To Boldly Go

EXPLORING NEW WORLDS: This afternoon, we had the pleasure of attending the out-of-this-world special Star Trek exhibit at EMP Museum.

The entrance to the exhibit was dramatic.

CJ and Annabelle were definitely ready to boldy go!

These space-flown Gemini-era artifacts from NASA at the entrance let us know we were in for something special. 

The Star Trek showcase included amazing artifacts, such as scripts pumped out of Gene Roddenberry's typewriter ...

Loved reading this page ...

 Are you up to the Star Trek Test?!

The visual centerpiece of the main floor's display was the old bridge from the original series. 

The shirts' necks and rickrack embellishments on the sleeves are a little worse for their 50 year wear, but the fabric itself is in great shape. In person, you can even see the see hand stitching on the shirts' hems.

While I have to admit the 'control panels' look dated and obviously they're the stuff of fantasy.

But boy , oh, boy, did those buttons hold magic for me when I was a kid. 

And I guess they still do. :)

Sulu's station is pictured below.

There were iconic original series props, including a communicator ... 

 a tricorder ...

 a phaser ...

 and McCoy's hypospray.

Uhura's dress was on display (as was the requisite ear piece).

We were happy to see this guy!

 Any fan of the original Star Trek will never forget the epic Kirk v. Gorn fight.

This Kirk costume from "Mirror, Mirror" was pristine. Something tells me William Shatner loved wearing it.

The detail on its medallions was cool to see up close.

There were also costumes from Amok time, including Spock's father, Sarek. It looked a lot fancier in person that it did on a small CRT TV back in the day.

Spock's mother's dress was lovely.

Of course, Star Trek didn't end with the original series. Naturally, there were nods to The Next Generation, including rather terrifying Borg items.

And there were some interesting Data-related items, including his painting of his cat.

 And his head(!). I walked over it twice before I noticed it.

 We all loved this Picardigan (a fun play on words).

And we can't forget Captain Janeway of Star Trek Voyager years.

Her chair looked more comfortable than Kirk's but I loved the mid-century lines of TOS captain's chair more.

 Captain Benjamin Sisko's suit was also on display from the Deep Space Nine days.

Of course, the exhibit wouldn't be complete without items from the Star Trek movie franchise, like this costume worn by Ricardo Montalban in "The Wrath of Khan." 

This Klingon mask was remarkably detailed. Bet it wasn't much fun to wear, though. 

Here's a space suit Spock wore in the movie series. 

There were items from the most recent movies, as well, like this costume from Star Trek Into Darkness.

The exhibit has a number of really clever interactives, including a booth where you can get your Khan on!

You go into the booth, the infamous scene cues up and at the appointed moment, you pretend to scream "Khaaaaaan!" a la William Shatner/Captain Kirk.

We were amused by the updates on the screen while waiting for the video to process. ... 

"Processing rage," LOL. 

There was also a terrific transporter-related scene for people to ham it up in.

Two to beam down, Scotty!

Things got pretty intense. Fortunately neither of the kids was wearing a red shirt during their away mission!

https://youtu.be/W0kmnOVE4_I


Another fun spot was a chance to crawl through a Jeffries tube (how many times did Scotty have to do that?!). 

 Turns out the tubes are named after a key production designer from the original series. 

 Mr. Jeffries drew this to-scale early diagram of Enterprise and a Klingon Cruiser.

There was also a super clever "Create an Episode of Star Trek" attraction.

 You could spin dials to create your story. Annabelle's featured Lt. Uhura who encountered a powerful energy being who is stealing the Enterprise. 

The hero (Uhura) decides to infect the enemy computers with a virus, but discovers a computer is running things from behind the scenes, so the hero must blow up the Enterprise ... 

and learns cooperation is better than fighting.

CJ's story involved Captain Kirk encountering a powerful energy being who is stealing the Enterprise. The hero decided to run scans and perform experiments and finds the aliens are simply protecting their young. So the hero must attack the enemy ship, but learns all thinking beings deserve to be treated equally.

