Day 13 - Houston TX - Non Travel Day
Skies were threatening, but forecasted to hold off until the evening. We had tickets to the Pompeii Exhibit at the MFAH: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston at 11:00 am.
Listening to the news on TV we heard that there was a fatal wreck a couple of blocks down the street from our camping area and the road was shut down... as well as the freeway that we were supposed to take into the city from yet another wreck. The local road had a detour..yikes! Detours scare us, remember?
It went through a subdivision in a maze-like series of dizzying turns. A long line of traffic was following a lead car that apparently knew his way through the maze. I thought how funny it would be if that first car had no clue on how to get back to the street and had half of the cars in Houston following him!
We stayed off the freeways again, thankfully, and it took us over an hour to get to the downtown Museum District. The traveling Pompeii exhibit was awesome! We spent over two hours viewing it.
Went to lunch, right there in the Museum, and then walked a couple of blocks to the Museum of Natural Science.
Now, let me stop here and explain something about Jim and museums. He goes through them fast, very fast. When the kids were little, we took them to the Smithsonian in Washington DC. I'm sure we were the only family in history to get through the Smithsonian in about an hour! He doesn't see any reason to READ the explanations of what you're looking at...just look at the exhibit and move on. I reminded him how on that trip when I was trying to read about the exhibit containing ancient skulls, that had been drilled with holes while the unfortunate subject was alive, what he had said to me.
He doesn't remember it, but he actually said, "Who cares? It happened a long time ago!"
So before we entered this museum I told him that I would not be rushed. Time had mellowed him, he took his time and probably learned a few things!
Jim likes history, as long as it is pretty recent. Recent meaning from the Civil War to Present. He can tell you about every battle, and every General, and the whys and the whos...but Natural Science is not his forte.
But even I was a little surprised at his reaction shortly after entering the Natural Science section. We had just entered the fossil area, ancient trilobites, ferns and such...when Jim looked into a case and said, "Hey, look at this shit with the bugs in it!"
Um...it's AMBER, Jim...
We decided to take a different way back to the campground because I realized that we'd been in Houston two days and had basically seen only two streets, long ones, but geez. So....we took other streets and got lost, eventually, you find your way.
We got back, had a light supper, gave the dog a bath and rode the bikes around this campground.
Had a terrible time getting to sleep and then in the wee hours a thunderstorm struck and it rained so hard that it sounded like the RV was parked under a waterfall! The storm lasted a long time...the dogs got spooked and ended up in bed with us. Two adults, two dogs a queen size bed in an 8ft wide room...no, I didn't get much sleep last night.
*The title for the day is for my daughter. For years we've been laughing at the Juice Newton song, "The Sweetest Thing". The line that says, 'And I have never been afraid of losing' always sounded like *and I have never been afraid of Museums* to me and I sang it that way, even though I knew it wasn't right. Just one of those silly family jokes...
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