The Field Museum

 Chicago, IL

Getting ready to catch a catamaran to that deserted desert island.

Chicago's Field Museum

Today we visited The Field Museum.  It's a Natural History Museum that is the closest thing to the Natural History Museum in London that we have been to (besides the Natural History Museum in London).  It's HUGE!  They have halls and halls of taxidermy birds, mammals, fish, and reptiles as well as insects, botany exhibits, dinosaur bones, minerals and more.  Every time we turned a corner we got deeper and deeper into the museum and farther from the exit.  There was so much to see and you should go there when you are in Chicago.  

Animal Crossing Insects!

Insects in Faux Amber

An insect in real amber

We were excited to see this Mold-A-Rama until we saw like 5 more.  Either they are reintroducing them or keeping them alive from when they first showed up.

The best place for an airconditioned nature walk

We'll keep an eye out for an Elegant Trogon when we are in Arizona.

The museum is old.  Some of the displays are really cool and vintage looking and some are just out of date as far as the science.  Peccaries are no longer considered part of The Pig family.  They are in the Tayassuidae family where Pigs are in the Suidae family.  Suey!  Su su su Suey!

Some of the displays mixed in video which was cool.

Aardvarks!

This Hartebeest is a bit derpy IMHO.  

That tail is saying something.

Nice interactive displays were added to enhance these dioramas.

King of the hill

Honey Badger don't give a....

This retro Emperor Penguin diorama, 

also had a retro info display.

The Alligator is roughly 3 times as tall as a man taking a wiz.

It's like Australia has so many snakes that they just gave up when naming them.  "Yea we'll call this one the Bandy Bandy mate!"  (Say that with a bad Australian accent an it's really funny).

Ya don't have to tell me twice!

I touched a Dinosaur Bone and I liked it!

The museum had a beer brewed for one of their special exhibits.  We didn't take the time to try one.

They had Pseudo Sue in the cafeteria.  It's a great beer and it's named after Sue the T-Rex.  She is here in the museum and we are now on a quest to find her.

We know Sue in on the 3rd floor so we made our way there and stopped to see the views.

We got distracted by The Pacific Islander area.  Aloha!

You could play some wooden instrument.

Don't tap on the glass, it agitates the scientists.  

Next up was rock and minerals.  This display seemed very vintage.  Probably a hand painted sign.  A meteor fell on a garage and they had the meteor and the items it damaged.

They had an actual meteor you could touch.  I touched it!

Next up we got distracted by the gemstones area.  I feel like we are getting closer to Sue though.

And then we find ourselves getting lost in a GIANT Botany wing.  This area was HUGE!

They had a whole section on mind altering plants and fermentation.

Magic!

Also they had a PSA on Cocaine

And they told you how to make LSD sort of.  I feel like these were a product of their time.  Would we make something like this today?

Finally Dinosaur bones!  Where is Sue?

At first I thought this was Sue but it isn't.  It was a Faux Sue!

Not Sue too

Also not Sue.

And this isn't Sue either.  We were out of the Dinosaur area and didn't see Sue!

We even found The Sue Giftshop but didn't' see Sue.  At this point we were tired and done with the museum but we were determined to see Sue.  We must have missed her so we decided to...

Speed Run The Dinosaur area to find Sue!  As you can see Donna gets distracted but I keep pressing!  We must find Sue!  (she didn't know I was recording)

Finally we found a hidden clue that we had missed on our last pass through.  Sue was hiding in plain sight!

This is Sue's head, the real thing!  It's a bit squished due to heat and pressure.

And Sue!  We marked time on our speed run and stopped to taker her in.  We did it!  If only I had a beer to celebrate.

I considered getting a Mold-A-Rama but it wouldn't last our trip.  It would melt or get squished.

We were able to ride The Green Line today as well so that's a win in my book!  Now we have ridded The Blue, Brown, Red, and Green Lines.

After the museum we were hungry and didn't want to go grocery shopping so we went back to Staropolska for dinner.  I had wanted to return to get the schnitzel and Donna wanted to go back.  On the walk back from Staropolska we noticed The Owl Bar was open and it was happy hour so we stopped in for a half price drink.

Donna's Cocktail was an Aviation but with Tequila instead of Gin.  It was delicious.

I had a local beer.  It was only $4!

They had a lot of owls.  This lamp alone had 3!

That was it for today.  The rest of the evening we hung out with Francis, had a dessert we got To Go (it was delicious too), and watched more movies in the "Highly Rated on Rotten Tomatoes" section on Tubi.  If you haven't checked this out, it's amazing.  There are quite a few great movies here for free.  Just go to the bathroom during the commercials like you used to.

If you missed my The Newberry Library post, check it out.  It's an amazing free library.