Last Friday Phil and I went to The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. This year we decided to take one day each month and plan a date day. It gives us something to look forward to and it is a way for us to spend time together doing things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. Last month we went to the Philadelphia Zoo. Phil planned that date day so it was my turn to plan this one. I decided that we should go to The Academy of Natural Sciences because Phil loves dinosaurs. All of these years living in South Jersey I never knew we had a dinosaur exhibit so close. Neither of us had ever been to The Academy of Natural Sciences before so that was a bonus!
The museum has a lot of history and it was great to go on a Friday because it wasn’t very crowded. There were a few families there but not so many that we felt like we had to rush through everything. I would estimate that we were there for just over 4 hours.
The museum has a butterfly room. You can walk right in and see butterflies flying around. The woman who volunteers to work with the butterflies had one sitting on the back of her shirt. That fascinated me. She told me there were probably about 100-120 butterflies in the room that day! I have always liked butterflies and admired their beauty and ability to become butterflies from caterpillars.
I felt about 2 inches tall next to this dinosaur leg.
These Hadrosaurus foulkii bones were found in South Jersey!!!
The Tylosaurus is a 43 foot sea creature. If this creature wasn’t extinct I would NEVER go in the ocean ever again.
The museum had dozens of incredibly life-like dioramas. I took a lot of pictures but I am only posting a few incase anyone wants to visit. I don’t want to spoil the experience you could have.
At 3:15 each day the museum library has a page turning event of John James Audubon’s book, Birds of America. The photos in the book are true to size. They are hand colored and so beautiful. This was probably the coolest thing we saw because the book is so old and rare. The book took several years to complete, 1827-1838, and it contains 435 portraits of birds. Only 200 of these books were printed and there are very few still in existence. I don’t have a picture of this because it wouldn’t do the experiences justice. As someone who worked with books for over a decade, I thought it was really amazing to see a book this old.
If you are ever in the Philadelphia area I recommend checking out The Academy of Natural Sciences. You can learn so much from visiting a museum and if you are like me you will leave feeling amazed by how much time has elapsed and how much history has been preserved.
The Road Less Run 
It looks like you had a great time! Since you posted about this and your zoo date, I want to suggest it to my husband because I think a museum or zoo would be a really fun date :). You get to spend time together and learn something.
Also, I had no clue you wore glasses… completely off topic but it’s neat to see what you look like in real girl clothes sometimes (I should post a pic of me in non-running clothes on my blog one day… lol).
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I actually just got contacts again the same day we went to the museum! I don’t really like wearing my glasses, especially when I run. You should absolutely start having date days. We’ve really enjoyed it and we’ve learned so much. It’s been a great way to spend time together doing something different.
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Looks like you had a great time. I recommend the University of Penn Museum for your next date day. They have the best Egyptian artifacts this side of Egypt including the pillars that Moses leaned on when he said “Let my people go!” to Pharaoh.
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