New York City Day Trip: American Museum of Natural History

Frontview of American Museum of Natural History (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once of our favorite day trips in New York is the American Museum of Natural History, and yesterday was the perfect day for it. The showers and sprinkles throughout the day didn’t bother us in the least.

On yesterday’s itinerary:

the new exhibit honoring Theodore Roosevelt. I knew about his role in establishing our national parks, and that he was a staunch conservationist, but had not been aware that he was originally planning to become a natural scientist, and switched to law in college. Other interesting nuggets from the exhibit: Roosevelt’s father was one of the founders of the Museum and there has always been a Roosevelt on the board, to this day.
the special exhibit, The Power of Poison, running through August
Dark Universe, the new Hayden Planetarium space show narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

We skipped the Butterfly Conservatory this time but we’ve done it in past and it’s a nice breathe of Spring (ends late May) and saved the new exhibit on Pterosaurs (through January 2015) for another time.

Instead, we spent a bit of time in the Hall of North American Mammals on the recommendation of a delightful volunteer who had kindly guided us from Poisons to the Hayden Planetarium theater because we were tight on time and she thought the turns might be a tad confusing. She told us that the Mammals exhibit was recently refurbished — down to the bison getting a blow out – so we thought we’d check it out. We also wandered a bit in the Hall of Asian Peoples.

We wrapped up our day with a jaunt over to the Nintendo Store in Rockefeller Center so Doug could pick out a new game for his birthday, grabbing a pick-me-up at Bouchon on the way, and finished up with dinner at Cafe Un Deux Trois on West 44th.

Here’s a short video from our day. It’s pretty sucktastic, as my iPhone photos weren’t oriented properly for the video format:

Here are some of the photos straight from the phone: