Detroit Zoo

Despite living in Michigan for the better part of a decade, I’d never been to the Detroit Zoo. Nick and Margaret hadn’t been there in years either, so we spent a day at the zoo!

The Detroit Zoo is a bit bigger than Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. Detroit has about 3 times as many animals, but WPZ has more species.

Probably the coolest (ha ha, pun) exhibit at the Detroit Zoo is the Arctic Ring of Life, which opened in 2001. It is the largest polar bear exhibit in North America and is also a home for arctic foxes and seals. Visitors can walk through a large transparent underwater tunnel and watch the animals swim. Unfortunately, the polar bears were not cooperating while we were there! We didn’t get to see them at all!

I also liked the prairie dog exhibit. You can walk all the way around the exhibit and watch the prairie dogs burrow. Kids can go underneath and look out from inside two glass viewing areas in the middle of the exhibit.

I think everyone’s favorite were the rhinos, though. We don’t have any at Woodland Park Zoo and they are massive animals. Pretty cool to see in person.

See the rest of the photos in our Detroit Zoo album on Flickr.

Stahls Auto Museum

We also went to Stahls Auto Museum, which is a vintage car museum that opened a few years ago in Chesterfield.

Stahls has over 80 cars on display, the oldest being an 1886 Daimler prototype. The cars aren’t roped off, so visitors can go up to them and look inside. There are a few cars they let you climb inside, too.

The most expensive car in the museum is the 1948 Tucker Torpedo Sedan, which is worth about $3 million. Only 51 of these cars were ever produced. The car was in the 1988 Jeff Bridges movie, Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

At the front of the museum, there is also a collection of automated musical instruments from the early 20th century. A docent told us about the various instruments and played several of them for us.

There’s also a 1924 theater organ that an organist plays periodically. It has more than 1500 pipes, which are distributed throughout the museum. The biggest pipe is about 17 feet tall and the smallest pipe is smaller than a pencil. There is a video of the organ below:

If you Michiganders want to go, Stahls is open on Tuesdays 1-4 pm and the first Saturday of the month 11 am – 4 pm. Admission is free, but a donation is appreciated.

See the rest of the photos in our Stahls Auto Museum album on Flickr.

Bonus Photos

We had a fun project during our trip. A ceramic lawn gnome we had gotten for Margaret years ago had lost almost all of its color, so we chose new colors and painted him by hand. He turned out SO cute! His name is Marickine, an anagram of Nick and Marie.

When we got back from our trip, we stopped at my mom’s to see the litter of beagle puppies that had been born earlier that day. It’s Mom’s first litter in 6 years and, if you’re interested, you can read more about the litter on her blog.

With Donna

With Grandpa

With Marickine

With Marickine

Marickine

At Detroit Zoo

Teschi

At Stahls Auto Museum

Tiny and Puppies

Nick in front of an IBM 360

Microsoft partnership agreement

Original Macintosh; I used to use these in school

Playing Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe

We saw a couple write their names on punch cards on a really old computer. Nick had fun writing simple computer programs on an old IBM. I played Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe and Microsoft Bob on an old PC.

After the museum, we went to a little park on Beacon Hill. I took a few photos, but they didn’t turn out that great. I’ll just have to try again sometime! Here are the two best ones:

Dad with his MSBL tournament champion trophy

Here’s a quick update on what’s been going on. Neither of us have been feeling well and Nick stayed home sick for most of the week. There was a shooting at my cousin’s school, but thankfully he’s okay. Yesterday, there was a big windstorm in Western Washington with 50 mph winds. Nick and I lost power, but it only lasted an hour and I was prepared with plenty of candles. And in good news, my dad has been down in Arizona playing baseball and his team just won the 2014 MSBL World Series. Good job, Dad!

Last weekend, Nick and I went to the Museum of Flight. Located at Boeing Field, it is the largest private air and space museum in the world. The museum includes the 1909 wooden Red Barn that was Boeing’s original manufacturing plant.

In addition to the exhibits and hundreds of rare planes, you can also board Air Force One, the retired Concorde supersonic airliner, and the first 747 ever built. The space exhibits were my favorite parts of the museum. I really liked going in the ISS Discovery module mock-up and the NASA Shuttle fuselage trainer, as well as seeing a Soyuz descent module. I knew the Soyuz descent modules were tiny (just barely big enough to cram 3 astronauts/cosmonauts  inside), but seeing it in person was really neat. Nick’s favorite things were going in the Concorde and the gutted 747 (it really shows you how big the jumbo jet is when the inside is empty) and seeing the Soyuz descent module.

