A Sundial Bridge and a T-Rex Named Sue....

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July yesterday and that everyone is still enjoying their holiday weekend. Yesterday was a fun one for my parents and I even though we saw no fireworks except on TV last night. My Step-dad had gotten bored with sitting at home and came up with the idea of going up to Redding and visiting the Sundial Bridge and the Turtle Bay Museum. I'd never gone to either the bridge or the museum before, so I was happy to be the driver for the trip. Redding is only about 2 1/2 hours from here, so it was an easy drive up there even with a stop halfway there for breakfast at a Black Bear Diner in the city of Willows. If you've never experienced a meal at a Black Bear Diner, I'd advise you to arrive at the restaurant hungry. The portions are big, the meals reasonably priced and definitely delicious!

Anyway, we found our way to the museum fairly easy, the route is well marked once you get into Redding. The park that surrounds the museum was apparently to be the site of the 4th of July festivities there in Redding, so there were lots of tents and awnings being set up, people wandering around and security directing traffic. I'm not going to give you a running commentary of the whole visit to the museum and the bridge... I'll just give you a few pictures of some of the things we saw...

When you first enter the museum, the first exhibit is of a sculpture of a tree set on a glass floor, and the view of the sculpture includes the root system of the tree!

We arrived at the museum about 15 or so minutes before the feeding time in the huge aquarium they have, so we made our way down into the chamber where you can view the fish.

As you can see from the image above, the children were fascinated by the fish swimming past the windows... There are sturgeon, striped bass and rainbow trout swimming around in this tank which is constructed to look like the Sacramento River. The fish kept in the tank are what would be found in the river itself.

The museum does have a couple of "rare" fish swimming around... Both are albino rainbow trout... The markings are quite different on the two fish...

Here's a view of the tank windows that also shows what we saw above the water level. That's one of the museum employees up there in the process of feeding the fish...

One of the exhibits that the museum is hosting this summer is called "A T. Rex Named Sue" that is on loan from The Field Museum in Chicago. That thing is HUGE! lol...

Another exhibit is called "The Art of The Brick" and consists of pieces of art that are constructed of Lego building bricks! The artist, Nathan Sawaya uses thousands of legos of different colors to construct his sculptures... Including a T. Rex not named Sue.. lol

Oh yeah.. I almost forgot to give you a photo of the Sundial Bridge!

I'd like to go back up there and spend some more time in the museum and see some of the other things they've got there. The arboretum, the butterfly house and I'd also like to walk across the bridge. Yesterday was hot. Too hot to do much walking about outside. My folks and I decided that we'd pick a cooler day to go back. Perhaps midweek and not on a holiday so there would be fewer people and spend some more time enjoying the place....