Museum of Natural Curiosity Plus Living Planet Aquarium

The Salt Lake/Provo area has a new museum attraction - the Museum of Natural Curiosity recently opened at Thanksgiving Point. It will provide hands-on learning opportunities for people of all ages. KSL has this article about the museum. Below are excerpts and a video clip.

"(There are) five main exhibition galleries all about science and engineering and art and creativity, really creating that curiosity in all of us,” Thanksgiving Point CEO Mike Washburn said.

The five galleries are Water Works, Rainforest, Kidopolis, the Discovery Garden and Innovation Gallery.

“This Museum of Natural Curiosity is going to spawn new entrepreneurship, people that will become the new business people, the new Steve Jobs, the new Bill Gates,” Gov. Gary Herbert said. “People will use this kind of curiosity to invent new things, make our lives better.”

Living Planet Aquarium

Not far away, in Draper, the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium also offers a fun learning environment. The Deseret News has this great feature about the aquarium and its offerings. Below are excerpts.

(Brent) Andersen walked away from a secure job on the California coast to return to Utah to build a world-class aquarium in his home state. His vision was finally realized 17 years later with the opening in Draper on March 25.

The aquarium reached 200,000 visitors on Day 36 and is on pace to reach the million mark within a year. According to Andersen, it ranks fourth among the nation’s aquariums in attendance. Part of this is probably attributable to the newness of the aquarium, but the aquarium also had long lines and sustained attendance when it was temporarily housed in smaller facilities in downtown Salt Lake City and in Sandy.

One of the aquarium’s sea turtles came from a hospital in Florida, where it recovered after being struck by a boat and then attacked by a shark. Such injuries leave air trapped in the turtle’s shell, which means it’s too buoyant to dive underwater and therefore can’t be returned to the wild.

The penguins were flown from Galveston to Utah on Continental Airlines because the airline offers a temperature-controlled environment. The otter came from Long Island in dog crates. The toucans were placed on seats in the two rows of a Southwest Airlines jet. The sharks were trucked from Albuquerque, California and Las Vegas.