Albany and the New York State Museum

The drive into Albany was pretty rural.

But once we got there, it was so urban it was our craziest parking adventure yet!

We tried the 4 options the Capitol has for RV's with no luck - 1. full, 2. the circus is in town, 3. the city says no, and 4. there's construction. Option 5: drop the trailer in the employee lot miles away and drive in with just the car. Easy! Yay!

And we learned that downtown employees park miles away and are shuttled to and from their workplaces on big busses that run every 8 minutes for 1 1/2 hours every morning. Huh. 

After it taking 1 1/2 hours just to park the car...

We decided to do the New York Stare Museum first because they close at 5 and the Capitol is open til 7pm right now because in October they offer "Haunted Tours" (where one is guided through the building and told ghost stories.) we planned to do a self-guided iPhone audio tour. (:

So museum...

Minerals of New York

Wildlife of New York

Bones of New York

History of New York

Native peoples of New York

Old carousels of New York

Ok - Hand carved horses with real horse hair tails from the 1800s!

Cars of New York

And an emotional exhibit about 9/11 that barely scratched the surface of what we know we'll experience when we get to the actual site.

After this, we realized we probably need a day at the actual World Trade Center site without kids. Will be thinking on how to make that happen.