Travelsmartplanet

We liked it when this sign on an Arataki trail in Waitakere NZ teaches us how dead trees are a life system for other life forms: slaters, cockroaches, millipedes, wetas, spiders live on the decay.

Look closely and you can see a live Weta which lives at the Arataki Visitor Centre in Waitakere NZ. Wetas are so old that they have outlived the dinosaurs. They’ve hardly changed in 100 million years. They are nocturnal and are among the heaviest insects in the world. There are about 100 different varieties of Weta in New Zealand.

Celebrate the season at historic Newburyport Spring Festival, a tradition upheld for over 30 years on Memorial Day Weekend.  Enjoy great live music, art, fine crafts, activities for kids, and food from Newburyport’s outstanding restaurants at this 2-day FREE festival featuring entertainment for the whole family -rain or shine.

Sunday -Entertainment
10:30am-11:15am in Market Square -Bryson Lang – Comedy Juggler – audiences will see a family-friendly show and an energetic personality performing inventive and clever routines that mix comedy, audience participation, ball spinning, flying sombreros, ball bouncing, fire-juggling, well-crafted timing, huge spinning bouncing rings, giant Beach Balls, improv, and a few surprises.

10am, 12pm, and 2pm -Theater in the Open – Flash Mob on Inn Street

Live Music
1pm – 4pm  Live Music in Market Square – 617 Band – Covering your favorite party and dance hits!

11pm, 1pm, 3pm – 30 min sets on Inn Street – Zach Field Drum Studio

Art
“Emerging at Any Age” – A group of Newburyport’s finest senior artists from just starting out to artists that have had long careers in art. Gallery will be on Pleasant Street.

Monday Entertainment
Kids Entertainment from 10:30-11:30am in Market Square – Reptile Show
Come and meet some of the friendliest reptiles in New England. Brought to you by Zoo Creatures/New England Reptile, they will teach you about some most impressive animals. From giant snakes to prehistoric lizards, you can learn, touch, hold and hug.

Live Music in Market Square
Eagle in the Attic – Newburyport band performing

Location: Downtown Newburyport, Market Square, Newburyport, MA 01950
Date: Sun  May 28 – Mon May 29, 2017
Hours: 10am – 5pm
Tel: 978-462-6680
newburyport.com/events-in-newburyport/
For Regional Accommodations, Restaurants & Attractions: newburyportchamber.org

Dinosaur Revolution is a traveling exhibition staged  at the Delaware Museum of Natural History. This is a creative learning experience within a maze setting. The interactive maze is mentally and physically engaging and offers a fun and hands-on way to explore the fascinating prehistoric world of dinosaurs.

Uncover the facts, fictions, and fossils of Dinosaur Revolution as visitors can experience reptilian role-play activities by LIVING LARGE. Undertake three Mesozoic Missions spanning 150 million years that dinosaurs ruled the Earth and mimic dinosaur behavior; become a junior paleontologist and find evidence of dinosaur doings while learning why dinosaurs are one of the most successful survivors in earth’s history; and unearth a shocking discovery: dinosaurs may not be extinct!

Dinosaur Revolution blends learning and play, inviting visitors to investigate all things dinosaur while challenging your knowledge, presenting new discoveries, and debunking popular myths.

Location: Delaware Museum of Natural History, 4840 Kennett Pike, Wilmington, DE 19807
Dates: until – May 29, 2017
Hours: Mon – Sat: 9:30 – 4:30pm, Sun: Noon – 4:30pm
Tel: 302-658-9111
delmnh.org/event/dinosaur-revolution
For Regional Accommodations, Restaurants & Attractions: visitwilmingtonde.com

If you are heading out to Ottawa to enjoy our nation’s capitol, leave some time to explore the Canadian Museum of Nature. It’s the perfect place for all ages of the family to enjoy themselves. The brainy kids (or adults) can soak up extensive details about nature while the playful gang can pull levers or turn knobs in a deep sea sub, learn on many touch screens, or even dance around in front of  the endothermy camera checking out their colorful “hotspots”.

Everyone is awed by the the 19.8-metre blue whale skeleton in the Water Gallery but keeping going further in. All the way in the back are many interactive games for young and old alike: make believe areas for the wee ones, a board game along a wall,  animal jigsaw puzzles on touch screens, word games, etc.  

Gawk at the dinosaur fossils or walk amongst the fleshed-out dinosaur creatures for photo ops with kids. In the Vale Earth Gallery swoon over the 1200 gorgeous minerals, rocks and meteorites. Our 5 1/2-year-old couldn’t get enough of the joystick which controls a huge earth or the button to start the volcano.

Sure there’s a full size mammal gallery but the 11, 8 and 5 1/2 year-olds all stayed longer in the small Nature Live space where they oogled the cases of walking stick bugs in different camouflage colors and thicknesses. How many of you have come face to face with a tarantula? Then they listened intently as a docent showed fossils which were indigenous to Ottawa.

If you have time there are two 3D movies, “Prehistoric Planet 3D and Micro-Monsters 3D” (both too scary for the 5 1/2 -year old) but our gang liked the interactive museum more.

The famous Bird Gallery, with  one of the most extensive collections of Canadian birds in the world re-opened June 1. A special exhibit on now is Ultimate Dinosaurs June 11-September 5 and then upcoming is Reptiles: The Beautiful and the Deadly, October 6-April 2 .

A brand new Arctic Gallery will be unveiled on June 23 which is set to explain how the arctic is changing, including plants, animals and people of the area plus scientific research. Outside, three new ecozones will be shown off on June 17 including a woolly mammoths and an “iceberg”.

I’d like to give a thumbs up to the friendly security guards who answered questions informatively and helped to point out nearby bathrooms and water fountains.

Canadian Museum of Nature, a Beaux Arts building, was our first national museum, completed in 1912. Trivia buffs should note that this building  served as home to Canada’s House of Commons and Senate following the fire that destroyed the Centre Block of Parliament in 1916.

Location: 240 McLeod St., Ottawa
Phone: 613-364-4021
www.nature.ca