I took some photos while we were at the Museum of Flight, which are below. Some of them are kinda crappy because of weird lighting and no flash. Sorry about that.

Great Gallery

Wright flyer reproduction (1903)

SK-1 Vostok Space Suit (1960)

NASA Shuttle trainer

Williams X-Jet (1974)

Nick inside Air Force One (1958)

Soyuz descent module (2009)

Caproni Ca.20 (1914), the world’s first fighter plane

Aviatik (Berg) D.I (1918)

Red Barn, Boeing’s original manufacturing plant

Inside the first Boeing 747 ever built

Seattle Central Library

Central Library exterior

Downtown Seattle’s 11-story glass and steel Central Library was opened in 2004. One of its major features is the “Books Spiral,” which is a 4-story gently sloping continuous spiral of nonfiction books. The Central Library has lots of reading areas, hundreds of public computers, and an auditorium. It also has a really impressive automated check-in and sorting system.

We didn’t spend a lot of time at the library, but we went up to the top and walked down the spiral. One thing I didn’t like was a weird, disorienting red corridor that is a bold, bright red everywhere on the ceiling, walls, and the floor. Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of that.

Seattle Art Museum

In addition to its permanent collection, SAM’s featured temporary exhibition while we visited were was City Dwellers: Contemporary Art from India (through February 16, 2015). SAM allows photography, so I brought my camera with. Using a flash, however, was not allowed, so please pardon the crummy photos.

Inopportune: Stage One

Face from a Native American totem pole

Peruvian ceramic vessel

Australian aboriginal painting

The First People

Untitled (Self in Progress)

India Shining V (Gandhi with iPod)

Sea Change

Mexican seated figure

Ceramic Egyptian hippopotamus

Burkinabe antelope mask

African Opa Mma costume

Egyptian marble head

Episodes from the Aeneid

South African caterpillar suit

My family has found curling fascinating since, I think, the Winter Olympics in 2002. When I found out there was a curling club just down the road from us that offered open houses where they teach you the basics of curling, I got super excited and Nick’s mom’s visit was the perfect opportunity to try it out!

Amanda sweeping

When Margaret, Amanda, Nick, and I got to the curling club, they first cleaned our shoes of debris and attached rubber grippers to the bottoms of our shoes. Then we donned our hoodies, hats, and gloves (thanks, Raynaud’s!) and got out on the ice. We took turns practicing throwing the curling stones (occasionally falling over while doing so) and once we were passable doing that, we added sweeping, which makes the stone travel farther. Then, it was time for a game! There was a group of young guys there learning to curl, too, so we played against them and we won 3-1! Woohoo!

We had so much fun and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested. For those of you in Seattle, there are open houses through March or you could just go watch for free.

Seattle Pinball Museum

Looking down at pinball machines on the first floor

Another cool thing we did was visiting the Seattle Pinball Museum in the International District, because Nick’s mom loves pinball. They have a wide assortment of 50+ pinball machines spanning 7 decades. It’s not your typical museum, though, because all of the pinball machines are free to play with your $13 admission fee. We spent a few hours playing and had a great time.

My favorite machines were probably the 1995 Theater of Magic and the 2003 Lord of the Rings pinball machines. The Theater of Magic machine uses magnets and mirrors to perform “magic” tricks while you play. My favorite part of the LotR machine was when you get to fight the Balrog. The Balrog lights up and moves into the playfield and you have to hit him with the pinball.

Today, Nick and I went to the EMP (Experience Music Project) Museum. The EMP is a funny-looking building in Seattle Center whose design was inspired by smashed electric guitars. It is home to pop culture exhibits from music to science fiction to fantasy as well as the Sky Church, a performance space with one of the largest indoor LED screens in the world.

The current exhibits at the EMP are about Jimi Hendrix, science fiction, Nirvana, fantasy, and horror films. There’s going to be a Lego exhibit in a few months, so Nick and I might have to go back to see that. The science fiction and fantasy exhibits were definitely our favorites, but we’re geeks.

