Science Museum of Virginia

After days of rain, and an overcast Saturday, had to get out for a while. Where I work, I get free admission to the Science Museum of Virginia and considering it was a really dank and dark day weather wise again, seemed like a good idea. The museum is at 2500 West Broad Street; had been past it before but this time took a walk around the displays. The museum was the former Broad Street Train Station (and is on the National Register of Historic Places). This photo at left is of the Christmas tree in the main lobby. Above that is a very impressive dome. There are actually displays on four levels, and an IMAX theater inside the museum.
They had a nice display of space items. Most of the museum was geared toward children, but did like seeing the small sliver of moon rock (top part of photo at left) and the small Virginia flag both of which were brought back from the moon by Apollo 17 (least I believe it was Apollo 17). There were many interesting items. The museum had a nice shark display of small tiger sharks and I got to touch one of them in the water which is unique to me anyhow. Liked the people in the museum, they liked to show off what they had on display. Had a few nice dinosaur bones as well; found enough to keep me interested, and was fun to walk around and see what they had.

I really liked the Aluminaut; this ship was used by both the US Navy and Jacques Cousteau in research. Read that it could go down to 17,000 feet; was built in 1964 and retired in 1970. It was once used to find an atomic bomb lost off the coast of Spain in 1966 when a B-52 and a KC-135 collided while refueling. I spent some time in the Navy hunting Russian submarines from a P-3 Orion, nice to find this one so easily. I was also impressed with a locomotive on display outside, they have kept a lot of the train station items (the passenger loading area and tracks are still on the site).It was a nice place to visit on a very gloomy day in Richmond. I also got to spend a bit more time in Richmond this afternoon doing some exploring; will save that for my next post here.