A Day in Columbia

Today I originally planned to go to the zoo, and the museum.  However, it was still just too hot to go to the zoo!  I doubt we would have seen any animals.  We got up a little later and off we went!

 Parking was abundant and free!    There were not enough trees to keep the car shaded, but we got a little shaded spot

Giant shark!

The museum was nice and cool inside.

We opted for the BUGS! exhibit for our plus one. We got to add one special exhibit with our admission. We thought about the planetarium, but we wanted to save that so we could see it all together as a family.

There is a green screen when you get to the bug exhibit that they can add giant bugs behind you. It was an additional fee of 10, but we were both wearing green shirts. She offered us a white t shirt to put on over our clothes, but we opted not to.

Fun facts about South Carolina!

Rocks and minerals !

Fossils!

Mastadon!

We moved rather quickly through this exhibit, due to some very loud, very rowdy children.  They just swarmed all over everything and took over what ever exhibit they were in.  The two adults were letting them run wild, and yelling at them to come here or be quiet. The kids did not care what they were saying. We tried to keep as far away from them as we could.

optical illusions.

Lasers!  

Trying to light up the lights

learning about shrimping.
This exhibit is all about the industry in South Carolina. There was also an exhibit on the Brown Vs. Board Supreme Court Decision, and it's South Carolina connections.  Lon learned a lot but he was confused on why people were treated so badly. We talked about that for a long while.

I was liking the floors. Seems I am not the first person to be interested in the floor.

The building used to be a cotton mill.

He still loves those dioramas!

The Best Friend.  We saw this train when it came through Summerville on the way to it's new home.  
They have a train whistle, you can pull a string and it whistles.  The unruly children found it an amazing noise, and would not stop pulling the string. We could hear it all over the building.

A Hunley replica. If you stand just where Lon was, the mechanism goes around.  Lon thought that was cool.

They had an exhibit of telescopes.  Lon liked the look of this one

What they say about this treasure

As we were looking at the wonderous telescopes, a gentleman (he was in a volunteer vest) asked us if we wanted to look at the sun. I sort of looked at him funny.  He explained that he was in the giant telescope room and there was a telescope that filters out all but the hydrogen of the sun.  You can see spots on the sun!

The little white telescope has the power to see the sun.  Lon was having a great time.
The gentleman was between tour groups,  and took lots of time telling Lon about what he was seeing. Explaining some of the science of the sun.
Then the next tour group came in, Lon said thank you  and we were off to the next part of the museum.

We had a great time at the museum, and we will be back up there.  There is a ton to see !!

 We passed under the train.   (disclosure: we were at a stop light and not moving when the picture was snapped)

Every time we went thought Columbia on 26 we saw these billboards for the State Farmer's Market.  Since were were in Columbia we thought why not, let's see what it is like.

It is not worth a separate trip. If we are in the area and we have time, maybe.
We did get some peaches, a watermelon and some very good corn.  (we ate that with dinner!)
It is all cash.

I was not spending any more time outside than I had to! It was HOT.

I thought we were done for today, but then I remembered the movie!

I read that Disney was going to show the new Pixar movie Inside Out a couple days early at select theaters. One of them was in Summerville.

I took the boys.  Ty is being anger. Lon is just being.

Getting inside their head.

The movie was great! We all cried a little, we laughed a lot.  It is so worth seeing.  We all got a lanyard, and a poster.

At the start of the movie they told you the *easter eggs* hidden in the movie.   We got so wrapped up in watching the movie we did not look for them.

The cat at the very end, it was perfect. I laughed so hard Lon gave me a dirty look.

We had a great day!