On this Father's Day, I'm taking you to Santa Barbara's Natural History Museum, to view fathers on outings with their children. With its Spanish architecture and tile roofs, the museum is housed in a park-like setting that encompasses the rocky watercourse of Mission Creek and its surrounding oak trees.
The Natural History Museum is a perfect place to spend an enlightening time with your child. Beginning with its entrance, where you'll be greeted by the life-sized skeleton of a blue whale. You'll proceed through tiled hallways to twelve exhibition rooms with displays of regional birds, mammals, insects and marine life, as well as artifacts from the museum's vast collection of Native American and antique art.
This day, I enjoyed watching the different moods of fathers with their kids, from playful, to pensive, to protective. They all enacted their fatherly roles with warmth and caring, and made me well aware of the memories they were fostering.
I watched them observe the animated dinosaur, with its flashing teeth and ground-rumbling roar. I saw them wander past docents who displayed live birds: fine-feathered kestrels from the falcon family that were perched on poles. From there, the fathers took their children to one of my favorite exhibitions:
the biennial Butterflies Alive exhibit. Here, live butterflies are enclosed inside a large netted bungalow with a lush interior of flowing fountains and floral gardens. It is always an enchanting scene.
Dear Fathers, thank you, and please take a bow!
**My next post is just days away, on the 20th. I hope to see you then. Sincerely, ~ Anitra
