What a Gem!

A couple weeks ago in October I went and visited my college buddies in Colorado. When asked what sites would be fun to see the Denver Museum of Nature & Science came up. I'm all for museums and stuff like that so I was all for it. Holy Cow! This is one sweet place to see....you could be age 7 or 70 everyone would enjoy it. They had taxidermy displays, imax, dinosaur fossils & skeletons, but my personal favorite was the Rock & Mineral Collection.

Now I've always been a rock hound, as previously mentioned....but this exhibit blew me away. I loved all the little pedestals for the crystals and the assortment of specimens was incredible. (My accomplice took lots of photos of the minerals for me to use as reference for paintings). Here are two of the paintings inspired by this lovely trip to the Denver Museum.

    "Splendid Fairy-Wren", 8.5 x 4.5, Gouache & Ink on Wood, 2010             Gypsum at Museum

       "Chit Chat, 5 x 7, Gouache & Ink on Wood, 2010                                         Quartz at Museum

Here are a few of my of my favorite displays at the exhibit. I thankful my friends patience while I looked at every shiny thing and bauble...and that's saying something because this was a pretty big exhibit!

After that I pretty much went into a frenzied state buying little rock samples and crystals at the gift shop to add to my own collection. And if THAT wasn't enough to satisfy my rock hunger, later that day we went to a pumpkin patch....that had a rock sluicing setup (intended for the 5 - 12 age, but I shamelessly went twice what kind of goodies I could get from the little bags of dirt and sifted out all sorts of shiny rocks.)

Here's a little video of me sluicing for rocks & crystals.

It was a great trip to Denver and great to see my buddies again. I highly recommend checking out the Museum there...and if you've already been there...GO AGAIN! 

*Thanks accomplice for the great museum photos and video*