My sister has chastised me for taking so long to write the second post about my vacation- I'm not sure where the time went, it feels like we came home yesterday! On vacation I learned a very big lesson about trusting the internet. We planned on driving to the Albany NY area Thursday night (we left at midnight- figuring that Cordelia would sleep in the car and we wouldn't have to entertain her on the 6ish hour drive, which only sort of worked) not being entirely sure if our friends would have off work on Friday The Hubby told me to look for something for him, myself, Cordelia to do during the day. Having never been to Albany I turned to the trusty internet and found a butterfly conservatory.
It looked like soo much fun! And I told Cordelia about it, and she talked about it non-stop for a week before we left. In fact when I went to carry her out to the car (to start our long drive) she shot up and say "MOMMY ARE WE GOING TO THE BUTTERFLY MUSEUM NOW!!!!!! She was soo excited that even when we figured out that the conservatory was actually almost two hours away from our friend's house we decided to go anyways (and drag our buddy along because he ended up with the day off in the end). Two extra hours didn't sound like that much in the grand scheme of things- but man were we exhausted by the time we picked Billy up!
When we got to the Butterfly Conservatory I think I almost cried. It was small, dirty, and smelled funny. There were lots of animals besides butterflies but all of their cages seemed too small- and pretty rusty. There were very few butterflies, and I'm pretty sure that at least half of them were dead. Maybe it was a really cool place at one point, but with lack of funds it disintegrated into a yucky road side attraction. My poor tired mind, which was over-stressed from the vacation prep and the long drive was about to crack. All I could think about was how I should have done more research. Why didn't I check how far away it was before telling Cordelia? Brendon and Billy were going to be soo ticked that I dragged them to this expensive hole in the wall! And mostly- Cordelia must be soo disappointed.
But, after we made it past the crotchety front desk lady, and worked on ignoring the five other slightly stand-offish ladies working the enclosure, I was able to take a big breath and look at my daughter and realize that she thought she was in heaven. She is too young to notice the rust on the animal cages, or the peeling paint, or even know that the place shouldn't smell that bad, she just saw that she could walk next to- and pet- a giant tortoise.
After that it got a lot better. It also helped that Brendon and Billy were troopers and never once told me the place sucked.
Cordelia was amazed by how many different types of animals resided at the conservatory, not a ton of each animal but one or two of many different species. In addition to the tortoise we were able to pet bunnies and hedgehogs (I bugged the people working there to let her pet them multiple different times because I was a little annoyed at the whole thing)
They also had a sloth which was pretty neat.
I would never go back, and I'm not sure I would recommend the experience to anyone, but I am glad we went because seeing the animals made Cordelia incredibly happy.
