October 17, 2022

DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE

2001 Colorado Blvd, Denver, CO 80205

“The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is a municipal natural history and science museum in Denver, Colorado. It is a resource for informal science education in the Rocky Mountain region.” - Wikipedia

When researching on the internet things to do in Denver the Denver Museum of Nature & Science is one of the top recommendations, I now understand why it is ranked so highly.  There is so much to see and everything I witnessed was very well done.

I started in the “Space Odyssey” room, a very hands-on and interactive exhibit that young kids love.  I can’t tell you much about the exhibit because there were too many loud, excited, young people for me to enjoy the area, so I walked through the room very quickly.  I next moved into the “Coors Gem & Minerals” room.  While I’m not a big rockhound, I did find the variety of gems and minerals on display to be fascinating.  From here I moved onto the second floor.

Most of the second-floor houses wildlife dioramas starting with animals commonly scene in the Colorado area, followed by bears, sea mammals, along with wildlife from North America, South Pacific Islands, and Australia.  Signs on the stoop of each diorama gave a lot of information about the animals inside.  Here again, young children loved the area, though they were not as loud as they were in the space area.  Also on the second-floor was the Crane Hall of North American Indian Cultures.  Unfortunately, I was running short on time when I found this exhibit, so I didn’t get to spend as much time here, but what I did see was very interesting.

There were more wildlife exhibits on the third floor including more animals found in Colorado.  Other rooms were Birds of the Americas, Northern & Rare Birds, and wildlife from Botswana, Africa, and South America.  The third floor also had an exhibit of Egyptian mummies and an excellent display of dinosaur skeletons.  And then my favorite room in the whole museum housed the “Konovalenko: Gem Carvings of Russian Folk Life”, an amazing display of statuettes made completely of different gems.  The artist, Vasily Konovalenko, was certainly talented and also had a keen sense of humor which showed up in some of the pieces he carved.

The open-air terrace on the fourth floor gave an excellent view of downtown Denver with the Rocky Mountains in the background.

When planning my stop at this museum I gave myself three hours to take in the exhibits.  I used up all three hours, and wished I had about another hour to completely see and appreciate everything the museum had to offer.  I highly recommend visiting the Denver Museum of Science & Nature when in Denver.