I think I've seen that episode. ...

There were factoids about the Star Trek universe posted here and there. I'd forgotten this fact.

There were several mentions about how diverse the cast of the original series was, and how unusual that was back when it aired. 

 CJ was enthralled by this mega Star Trek timeline on a wall in the exhibit.

There was a smaller, upstairs exhibit area. 

The space included info about how Star Trek continues to influence popular culture. 

The Star Trek exhibit took up about 90 percent of the two hours we spent at EMP today. But we didn find time to say hi to Jimi. ... 

And the kids thoroughly enjoyed their time in the Indie Game Revolution space. Since our last visit, they have added this ridiculously entertaining game. 

Two teams of two people play against one another. Each team is a two headed noodle, basically, trying to work together to coral a ball onto their side. 

 It was hysterical to watch. And speaking of hysterical, the kids always *have* to play Tenya Wanya Teens.

 It appeals to only the most high minded players. :)

EMP is simply amazing. Oh, and the playground outside of it isn't bad, either.

EYES ON JUPITER:  Most Americans will be thinking about barbecues and fireworks on the Fourth of July. Space exploration fans, however, will also be watching NASA TV for news about the spacecraft Juno arriving at Jupiter on Independence Day. 

We can't wait to see the photos and data that will be beamed some 1.8 billion miles back to Earth!

This PBS NewsHour segment gives an overview of the event. 


And tonight we listened to sound from around Jupiter! Below, you can listen to waves measured as Juno entered Jupiter's magnetosphere on June 25, 201. Audio accompanies an animation, with the volume and pitch correlated to the amplitude and frequency of the recorded waves.


SOCIAL ANIMALS: For anyone interested in potentially attending an awesome, NASA-related event (like a launch, a rocket engine test or more), sign up to get announcements from NASA's social media team when new NASA Social opportunities are open for registration. Simply subscribe by following this link: https://lists.nasa.gov/mailman/listinfo/nasa-social-announce

Diamonds and Asteroids

THE OLD BALL GAME: Tuesday, I had to drive down to Portland for an appointment. All the way down, I listened to sports radio, and all the way back. By the time I was halfway home, I was dying to go to the Mariners' game that evening.

I called Christian at about 3:30 to ask if he and the kids wanted to meet me at Safeco Field in a couple of hours. They hopped on a bus, I scored a parking spot on the street for free, and we actually arrived at the same street corner within 30 seconds of one another. Pretty amazing.

The kids were thrilled to see I had a big pizza from their favorite place down south. And so, they sat by the bullpen during batting practice and enjoyed their favorite pizza. Talk about a great dinner!

 Speaking of batting practice, we managed to come away with another ball!

It was rocketed out of the stadium by Pirates star Andrew McCutchen. We held onto it for nearly the whole game, but in the ninth, we spied a young Pirates fan in a McCutchen jersey and Christian and Annabelle gave it to the boy. He was pretty pleased. :)

All told, we got cheap tickets (thanks, random scalper), had great pizza, free parking, easy ingress, and the Mariners won convincingly. Good times!

ON YOUR MARKERS: A couple of weeks ago, Annabelle was gifted a set of super fancy Copic markers from our awesome Buy Nothing group. This set of markers retails for around $185 for the set she was gifted, if you can believe that.

The markers are special because they let you masterfully blend colors. Annabelle takes them with her frequently when we leave the house. Last night, in about an hour's time span, she produced all of the above at a local eatery. It was fun watching people's reactions as they walked past the table. One family stopped to chat on their way out. They had a girl a couple of years older than Annabelle who just *loved* her drawings, and so Annabelle gave her one. The girl was so thrilled. She actually came back into the place and over to the table a couple of minutes later to ask Annabelle her name so she could say she knew her before she was famous.  Pretty sweet. 

ASTEROID EVENT: This afternoon, Christian took the kids to the Museum of Flight to check out an Asteroid Day 'celebration.' 

