Philadelphia! (part two)

I thought I'd be able to write the second post about our trip on Tuesday night or Wednesday, but once I got home I had to hit the ground running in terms of doing school work. My original plan had been to visit a children's museum and aquarium in New Jersey on Tuesday. On Monday as I was looking up the directions I realized that the Garden State Discovery Center was about 20 minutes farther than the Aquarium. Knowing we'd already be driving home that day, I didn't really want to add a 40 minute round trip drive to a children's museum given I knew there was still so much we could see and do right in Philadelphia. Since we had free parking because of our hotel stay, we opted to walk to the Academy of Natural Sciences, which is run by Drexel University. It's located very close to the Franklin Institute. Ian didn't object to walking again, but Oliver and Nadia weren't too thrilled. The museum was about one mile from the hotel; one advantage of walking was we saw things we wouldn't have seen if we were driving such as statues and our walk through the gates of City Hall. The walking would have been more pleasant if it had been warmer out. You just never know at this time of year what to expect with the weather. The good news is we didn't have any snow, and it only sprinkled on us a little bit on Monday evening, but otherwise it didn't rain while we were out and about, which was good as I forgot to bring umbrellas!

We spent about two hours at the museum. Most of it was free for us due to our ASTC membership. There were two exhibits that had additional fees. We opted to skip the crocodile one because we already go to Reptiland once a year, and they were the ones who set up that temporary exhibit in Philadelphia. We paid $3 each to visit the butterfly exhibit. If I had to do it over again, we would skip that one also because we didn't even have enough time to see everything in the museum during the two hours we spent there, in part because there was a fire drill at one point. We attended one program that featured a Cooper's hawk and a Solomon island prehensile tailed skink. On the third floor that had a variety of animals that the children could ask a staff member to take out so they could touch it. They chose a legless lizard (looked like a snake). Unfortunately when I brought my camera to this museum I forgot to take the memory card out of the laptop so could only use my phone to take pictures. I made sure to put the memory card in before we went in the aquarium!

On our way back to the parking garage next to the hotel, we stopped and had breakfast sandwiches for lunch at Dunkin Donuts. Then we drove across the river into Camden, NJ. We spent the next few hours at the Adventure Aquarium. It's hard to say which is better when comparing that one and the one in Baltimore. They are both excellent. They have differing strengths. The kids enjoyed touching a variety of animals such as a cleaner shrimp, anemone, starfish, shark, stingray, etc. Oliver loved the hippos. All three of them loved walking over the rope walkway over the shark tank. They did that multiple times. We watched a short program featuring an African penguin. We watched two 3D movies that were each about 25 minutes long. One was about emperor penguins, and the other was titled 20,000 leagues under the sea. Altogether between our walk to and from the Academy of Natural Sciences plus our walking around the museum and the aquarium, we walked six miles total on Tuesday. Over the course of the three days we walked more than fifteen miles. Oliver fell asleep in the van as we were leaving Philadelphia. I had done all the driving on Sunday. We didn't drive at all on Monday. Paul did the majority of driving on Tuesday, although I drove the last hour of our trip home. We stopped at McDonald's on our way home for a later than usual dinner. During our car rides to and from Philadelphia we listened to a few chapters of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (via Audible and a Bluetooth speaker) and the kids watched a couple of Veggie Tales dvds.

If money were no object it would have been nicer to have two rooms, but for two nights we survived all sharing one bedroom. We were all glad to be back in our own beds on Tuesday night. Paul's first question was to ask for details about the sleeping arrangements for our trip to San Diego. We aren't all sharing one bedroom for that trip as I reserved a 3 bedroom condo through airbnb. I think the trip was a success! Because we had this outing, I cancelled two other field trips I had originally planned for this week. We skipped the homeschool hangout at the Children's museum on Wednesday morning as I needed to get work done and the last thing I wanted to do was get right back in the van, especially as I was going to drive almost two hours round trip to see a student teacher that afternoon. Also, I was going to take the kids to see a show about Harriet Tubman this morning, but I again opted to skip the drive. Skipping the show meant all three could go to gym class plus Ian and Nadia could go to art class. While they were in art, Oliver and I went to Walmart and the library. My goal is to finish my student teaching evaluations today, and when I complete that I will be totally caught up with grading. I'll have a little break from student teaching evaluations, and during that respite I want to work on writing the final exam for the math classes. Although I'd rather live in a warmer climate, I am grateful that we live in an area where within four hours or less we can be in NYC, Pittsburgh, Philadephia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. This makes it feasible to go on SO many field trips to historical places like Gettysburg, Antietam, Saratoga, Valley Forge, etc. as well as many museums, aquariums, and zoos. Since we didn't go on as many field trips as usual this school year, I want to schedule more of those this summer, and I'm hoping next year we get back to doing more during the school year.