North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

Our latest Triangle excursion was to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Admission is free, and there was plenty to keep us entertained for hours. We did opt to pay $7 each to go to the special Glow: Living Lights exhibit. However, we agreed that this particular exhibit was not really worth the money, and we wouldn't recommend paying to see it.

The first floor of the museum focuses on animals and plants native to North Carolina. Without a doubt, the most impressive part of this floor is the gigantic whale skeletons.

There's also a really cool recreation of a North Carolina beach, and the types of birds that are found in the area.

Walking onto the second floor, you feel like you're being transported to a serene forest. There's a waterfall, and real fish and turtles swimming around. There's also a whole section on different minerals found in North Carolina.

The third floor was by far our favorite, because it had all of the dinosaur exhibits, and a section on the Earth's past. This is where we spent the majority of our time, and TJ got some really great pictures here.

The fourth floor has a section on Arthropods, an amazing, hands-on area called The Naturalist Center, and a Cafe. We skipped the bugs (I've never been a fan), and stopped by The Naturalist Center for a little while, but our favorite part of this floor was the Cafe, where we cooled off with a refreshing drink.

There are also two great gift shops that we enjoyed browsing through, and we picked up some fun stuff to remember our trip by. To sum it up, this museum is awesome, and we'd definitely recommend checking it out!

-Map