Turns out June 30 is Asteroid Day because it marks the anniversary of the 1908 Siberian Tunguska asteroid impact - the largest such event in Earth's recent history. It took out 10 million trees, 20 miles in every direction from the point of impact.

I'll let the kids tell you about their afternoon field trip. Annabelle writes first ... 

The Museum of Flight had an event today called “asteroid day”. When we arrived, we didn’t know it was going to be as small as it was. It took up the Alaska Airlines aerospace education center area, so it only had about 3 things you could do. The first thing was make a solar system “model”, which was just gluing pom-poms onto a piece of paper, from what I could tell. They also had a flat cutout of earth with holes to throw “meteors” through. The meteors were just tinfoil balls with red, orange, and yellow ribbon (like fire) coming out of them. The one thing I did do was a small sandbox activity where you would dig up different rocks that might represent minerals you might find while digging on an asteroid (e.g. rhinestones represented diamonds, malachite represented copper). It wasn’t all I expected it to be, but it was nonetheless good for younger kids to learn about asteroids.

 Next up is CJ's account ...

According to the event's website, "Asteroid Day" is a global awareness campaign where people from around the world come together to learn about asteroids, the impact hazard they may pose, and what we can do to protect our planet, families, communities, and future generations from future asteroid impacts. Asteroid Day is held each year on the anniversary of the largest impact in recent history, the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia. The Museum of Flight, a frequent haunt for us, was holding an event for Asteroid Day, which we were looking forward to and visited.

One of the only things I learned at the event was the difference between asteroids (large rocks outside of Earth's atmosphere,) meteoroids (smaller rocks that break off from asteroids,) meteors (an asteroid or meteoroid that enters Earth's atmosphere,) and meteorites (meteors that land on Earth's surface). Otherwise, the event was rather simplistic and disappointing. There were 3 activity stations, only 1 of which I was interested in. One was a simplistic craft station that seemingly had little to do with the event. The second was a sandbox where you could "dig" for fools' gold, which you immediately had to put back in. The last one was a cardboard cutout of Earth suspended from the ceiling, with 4 holes in it. You could take a tinfoil ball that was supposed to look like a soon-to-be meteor, and try and throw it through one of the holes.

I was disappointed by the Museum of Flight's Asteroid Day event.

Ouch.  Hopefully it was more satisfying for the younger children who visited!

Eastern Adventure

CATCHING UP: Apologies for the tardiness, but the last couple of days have involved hundreds of miles and many sights.

Sunday and Monday were filled with an Idaho field trip for us. 

We left Seattle at 5 a.m. and drove along Interstate 90 for over 5 hours. We only stopped briefly for a couple of minutes, including one break to behold the viewpoint hear the Wild Horses monument in George, Washington.

Formally titled "Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies," the 200-foot line of life-size charging horse symbolically re-creates the Great Spirit turning loose a herd of wild horses above the Columbia River's Wanapum Lake. They are the creation of David Govedare of Chewelah, Washington, 

The horses are up on a hill, overlooking the Columbia River basin. Annabelle checked out the view there, too (that's the photo at the top of this post).

Then, it was on to our destination, the Silverwood Theme Park just north of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

We arrived at about 10:45 a.m., fifteen minutes before the gates opened at 11. Perfect timing! For the next seven-plus hours we walked all over the sprawling amusement and water park.

The very first thing CJ and Chistian did was hop on a big rollercoaster.

I'll let CJ tell you a bit more about our visit. ... 

Recently, my family went to the Silverwood Theme Park in Idaho, near the city of Coeur d'Alene. According to Wikipedia, Silverwood is the largest theme and water park in the American Northwest on 413-acre (1,670,000 m2) and boasting more than 65 rides, slides, shows and attractions.

During our visit to Silverwood, we went on many of those rides, some of which I will talk about here:

If I am remembering the first ride I went on was the Corkscrew. the Corkscrew's look was very distinctive, with a black-and-red color scheme in contrast to most of the rest of the park. According to Silverwood's website, originally opening at Knott's Berry Farm in 1975, the Corkscrew was the first modern inverting coaster. Riders on the Corkscrew would be turned upside down 2 times, which was apparently mandatory while building the Corkscrew.

