DAY SEVEN – 14 SEPTEMBER 2013:
We checked out of the hotel, and
had our last breakfast at “The Egg and I.” Again, this is a chain based
out of Colorado
(and I like to frequent local or regional places), I can’t beat finding a place
with good food and atmosphere. That makes it worthwhile. Thank you
very to General Manager Athena Huff for having such a nice location, and
friendly staff! Hobby Airport
When I came this way last week, it
was difficult to tell if this section of the Sam Houston Tollway would be
closed on the westbound side. Today it was. Yeah, it took some
extra time, but that didn’t bother me, because it would bring me closer to when
the doors would open at my first destination of the day. I didn’t really
want to drive in the center of Houston
(as I wanted to relax on vacation), so there were things in their Museum
District I wanted to see which would skip this trip. I’ll hit those on a
return visit, when someone else does the driving or has to worry about parking.
I swung westward (on Highway 59)
long before I’d even gotten near IH-10 (at Katy) and headed towards the city of
Sugar Land Austin around dusk), that
would be pretty good. Sugar
Land
When I came in to pay for my admission,
I was asked if I was part of the “seminar” going on today. Uh, no, I’m
just visiting as a representative of the Austin Planetarium. Hey, I’m not
looking for any discounts or anything, but I’ll take any opportunity to spread
the word.
The first floor contained the gift
shop (obviously), a large section on various types of gem stones, and an area
which could be rented out for birthday parties. Okay, that’s one way to
bring people into the museum, although I’m not sure how much learning actually
goes on then. There was also a T. Rex skeleton dominating the floor.
I liked looking at all the stones,
as it reminded me of when I went to Nature’s Treasures (in Austin ). I placed a museum brochure in
the shots as I took them, only to be able to have something to gauge size. This piece of copper was the size of a
keyboard…
…and this piece of quartz would
easily fill a knapsack. Good luck at trying to carry it.
A lot of people had come into for a
birthday party, as well as this mysterious “seminar” (which no one tell me what
it was about), so I pretty much had the place to myself. I could hear the
birthday party in the other wing, but it wasn’t annoying in any way.
I worked my way up to the second
floor, where the space science and paleontology exhibits were. There were
some hands-on displays, and large portraits of various locations within the
universe (from the immense space of the Local Group of galaxies, down to our
own Solar System). The first thing I headed was their version of the
Discovery Dome (like what Austin Planetarium uses), so I could enjoy a show
before things got too potentially crazy. The presentation was called “Ice
Worlds,” and dealt with both the “snowball” period in Earth’s ancient past, and
the cold moons of the gas giants.
Their dome sat higher than what we
have, and had nice folding chairs set up. There was a set schedule of a
program every half-hour (and not the same one repeated). There was no
“interactive” portion to have the night sky described, or specific visible
stars or planets pointed out (like what we do, or what Mayborn or Schenectady
Planetariums had). I thought that was a feature which should be a
commonly-used fixture in any planetarium show.
While I probably could’ve sat there
all day to see shows, I wanted to explore the rest of the museum first.
Perhaps I’ll catch another one before I go, as this place was smaller
than I expected it to be (and obviously wouldn’t take me as long to go through
it).
A couple items here which I found
interesting was a sliver of an asteroid “older than Earth” (called the Allende
Meteorite), and a rock which was said to have come from Mars. Still being
allowed to “touch” them was pretty neat. And that was pretty much it for
the space science section. Keeping in
mind this was an extension of a larger museum that was understandable. I
still would’ve liked some more items to check out.
I went over to the paleontology
section. This started off with some skeletons, which included the pretty
recent giant ground sloth (called an eremotherium)…
…to a triceratops. This wing
was designed so you started in the last Ice Age, and the further down the hall
you went, the further back in time you were taken. After where the
skeletons were (in the time line of the planet), it was now the epochs prior to
the Age of Dinosaurs.
These sections had various fossils
of plants, insects, and other critters. Of course one the most frequently
found critters are the trilobites, as they had a rather long reign in the
geologic record. Each of the fossils had an informational card, and the
displays were broken up by specific ages all the way back to the Cambrian
Explosion. You get any further back than that, and it becomes tough to
locate fossils because of the way the Earth’s surface has changed over billions
of years.
Part of checking out the museum was
also to see how they do things, lay out the exhibits, and such, as part of
research and information gathering for when the Austin Planetarium opens its
doors. Anything which can be done to contribute to the creation of a
“world class planetarium, museum & technology center” (part of our tagline)
is useful. A quick scope of the gift
shop was included in that. As part of
the museum at Sugar
Land
Leaving the museum, I worked my way
a little more to the west towards Fort
Bend , as my map mentioned a “Fort Bend
Museum Grand Parkway
(route 99). I drove around the area where I was marked to be, and saw no
sign of it (or that it had been there). I just figured that must’ve been
like the “Forbidden
Gardens
Since there was nothing to see
there, I shot back towards 99, and got a few speedy miles under my belt …
before I run into some construction zones. This section was currently
being expanded to make it a four-lane highway, and it slowed my journey, but
not significantly so. They do need to have a nice ramp to be able to go
west on the Katy Freeway (like they do to go east), as waiting through a stop
light for that was annoying. I cruised along IH-10, and now knew if I was
going to go directly to Austin , I’d need to pick
up 71 at Columbus (which would take me through Bastrop ). Because I
had a lot of the day left, I opted for my “Plan B.”
For more information on the places visited or mentioned:
Houston
Museum of Science at Sugar
Land
Allende
Meteorite: http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/featured_objects/AllendeMeteorite.html
George
Observatory: http://www.hmns.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=107&Itemid=115
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