a day with the family

The southern California Retties are visiting and the possibility of rain, and a very traffic heavy San Francisco changed our plans and we decided to stay on our side of the bay. We stopped in Oakland Chinatown to pick up pork buns for later and then headed to the Oakland Museum. When you have a ten year old with you, suddenly your ideas of museum viewing change.

What would Katie like to see? First stop was the Koi Pond, something I always enjoy.

We weren't the only ones trying to decide on our favorite fish. Friday school groups were everywhere.
But this didn't seem to bother any of us.

Then we headed to the Gallery of California Natural Sciences. We periodically cruise through here after viewing the art and are in the throes of becoming museumed out. But watching what interests our ten year old visitor as well as the other smaller visitors is an a very different experience. I always have liked the Oakland Museum for it's displays that ask for participation and encourage you to open the drawers and look deeper. They even have a a couple of drawers to pull open that let the viewer see taxidermied roadkill. Not something you see everyday. Sorry no photo.

But the photos above and below get the point across about the overuse and waste of plastic in our local world.

Recycling all the plastic into art is a softer way to tell the story, but the story gets told, and the observers are encouraged throughout the museum to make their own art.

Mike and Tina view one of their displays explaining the problem of plastic garbage.

And we do make our way over to the "art" where brothers can view the f64 pullout drawers.

Now we take our dozen pork buns and move onto "Bulwinkle Land".

Mr. Handsome (dressed in the orange cat suit) joins us for the tour.

We left with a handful of tile from Mark, generous gifts to all of us.

Two more stops before heading home. First one to pickup live crab for dinner and second the fresh bread to go along with it.

Aero is quite interested in what had been in the cooler, and it wasn't the bread.