Monday 8 November 2010

Day 73 – Muppets On The Long Road Home

So, this is it; our last full day on the road and our final night of living in hotels. This time tomorrow we’ll be sleeping back in our own bed and we won’t have amazing sights to wake up to every morning…if you don’t count each other, of course…and we sure don’t!! Today we wanted to go out on a high, but unfortunately it wasn’t one of our ‘highlight’ days, just a so-so tourist day if we’re being honest. In a way its good as it makes heading home a little easier, but in another it’s a shame not to have a final ‘wow’ moment. Still, we did see some cool stuff and we learned some things along the way.

Our first stop was the John Dillinger Museum. The small museum inside the Indiana Visitors Center may have been bizarrely located, but it was a worthwhile stop all the same (although when Joe noticed we’d paid $8 to get in he made the comment ‘It seems Dillinger’s still robbing people, huh?’, Oh that Joey…).
The museum covers Dillinger’s whole life and includes some unique artifacts, like the wicker casket his body was transported in and the pants he was wearing when shot. I was surprised to learn that he went to jail for nine years for his first robbery and when he finally got out was when his real criminal ‘career’ started. Even then, despite becoming so notorious, that crime spree only lasted a short fourteen months.
Although the Dillinger Museum was an ok quirky little stop, we felt it wasn’t quite big enough to end this trip on museum-wise! Turns out I spoke too soon the other day when I said St. Louis, MO would be our last big metropolis, as today we added in one last detour. Yesterday we discovered that the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry had a special exhibit going on called Jim Henson’s Fantastic World. Considering Joe has a strong love of the Muppet creating genius going to this was a no-brainer, so off to Chicago we went.
The exhibit was really cute and showed what a talented guy Jim Henson really was. From the Muppet Show to Sesame Street to Fraggle Rock, he knew what kids, and even some adults, should be watching. Sadly they didn’t allow photos inside, but seeing as with the ticket we also had to purchase regular entry to the museum for $15 a pop we figured we might as well have a look around at the rest of the science mumbo jumbo they’d got going on…
As you may have noticed we’re a couple of nerds, but this doesn’t move much past the normal kind of pop culture nerds into smart, intelligent, science nerd-nerds. This meant a lot of wandering around mildly fascinated by the pretty colors and bright lights, but not so interested in finding out how any of it actually worked…we’ll leave that to all the American school kids trampling around on their fieldtrip with their sticky fingers and inability to realize when someone else is trying to look at something….Hey kid, I’m standing here and don’t need you stepping on my toes.
Of course, as usual, the best part of any museum is the gift shop and how will we cope without learning through buying overpriced items with fancy logos? I feel like one of the funniest things I’ve found out on this trip is that you can buy the same type of item from every gift shop in America. Collect baseballs? Well, you can have one from Mount Rushmore, The Gateway Arch or The Spy Museum. Baseball not your thing, what about Christmas Decorations? Or even Cook Books, because if you can’t cook like they do in the White House your visit to D.C. will forever be ruined…
We said goodbye to Chicago (for the umpteenth time in our life!) and made our way to state number 49: Wisconsin. Yes, that right: State. Number. 49. We’re done for now state-wise. We will get to Hawaii, number 50, all in due time, but for now we’ll be going to sleep tonight knowing that tomorrow’s drive will be the one that takes us home. Bittersweet…
So…for the last time: Until tomorrow…
Ani

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1 comment:

  1. Excuse me I remember an awful lot of school trips where you all wound up paying customers and tourists Childrens Museum/ National History Museum/Science Museum/British Museum/London Zoo if that counts as it was a Learning trip Best of all was Kew Gardens and a certain BANANA!!!!

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