Field Trip Friday: Emporia

   I've been wanting to try the Emporia theme for a while.  Its about an hour down the road from us and just full of wonderful Kansas history!  Not to mention tons of free things to do.  Our first stop on this cool and breezy day was the Geology and Natural History museums on the lower level of Breunkelman Hall on the Emporia State campus.  Both are about the size of a large classroom, but would be great for enhancing a science lesson.  There are hundreds of species of animals in the natural history museum.  Not just adult specimens either, some have eggs, juvenile and adults represented.  Mookie's favorites were the little guys. 

Not quite the dioramas of the KU Natural history museum, but definitely worth a look.

I loved the geology museum!  Excellent fossils, florescing rocks, Native American artifacts, an exhibit on the zinc mines of SE Kansas, but it had one problem.  It was steaming hot!  It drove Mookie and Shorty out after only a short time.  I sure would like to go back and take more time in there.  Luckily Bubby got quality time in there, most of my time at these museums is riding herd on those not so interested.  Someday that will change, so I just have fun in the running around in the meantime. :)
  Our next stop was the David Traylor zoo.  It had a bunch of native species as well a few others. 

This zoo was not fantastic because of its selection of animals, but because it was absolutely beautifully landscaped and so cozy and up close with the animals it did have.  They even have a portion that is open at times for a drive though.  The kids are ready to go back again!
  Right across the road from the zoo is the Veterans' Day memorial. Did you know that Emporia was essentially the birthplace of Veterans' Day?  They had the traditional tank and helicopter to view....

with some excellent extras...

A Braille Pledge of Allegiance

And a Rainbow footbridge over the Cottonwood River

It was a great place to get out and stretch our legs a little more!
  We also went and tracked down some statues of famous Emporia personalities.  It is located right on the corner of the Lyon County fairgrounds, so we felt a little conspicuous taking pictures by all the traffic, but not too much ;)

The people represented were William Allen White, Preston Plumb (one of the founders of Emporia), a Native American chief, and Nathaniel Lyon (Lyon county is named for him and Emporia is the county seat).
  We took our packed lunch and sat by the train tracks to watch passing trains, to Shorty's delight.
  Our last stop was the Lyon County Historical Museum.  I had been dying to see its Civil War exhibit.  We walked in and Shorty started telling the staff about the trains he saw, to which the reply was "oh, you want to see the train?", and she led us to the train room.  And not just any train room, but one with a camera on the front with a screen on the wall so you could watch as the train followed the track, went through tunnels and you could even catch a glimpse of yourself on the big screen! Um, yeah, awesome!

To heck with mommy wanting to see the GAR button of Preston Plumb's in the Civil War room and read all the interesting placards.  Luckily I could see him in the train room playing at the Thomas the Tank Engine table from the Civil War room and bought my self some time.  Preston Plumb led the 11th Kansas (of which Burlingame's Company I was a part of) and I was so excited! The Civil War exhibit was also interactive and had a basket where you could chose a real soldier's name and find an artifact or mention of him in the room and then look up his name in a book.  The two older ones loved this.  Laura was excited because she got Plumb's name - we accused her of cheating ;)

Bubby looking for his soldier

The museum right now is really small, just one other room beside the train and Civil War exhibit rooms, but that will change after the first of the year.  They are moving to a building with 40,000 sq. ft. (where they have 4,000 sq. ft. now) and they are merging the research library with them too.  They are very excited about getting more of their fun stuff out, and I am too!  I'll make a trip back down for sure, the Gazette has some of neat sounding newspaper artifacts we want to check out too, as well as possibly his house - Red Rocks.
  The only thing we paid for today was the gas to get there and happy hour drinks at Sonic.  Not a bad deal at all :)