Pictures are below. Sorry for the bad quality, but they were taken with my phone and flash wasn’t allowed. The picture at the top is of the massive guitar sculpture in the EMP, which is made up of more than 500 musical instruments.

Chihuly Garden and Glass

On Mother’s Day, a friend of Mom’s from Sweden was visiting, so we (Mom, Amanda, Nick, and I) showed her around downtown Seattle. Nick and I took the bus down and got there a little early, so we could pick up a few things at Pike Place Market.

We met up with the others at the waterfront, because Mom’s friend was arriving via the Victoria Clipper (ferry from Victoria, BC to Seattle). We walked through the Olympic Sculpture Park and then headed over to Seattle Center. We saw the International Fountain and then visited the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum. Dale Chihuly is a  world-famous glass artist from Tacoma, WA, and this new museum showcasing his work opened last year.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t planned on visiting Seattle Center (particularly, the Chihuly Museum), so we didn’t have our camera with us. I used my phone to take the photo of the Persian Ceiling room above, which was my favorite part of the museum. There were tons of colorful glass pieces on the ceiling and the light shining through made the room a rainbow of beautiful, bright colors.

Woodland Park Zoo

Grizzly Bear

On Sunday, Nick and I went to Woodland Park Zoo with Amanda and our friend, Sean. There are lots of baby animals at the zoo right now, so it was an exciting time to visit.

Gavin the porcupette was trying to hide in the grass while we were there, but we were able to catch a glimpse of him. The twin sloth bear cubs are supposed to be on exhibit now, but their habitat was empty while we were there. The fuzzy little tree kangaroo joey (which I’m really looking forward to seeing!) is still living behind the scenes with its mother, but you can watch it online via webcam for now. The quadruplet lion cubs were definitely the most fun to watch. One of them found a cardboard box to play with, which made one of its brothers or sisters jealous.

Nick and I took a bunch of photos during our trip to the zoo, so be sure to check them out at the link below!

Flickr photo set: Woodland Park Zoo

Nick and I spent the morning taking a load of boxes over to the house and setting up some things there. It’s really starting to feel like home. We hung out with Margaret and Donna at the apartment afterward and then we went to the Volunteer Park Conservatory on Capitol Hill. I’m really glad we went because all the plants and flowers were gorgeous. Even the building itself was beautiful, made of glass with a wood and iron framework. I took tons of pictures, but it’ll be a little while before I upload them because I have to go through them all. We also walked over to Volunteer Park’s koi pond and Black Sun sculpture, but we didn’t stay long because of the rain. When we got back to the apartment, Margaret taught me how to crochet. Maybe sometime soon I’ll be able to do some fun crochet projects!

Nick’s Burrito Macho

We went to Sonrisa Modern Mexican at U Village for dinner. It wasn’t busy when we got there, probably because of the rain and we were there for an early dinner. The salsa that came with our chips was delicious and made in-house. We ordered a primo combo (three different enchiladas), baked chile relleno, burrito macho, and ancho rubbed chicken quesadillas. Everything was fantastic and Nick and I would definitely go back there again.

Margaret and Donna start their scenic drive back home early tomorrow morning. They plan on stopping in Salt Lake City and Jackson Hole to see the Grand Tetons. We said our goodbyes after dinner and gave them both big hugs. Can’t wait to see them again!

Nick and I took another car full of boxes over to the house tonight and we’ll spend tomorrow packing up what’s left and moving more boxes. We’ll probably only have furniture left by the time we do the big move on Sunday afternoon. Hurrah!

Dad in a Carnival mask

On Thursday, we took advantage of free museum Thursday and went to The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, which is on the University of Washington campus. Dad had never been to UW’s campus before, so we walked around campus a bit and saw where Nick works. It’s a very pretty campus and Nick and I are excited to see it in the spring when the cherry trees are in bloom.

The Burke Museum was founded in 1885 and is Washington’s oldest museum. The special exhibit when we visited was Carnaval, which was all about Carnival celebrations throughout the world. There were lots of bright colors and fun outfits and at the end of the exhibit, you could try on some masks yourself. Dad had fun trying on all of the silliest masks. Elsewhere in the museum, there were lots of fossils and artifacts showing the history of life in Washington. On the lower floor, there was art, clothing, instruments, ceremonial items, etc. from all sorts of different Pacific cultures.

We had fun hanging out with Dad and afterwards, he came over and we cooked him dinner.