The following day Mark went to his CIBM conference while Natalie and I explored the Zoo and Botanical Gardens. While I normally don't like seeing the larger animals in the zoo, I did like many of the newer exhibits. Everything is very informative with Q/A areas, skeletons and wonderfully creative exibits. Natalie really liked one interesting exhibit which housed snakes in artistic surroundings- some of the snakes were housed with bright red pots to complement their beautiful patterns. Others had rebar and other creative structures to hang from. We greatly enjoyed the dolphin show- the trainers used 6 bottle-nosed dolphins for the entire show and greatly soaked the splash zone. It was really interesting to learn all about bottle-nosed dolphins and their great intelligence. At the end we talked to one very nice trainer who told us it is a tough competition to be hired as a trainer- most have bachelor degrees in psychology and some area of biology.
After a bit of lunch in the zoo cafe, we ventured into the desert area :) and got to feed a giraffe some sweat potato. Didn't realize that their purple tongues were so long- they were very nice. We also had a nice talk with a lady from the tropical bird section- some of their birds were rescued and each definately had their own personality. As we were walking back through the park I noticed a family of ring-tail lemmers, mark's favorite and picked up a small fluffy, stuffed ring-tailed friend from the giftshop named Lary.
Right next door was the Botanical Gardens and they were having a butterfly exhibit. Natalie and I found a good portion of the displayed butterflies hanging and floating all around the conservatory. Outside we were beautifully manacured zones. There were lofty arbors next to cragy rocks holding water for feathered friends. Appropriately surrounding a beautiful green lawn was bridal veil hanging from a sturdy pergola. There were many frog and tortise sculptures all throughout the landscape and some beautiful sunken gardens with a little train traveling down one side. One interesting feature appeared as a large stone gobblet filled with fine white sand. In each of the four corners surrounding the goblet, there were embosed balls on pedestals- one for every season. The object was to roll the ball of the current season around in the pristine sand and watch the pattern created- Natalie made a beautiful summer pattern.
After a short rest and a bit of Apples to Apples, we met up with an old friend of Burr and Natalie's and some of the visiting AI guys and headed out to the Rock Bottom Brewery. It was amazing that almost every dish had some kind of beer in it. Mark had a lovely portabella pizza and I had a stew with beer gravy. On the way back to the car we saw one of the many monuments in Indianapolis. This one was circular and celebrated the heros of WWII- the amazing bit was that all of the surrounding buildings were also convex with a matching curvature of the statue. Some of these bulidings also organized their office windows to reflect the American flag at night.
On the next day, June 10th, Natalie and I ventured to the Art Center. It is very well known and supported by artists, if you live within 250miles of the building you can have a show there (if you are a member), unfortunately madison is over 300 miles away). It was really niced to see all of the classrooms and the beautiful library. There were many exibits displaying children's work. Next we traveled to the Museum of Art which was under heavy construction. So instead of Art exhibits we saw the botanical section. We saw many native prairie flowers and we identified the beautiful African daisy I have seen all over this summer. Next we wandered through the 3 greenhouses of plants and were happy to see so many tropicals- even a citrus tree.
After meeting up with our husbands we headed to the famous Indianapolis Children's Museum. As soon as you walk in you see the gigantic water clock filled with royal blue water. Fortunately we arrived at noon and got to see the draining of the clock. One interesting room talked all about money. Mark tried his hand at owning a lemonade stand. We were interested to see one artistic exhibit where the artist travels to different countries and asks a family in each country to take all of their belongings out of their house and stand amongst them. There was also a beautiful puppet exhibit on the top floor where we all relived some of the earlier Muppet days. After wandering around the 4 floors of exhibits we went to the planetarium and got a nice tutorial on finding constilations in the sky.
After such a long and event day we split-up and headed home. Unfortunately more adventures were ahead of us as we drove back in constant (and sometimes blinding) rain and tornadoes spotted all around us. Needless to say, it was great to be back in Madison again!
