It was time to visit a big city again last week, which I hadn't done in some time.

I try to stick with the mountains most of the time, if only to remain on familiar ground. In Raleigh, I found little ground that I would dub familiar. I did work there a little in the early 1990s, but the world has turned many times since then. After going to a training and award ceremony in Cary for the N.C. Press Association representing the newspaper on Thursday and Friday morning, I spent part of the latter half of Friday exploring the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh with my family. It was one of those locations that's hard to forget, especially since one of the exhibits involves humongous dinosaur skeletons that have been discovered right here in our own state.

After taking the children to see the dinosaurs, which measured up to 40 feet long, I figured they would be awed by the ability to be so close to creatures that lived so long ago.

However, they took that part in stride and instead told others about parts of the trip I considered little more than mundane. For instance, one experience involved a museum employee explaining nocturnal animals and how they operate in our state. The animals, including alligators, snakes, an owl and others, were displayed for the children to look at and sometimes touch during the event.

So, my older daughter didn't tell people that she saw the most complete Acrocanthosaurus on display anywhere in the world (the dinosaur resembles a predatory Tyranasaurus Rex and actually lived in our state). She didn't mention that the sky held pterosaurs soaring overhead as the skeletonized predator stalked a 50-foot-long sauropod (longnecked and long-tailed plant eater. Nor did she mention the displays of ancient whales and complete skeletons of other dinosaurs recreated in their native habitats.

She told them that she touched a snake and an alligator and got to see an owl up close. She was also impressed with the butterfly exhibit, a room with a tropical climate that was filled with live butterflies that could land on visitors. Having dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, the hot and humid room was more than I could stand after only about 10 minutes. I suppose I was expecting the children to be taken with the same things I was interested in, but that wasn't the case.

In fact, from the start, they really didn't seem interested in going to the museum at all. However, once they started seeing some of the exhibits, they were more interested. Once they found out the building's floors were connected by escalators, they were hooked.

While standing beside a giant prehistoric shark's mouth with teeth the size of my hand, my younger daughter looked absently at the display and asked, "Daddy, can we ride the escalator?"

We wouldn't have had to drive to Raleigh for that, I thought.

Upon arrival, I foolishly parked along Jones Street near the legislative building. Having dropped 50 cents in the meter, we went inside to look around. When I returned one hour and eight minutes later, I had a $20 parking citation attached to my windshield. In case you don't know, the meters run for one hour exactly.

Much to my chagrin, I learned upon returning to the museum that a public parking lot was open for business about three blocks down on the same street and had ample parking available for a minimal fee per hour.

Once I knew I was ticketed, I just left the car there for a couple more hours while we looked through the museum. So, I ended up having a pretty good parking spot for about $7 an hour, versus the $1 an hour I could have payed just down the street. Live and learn, I always say.

After leaving there, we also made a stop at the North Carolina Museum of Art, which opened a special exhibition on modern American paintings that day. Of special interest to me, the museum includes exhibits of sculpture and artifacts from the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations, as well as paintings and sculptures from all over the world. The paintings are by far the most numerous exhibits in the gallery and, being a bit ignorant on art history in general, I truly appreciated the experience. I even surprised myself by recognizing a few of the works.

The European gallery there also had a number of interesting works, including a painting of Louis XV, the boy king who took the throne as a mere child. The painting's textures were so rich that it was almost as if one could feel the fabric. The museum furnished a bag of interesting items to keep children occupied that allowed them to do just that. They enjoyed the activities, but were more interested in why all those naked people were made into statues and why some weren't wearing any underpants.

My older daughter's favorite work was "Venus Italica" by the workshop of Antonio Canova done in white marble in the early 1800s. It tastefully depicts a lovely woman standing with a sheet covering her, or mostly so. My daughter decided that this woman must have been getting out of the bathtub.

True to form, my younger daughter said she liked the elevator best that connected the floors. The elevator was interesting, in her defense. It was a triangular form of glass that jutted off one end of the building and offered a view of the area around the museum's three story structure. But it wasn't as cool as an escalator, in her estimation, but it was better than naked people.
 

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