One ride I really enjoyed at Silverwood was the Log Flume ride, where you could ride in a fake log across an artificial lake. One special part of the ride was that somebody outside the ride could place a quarter in a machine, and if they pressed a button on the machine after doing so, water would shoot out at certain parts of the ride. We ended up getting soaked this way.

A ride called Panic Plunge also comes to mind any time I think about Silverwood. Panic Plunge is a typical plummet ride where the ride raises you for a while, and then drops you very quickly. I noticed that while plummeting on Panic Plunge, I felt like I lost control over my body. I ended up regretting my decision to go on Panic Plunge, mostly because I became disoriented after riding it.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience at Silverwood. I look forward to visiting Silverwood again, and I would recommend a visit.

There was big fun to be had on the Bumper Boats ...

And there were multiple rollercoasters, including a mammoth wood-framed one.

We only played one midway game. Of course, it involved shooting clowns.

We spent about three hours in the amusement park side of the park, and three more hours on the water park side.

I'll let Annabelle share some about her visit. ...

Silverwood theme park is located in northern Idaho.  It’s a very fun park and it even has a large water park! The first thing we went to was the Country Carnival area. I didn’t go on any roller coasters, since the tame one I saw didn’t have any riders. I did watch CJ go on the Corkscrew though, and that roller coaster went in 2 loops! I did go on the scrambler, though. It was one of the fastest scramblers I’ve ever been on! After that we headed towards Roller Coaster Alley. There were rides there like the Aftershock, which dad went on. He said it was really scary! After riding roller coasters and having some snacks, we headed to the water park!

The first thing you see in the water park is Polliwog Park, which is a huge structure with lots of slides and water guns! You can run around in the shallow part or even get dunked by the huge bucket of water! They also had a wave pool with giant waves! My favorite part was the big tubing slide called Avalanche Mountain. The rafts were big enough for all 3 for us to go and it was fast! I also went on things like Velocity Peak, where you can go as fast as 55 miles an hour in only your swimsuit, and the new Riptide Racer, where you have a blue foam “toboggan” and you are timed as you zip down the slide! It was really fun going to Silverwood and I can’t wait to go again!

 Polliwog Park is pictured above.

Below are the big wading pools. The north one was closed when we were there, bummer ...

 but the south one was lots of fun. The waves were pretty impressive (often twice the size shown here).

In the middle of the water park, there was a "Lazy River" for floating down.

Much less sedate was this wild slide, Velocity Peak.Here's CJ smiling, happy to be alive afterward. 

Annabelle went down the dark blue, enclosed slide. Christian chose the same one as CJ.

At the north end of the water park were a pair of rides groups of people ride inflatables down. Christian and the kids went on Avalanche Mountain. It was about a half hour wait for a minute of fun, but they enjoyed it.

The forecast for the Sunday we visited was for 76 degrees or so. It would up being in the high 80s. It was a long, hot day, but loads of fun.

HOLY MOSES: We began heading back toward Washington at about 9 a.m. on Monday. I mentioned to the family that Id' heard there was a neat-o municipal water park in Moses Lake, Washington, and suggested we check it out.

Boy, were they glad we did!  Surf 'n Slide is big fun - and super inexpensive! The Moses Lake park was just $10 for adults, and free, $8 or $9 for kids, depending on their age. By contrast, general admission for Silverwood was $48. Sure, Surf 'n Slide isn't anywhere near as big and fantastic as Silverwood, but it's super affordable and definitely worth a visit!

The biggest draw there was the surf area, where water rapidly rushed up an incline, allowing for some fun knee and surf board action.

Annabelle looked downright graceful at times.

 Other times, not so much, ha ha.

The video tells the story best. 

But CJ, Annabelle and Christian all got the hang of it pretty quickly.