Day 2.037: Eye protection required

Presidents Day arrived with no plan in place for how we would fill it. Eventually - spurred on by the need to find an indoor family-friendly local open-on-Presidents-Day venue - Exile #2 proposed a drive into Massachusetts to visit the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. I'm glad she did - we had a great day there.

During the visit we picked up starfish, looked at blind cave fish, turned over horseshoe crabs, watched snakes, uncovered dinosaur bones, marvelled at mummified toes and marble veils, built an igloo, identified bird-calls, investigated radioactive rocks, played with hand-puppets, sat on the ground to look at the stars and played with 1920's toys.

One of these activities required these goggles - anyone like to guess which?

One of them also required a much-appreciated merciful intervention from a museum worker - we had not realised that the portable planetarium show 'free with your admission' required tickets, so we were turned away. Exile #4 by this time was getting a little tired and did not take the disappointment well (although she did wait until we were away from the giver of the bad news before she showed it). A few minutes later he came to find us to say that he had been given some spare tickets and would smuggle all of us in - in fact I took the girls to learn about light pollution and star-navigation while Exile #2 and E5N1 walked through some more galleries.

All in all it was a great visit - and pretty good economic-downturn value at $30 for a family of five.