Our OMSI Dinosaur Exhibit Outing

We have had a membership to our local science museum, OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), since the kids were babies. I have been visiting OMSI since I was a child as well, both through school field trips, and every year for my birthday my grandma would let me pick my favorite place to go and I would always pick OMSI! :)

Such a fun place to explore, the museum always has interesting exhibits and fun interactive displays. Definitely something for everyone, a membership is a great value, you always have somewhere interesting to take the family! The latest exhibit is Dinosaurs Unearthed. We have always enjoyed the dinosaur exhibits, the fun animatronic giant dinosaurs set up in prehistoric settings are always so much fun to see.

The last few exhibits we have been to have not allowed photos, so we were super excited to see that photos of this exhibit were encouraged!

The exhibit was set up really nicely, the dinosaurs looked relatively realistic and it was fun watching them move around.

 It is amazing to think of how big these creatures were! Of course the big T-Rex types were extra cool to see!

We had the kids do a "Land of the Lost" style pose with this biggy, we were able to go through the exhibit twice, once when we first got there, and once again towards the end of the day when hardly anyone was there. A sign was up encouraging "selfies" with the dinosaurs so the kids went through with their phones and had a fun time taking selfies with every dinosaur.

I thought some of the exhibit was interestingly different than the ones I had seen before, many of the dinos now sported hair and feathers since that is one of the current theories.

The lighting throughout the exhibit was fabulous.

My favorite scene was one with a velociraptor, as well as some of the flying varieties of dinosaurs.

 The lighting was turquoise and pink with some yellows and it was just really easy to imagine a far off land of dinosaurs being just like this!

 There were dinosaur skeletons set up next to animatronic dinosaurs for comparison.

I was just taken in by all the prehistoric scenery, as a long time fan of Land of the Lost (read my post where I got to meet the actress who played Holly!), and also a fan of the book and TV series The Lost World, and of course who can forget Jurassic Park, it was all quite fun!

After we were done at the dino exhibit we decided that it had been quite some time since we had seen a planetarium show, so we saw a cute little presentation that gave us all an update on our solar system facts, it was probably geared for a much younger audience but it was still very fun.

The kids played in the Rocket capsule replica which they have been enjoying since they were toddlers!

On the upper level they have a newer exhibit with a large suspended planet that changes from the sun surface to the moon, then earth, and so on, it is very fun to watch.

They have a very large learning area about the environment and recycling with lots of fun hands on exhibits.

We stopped in at the Science Store, the kids always buy astronaut ice cream, and this time they also found astronaut freeze dried grapes which they are excited to try, I found a cute little dinosaur carved out of Mexican Onyx which will be perfect for my bookshelf.

I saw some cute books about dinosaurs while I was there and ordered them from Amazon this week. I was excited to see a new ologies series book- Dinosaurology (Ologies) we have loved the ologies series since Dragonology which is having it's 10th anniversary this year, my how time flies! Just like all the ologies series books, Dinosaurology is a fun book!

Another favorite series of ours are the Basher Basics Science books, so I was excited to see they had one about Dinosaurs - Basher Basics: Dinosaurs: The bare bones. Basher Basics have wonderful cute illustrations and present a subject in a nice basic way that is easy to remember, I have enjoyed these since the kids were young, we all reference our Basher books when we need a quick answer on a science subject, this will be our 10th Basher book, and I hope to eventually have them all! Now we can brush up on Dinosaur facts! :)

All around it was a very fun trip to the museum. The day was beautiful so we decided to walk along the outside of the museum which is right along the Willamette River, right across from downtown Portland, Oregon. We got to see the progress of the new bridge being built.

Here's the view of Portland across the river.

There is a public dock that you can walk out on, the kids being teens were eager to explore it, I was less keen on the idea, but I walked out as well. I am not much of a swimmer so I was quite happy when we were back on non-floating ground!

Definitely a great way to spend a summer day!

I would highly encourage anyone in the area to stop by OMSI for a visit, or check out the exhibit when it comes to a museum in your neck of the woods!