Science Museum With A View

The Maryland Science Center is twice as big as it was when we had our older son's birthday party there two years ago.


This is the dinosaur exhibit at the newly renovated museum, with some of the Baltimore skyline visible out the windows.


The dinosaur exhibit also had more modern lizards, but you can see the reflections of the dinosaur display in the glass of this guy's cage.


The Baltimore area as it looked a few years ago.


You can also design and test drive your own Mars rover...


...learn about Chesapeake Bay flora, fauna and ecology...


...look out the big windows at the Inner Harbor and the post-game crowds after the Orioles blew it to the Twins...


...play at the water tables in the kids' area, where one can design contraptions with pipes, make water volcanoes erupt or squirt one's siblings...


...or visit the environmental exhibit, where there's a device that creates tornadoes.

After the Maryland Science Center we walked to Harborplace to browse, but left fairly soon as it started drizzling and was getting crowded with post-Orioles dinner crowds. The only drawback to the afternoon was horrible traffic on the Beltway going past the Mormon Temple, which we wrongly assumed at first might be baseball crowds headed all the way to Baltimore (as it turned out, the traffic even right past the stadium wasn't bad). When we went around one of the S-curves, we could see fire trucks, EMTs, road crews, police and a crane blocking two lanes next to a shattered barrier. Later we learned that a tractor trailer carrying mail had slid off the road and hit the barrier, jackknifing and hitting two cars. The lanes had been closed since before sunrise. I'm glad no one was seriously hurt, based on how bad the accident looked, but a little worried about packages I'm expecting, as the mail was apparently totaled as badly as the mail truck.