Not all who wander are lost

After leaving Turkey Run, MB and I took the scenic route to Mounds State Park. We hit the Target in Anderson for provisions and long-sleeved shirts for MB (who packed for the summer weather we were expecting but thankfully didn't get). I scored this wicked T-shirt from the guys' clearance rack:


We had dinner with college roommate Spanish Monkey, and went back to Mounds to camp for the night.

home sweet home

On Monday, we drove to Muncie to go to Minnestrista. It was okay, but only had three smallish galleries. One of the art exhibitions was REALLY cool. In the Indiana Acres exhibit, I saw these somewhat disturbing little spectacles:



I like chicken nuggets as much as the next person, but this is a little freaky. Hmmm...or maybe I feel less bad about eating them since given a chance they'd eat each other.

Minnetrista did have a really cool (and ENORMOUS) sculpture out front:



We ate lunch at a Thai place that MB had been wanting to visit for more than two years, and it was very good. After that, we went back to Mounds to hike:

the White River

honey locust
(yes, those are GIANT SPINES on the tree)

Holy crap!
(and could I be any whiter?)

weird but cool shelter on the trail

The park had this hilarious picture posted in several places as a warning about the incredible cunning and appetite of raccoons:


Speaking of raccoons, one apparently tried to raid our cooler at some point:

I found this little guy on Tuesday morning while I was taking down the tent:



After we packed up, we drove down to Indianapolis to go to the Indiana State Museum. But first, we headed back toward Turkey Run on State Road 32 to take pictures of the coolest lawn ornaments in the entire damn world:


And how cool is MB, truly? He's a very linear person, and yet he approved an hour-long backtrack, just so I could get photos of giant dinosaur sculptures for my blog. I am the luckiest girl ever.





The State Museum was pretty rad. We went to see Dinosaurs 3D:  Giants of Patagonia in IMAX, and liked it so much that we went right back in to see Sharks 3D. After the movies and lunch at the eerily deserted cafe (The museum is MASSIVE, but we only saw about 20 other guests the entire time we were there. There weren't even any field trips, since it was state standardized testing week. Nice, but unnerving.), we checked out the first three "Story of Indiana" galleries. It started with a geologic history. The second gallery (and my favorite) was the ancient seas exhibition, which had dozens and dozens and dozens of mindblowing fossil specimens. I LOVE me some fossils. The last gallery that we went through was the Age of Ice gallery, which had wicked-cool Ice Age fossils. Most of the other galleries deal with historical times and industry, which is neat but not my favorite stuff to see, and the museum was about to close anyway, so we headed for home.

huge calcite crystals (bigger than my head, dudes!) and crinoid fossils

Check out the mastodon in the back! And the stag moose!

giant short-faced bear and Harlan's musk ox
(which has the best Latin name in the history of classification:  Bootherium bombifrons)

Gil the (impossibly cute) Glyptodont says, "Thanks for reading!"