Summer Travels- Center in the Square

 i'm a weekend behind on my summer travels blogging. On the weekend before last, we took a trip over to Roanoke to visit the Science Museum of Western Michigan.

The Museum is located in the Center in the Square.  It has been quite a while since we have been there and there have been lots of changes!

The first floor now has a small aquarium with interactive tablets that contain lots of information about the fish in the tanks, word searches and other educational puzzles/games.  This was really neat, and the kids really enjoyed it.  Our Greensboro museum passes gave us free admission to the museum.  

The science museum had a traveling exhibit about parasites called Eww! What's eating you. Really, not sure what was scarier the parasites or Carrot Top. 

 We each spun the wheel of Misfortune. Both kids spun a tick bite w/ lymes while Kenan and i were lucky enough to only get a tick bite. Not all that funny since Sequoia was treated for Lymes last year, and i know 2 people being treated right now. The ticks are especially bad this year and Lymes is everywhere.

The Science museum is really small, but the kids still really enjoyed it.

They just added a new butterfly garden upstairs, and i was excited to check it out. i love butterfly gardens.

The butterfly gardens are new. They have a really nice set up, but the butterflies were kind of lacking. They only had the native butterflies, primarily Painted Ladies and Fritillaries.  

This is a great Spangled Fritillary. We get tons of these at home, so they were not that exciting, but it was still fun to walk through. In a few weeks they are supposed to be getting the non-native butterflies and we'll be going to back to see them.  They do have an area where you can see the chrysalises hanging, and watch the new butterflies emerging. 

After visiting the butterfly garden we walked up to the rooftop Pavilion. i didn't get very good pictures, but the pavilion is really pretty. They have rooftop gardens, a fountain filled with lily pads, solar panels and  a beautiful view of the city.  The Center in the Square also has a history museum, theatre and other things. We really have never explored the whole thing.  

After visiting the museum, we walked down and browsed the market square. They always have tons of fresh locally grown produce and hand crafted artwork.  Across the street is an eatery with severeal different restaurants inside.  It made for a really nice day trip.  

After leaving Roanoke we headed back towards floyd and stopped just outside the county to hike at Bottom Creek Gorge but that will a separate blog post. :)  

Lots of fun adventures this summer!