This was the second part of our first full day in Denver. Earlier we had visited the Denver zoo which you can read about here. After that we weren’t quite ready to head back to our cabin and instead decided to visit the nearby Museum of Nature & Science.

It was only about a five minute walk from the zoo, through a little park before coming across this beautiful sight. I’ve mentioned in the past that I love museums, doesn’t matter if it’s for art, science, industry or history. My favorite however is a Nature museum.

We had one in Ottawa where I grew up and it was a place we visited quite often and is where I fell in love with dinosaurs. So I was excited to get inside and see what they had to offer here. Immediately upon entering we were confronted by this big guy and I knew we were in for a treat.

This place was huge, and I truly wish we had enough time to explore the entire museum, unfortunately we only had a short amount of time so we had to pick just a few sections to explore.

We headed all the way up to the top floor and figured it would be easiest to work our way back down. This was where they had a special exhibit going on that was all about bugs. Now I’m not the biggest fan of bugs, so usually I’ll just try to steer clear.

They had some very interested interactive exhibits, and even an area where you could tough a few creepy crawlers. That I did not partake in, although the little ones in attendance seemed to really enjoy it.

After having our fill of bugs, we headed down to the Wildlife Halls. This is another favorite of mine in all Nature museums.

The size and details of these scenes in incredible, and even just the total number of animals instead each display is amazing.

The museum hours were quickly coming to a close and we didn’t have much time let so we wanted to make sure and visit one last section and that had to be the prehistoric dinosaur exhibit.

This area just brought me back to my childhood. The fossils on display were immense and it always blows my mind just how big and small some of them where.

I could have spent hours in this area, but still enjoyed everything we saw here.

After finishing up with the dinosaurs we then headed back down to the main floor. We chose to skip the gift shop, but I did find the pressed penny machine just outside the store.

The machine miraculously was still only fifty cents and I was able to use my own pennies. Thankfully I came prepared with some coppers to press. The cabinet had a nice blue design, and the marquee design was like nothing I’d seen before on a machine.

The pennies in this set had images of Saturn with some starts, an Egyptian burial mask, a Mammoth, and my favorite the T-Rex skeleton.

We had a great day at the zoo and then this fantastic museum, but we were pretty exhausted by this time and still trying to get on the correct time zone. After a quick dinner we headed back to our cabin for some much needed rest before we headed back out for some other experiences and plenty of new pressed pennies so stayed tuned. Keep on Pressing!

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