
Las Vegas Art Museum (at UNLV)
Las Vegas Signs Project
Walker African-American Museum
Neon Museum
Nevada State Museum
Searchlight Museum

Think we can manage all of those in a single day?  AND take a trip through Red Rock Canyon on the way home?  Ahhhh, no.

So Granpa opts for the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, and we get there just as the doors open. Remember, Granpa still has the blues about losing his newest camera.  All he has is his poor old Olympus and my iPhone (because his Android based phone won't hold a charge.)

This puts me in mind of a story one of our sons tells of an owl coming down in the woods behind his house.  He and one of our grandsons were tiptoeing around trying to find it when some tiny movement almost under his foot caught his eye - and then the owl lifted off soundlessly and flew away.  Obviously, this guy was a fan of "stand your ground" and had no intention of flying off.  (At least that's how the taxidermist staged him.)  Owls pose like this to make predators think that they are larger than they are and scare them off.

We've talked many times about adding a peacock and some peahens to our menagerie back in Texas, but I hear they can be really, really mean and that they make a great deal of racket.  I suppose I will, however, forever mull the idea over in the back of my mind because they are so-o-o-o beautiful!



From a really large bird, we go to the smallest bird, a hummingbird.  They are also beautiful but totally unable to be domesticated.  I have see folks get them to land on their hands, but they should never be caged.  How large is that hummingbird nest and egg?  Well, compare it to the print on that name tag! February is when the hummingbirds start showing up in East Texas after their winter migration into Mexico.  Can't wait to get back there and hear them humming all around our porches!



The museum also had a section of aquariums full of live critters.  This one pretty much reflected what Granpa looked like:

We learned that toads (not frogs, toads) don't drink water through their mouths.  Instead, they absorb water through very thin skin on their lower abdomens called a seat patch.

There were had animated dinosaurs:

And animated hatching of dinosaur eggs - but they didn't make much noise, and it was kinda slow-motion stuff.

Now, we believe in Creationism, and I get pretty testy when folks try to explain away a worldwide flood - especially when we see evidence of sharks inhabiting what is now mountains in a desert.  But then again, I don't believe in global warming either.  How arrogant of mankind to think that their presence on this planet will kill it! And the fuss over cow flatulents creating too much carbon dioxide.  I'm thinkin' a brontosaurus put out a whole lot more flatulents than any cow ever did!  Ditto for volcanos, too!

There were also had live seahorses!  The light blue spot on the side of its neck is in fact a fin which is it's means of locomotion.  (See my blog post on the seahorse I saw, caught, released and video-taped in Kaua'i.  http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2011/08/monk-seals-and-seahorses.html )

And, for my friends Paul and Joann Steinfort, live snakes:

There were scads more things to see in here - and they were all wonderfully showcased - but they topped it off with none other than King Tut, who probably felt perfectly at home in the Nevada desert.

I wonder why emoticons are not available based on this hieroglyph decoding chart ...