Pet-Friendly New England Travels

There's a cool guide to pet-friendly travel guide at the Boston Globe's web site, here. Places to roam with Rover, dog-friendly parks in Boston, pet-friendly lodging, pet-friendly attractions, dog parks and trails, and Boston kennels.

Also, a photo gallery of travel pals.

Children's Museum, West Hartford, CT

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On a day off from school recently, Tinsley found herself with two kids to entertain and no help from Dad (I had to work, it's good Friday, not great Friday). She decided to spend the day at the Children's Museum in West Hartford. She didn't bring a camera as she already had her hands full, but we did convince Tom to write it up for our blog.

Here's Tom's write-up:

In the yard of this really awesome place in West Hartford called the children's museum, I saw and went inside a hollow concrete whale that said facts about its self. But every time I went inside, it fell silent.

Inside the museum there was a room called turtle town. And no wonder! There were turtles everywhere! Turtles! Turtles! Turtles! there were big turtles, little turtles, snapping turtles, box turtles, tortoises, every one you could think of! Eventually we had to leave turtle town.

In the next room, I almost fell down -- practically every thing was made of LEGOS! Boy did I have a fun time in there! But, sadly, we had to leave; my annoying sister convinced us to go back to turtle town.

After that, I got to pet a snake with really scaly skin. I didn't miss my turn! Later on there was this really awesome thing where I saw a scorpion underneath an ultraviolet light. (It looked white.)

After a while something even cooler came to my eyes. I actually saw a fake dinosaur that moved and roared! The last room was the gift shop. I bought a little lizard, a “grabit”, and a rock called snakeskin. They were all awesome! I sighed.

On the way home I had quite some fun thinking about all of the fun stuff I did at the museum. It was really fun, and I wish I could go there again.

Sounds like a good time.
Here are a couple of tips from Tinsley:

• Bring hand sanitizer to swab the kids down with after they pat the turtles and snakes and swarm the LEGO pit.
  
• Parking can be a little difficult in west Hartford, so looking for lunch before going to the museum may be challenging. I recommend the Subway on Farmington Avenue.

Dinosaur State Park: A Good Pit Stop

Stop in for a picnic lunch and explore the museum, craft room, and more than two miles of nature trails through the Dinosaur Park State Arboretum.

In Rocky Hill, CT, just a wee bit south of Hartford you’ll find a geodesic dome built over an expanse of sedimentary rock with one of the largest dinosaur track sites in North America. Inside, you’ll see life-size Jurassic and Triassic period dioramas depicting life in prehistoric Rocky Hill, Connecticut and you'll also see actual dinosaur skeletons, dinosaur footprints, fossils, and learning exhibits.




Five hundred footprints is nothing to sneeze at
The footprints were discovered in 1966 when excavators were digging out to set a foundation for a new state building. The workers found 2,000 footprints (500 of them are on display under the dome, the rest are buried for preservation). The tracks were laid down 200 million years ago.

Did dinosaurs eat walnuts?
In the early dinosaur days, most of the plants we see today were already established: conifers (cone-bearing), ferns, horsetails and ginkos. Missing were the flowering plants, whose pollen first appears in the fossil record about 140 million years ago, and who were prolific by 90 million years ago. The same Laurel, magnolia, sycamore and beach species that we have today were growing back then at the end of the Cretaceous period. Walnuts, barberry, elm and mulberry were prevalent then, and there’s a good chance some species of dinosaur ate walnuts, but there’s no evidence that dinosaur children played All Around the Mulberry Bush. The arboretum has more than 200 conifer species, including such exotics as cedar-of-Lebanon, giant-sequoia, incense-cedar, and monkey puzzle tree.

Cost: $5 for adults, $2 for kids ages 6-12, free for kids under 6.

Open daily 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Trails close at 4 p.m.



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