Field Trip to Colorado History Museum

 Yesterday, Rowen took a day of vacation and went with us to the Colorado History Museum in Denver.  It is a fairly new facility.  When we arrived, it was full of students.  When these pictures were taken, the students had left for the day and we could use the time machine.

 This is a time machine that you pull to different spots on the floor map of Colorado. 

 We had the machine positioned over the Grand and Gunnison Valleys spot on the map.  At this location, we could choose between two dates to select a story.  Pull the lever on the right!

 This was a story about mining. 

 

The map on the floor shows the land formations and cities in Colorado.

 There was a big display about one of Colorado's ghost towns:  Keota.  It was a nice booming little town in the early 1900s, but then there was a drought, the Railroad company quit coming there, and people moved away.  Some of the last folks to live there donated so much stuff to the museum that it is a wonderful display of how people lived on the plains.  These pictures are in the "school house."

 We positioned our faces in the mirror and took our pictures.  Then we selected a hairstyle from early 1900s and made our pictures for the Keota Yearbook!  We emailed the pictures to ourselves!  We thought this was a very clever activity.

 Here we are, a blast from the past!  I love how it makes me look young and thin!  :)

 Here's Emily!

 And can you believe--Rowen?

 

Another interactive display that we tried:  this is a ski jump at Steamboat Springs with wii technology.  The skis actually change tilt as the wind blows your hair and you are in the movie flying down the hill!  We crashed several times, but we also did some Olympic qualifying jumps!

 Rowen taking off on the jump!

 We got the best scores when we followed the instructions of the little guy on the screen.

 There were so many things to see and learn from.  We thought it was an amazing museum.  Most of the time, we were too busy learning to think of taking pictures.  We even got to place dynamite in a gold mine and blow it up!  Just pretending, of course, but it was very educational.  We were so glad to have Rowen along with us for the day.