Track Out Week 2: Something Hot, Cold, and Old

We don’t have very good pictures of this week.  So if you want beautiful travel photos, we suggest checking out Lithuania pics of TravelSpirit blogger or the globally varied pics of traveledlife instagram etc-er.  We believe you will be admirably awed.

We started this week by taking Daddy to one of the “hot” new park destinations we stumbled on last week in Raleigh – Prairie Ridge Ecostation.  If you are a fan of Natural Playgrounds, then you’ll enjoy this place, tucked in off Reedy Creek close to the North Carolina Museum of Art.

There is not a lot of shade especially in the prairie section, but you will find some along the Forest Arboretum Trail which meanders along the creek.  There you can use your best Tarzan skills to swing down a “vine” to check it out.  This trail also has alot of trees labelled, so you can test your family’s knowledge of various well known as well as more obscure varieties.  Initially, we thought CJ was conquering a striated rock along the creek.  However, upon closer look it was actually the compacted roots from a fallen tree.

Surprisingly, we spent a long time in the bird blind looking at all the feathery friends which flew in and out of the pond area.  Another treasure of this new outpost of the Museum of Natural Sciences.  If you do venture out there though, be reminded it’s fairly hot in the prairie land marsh, so an early morning adventure would be better in the humid summertime.  Also, you may wish to be an eagle scout for black rat snakes unlike oblivious Lizzie and I who nearly stepped on one much to our after the fact gasping.

Before we left, CJ and I spent a long time creating different runs for balls to roll down.  Made me want to create one for our backyard.  Aah … the list grows.  I might get to it before they get out of college.  Maybe they could use it for an engineering project. 🙂

Due to limited digital device time the 1st week and a laudable amount of whining for such, our 2nd week only saw a limited amount of leisure outings.  Thankfully, we all enjoyed beating the heat by ice skating at the Raleigh Ice Plex.  If you live in the area, Tuesday’s from 9:30 to 3:45 is open public skating which is only $4 including skates.  Quite a deal for “cheapster Mommy” with kids home from school during the day as Lizzie proclaimed.  The skates were a bit rough on our unaccustomed feet, but we had a good time nonetheless.

I particularly liked Lizzie’s picturesque skating outfit.  With the music they played on the rink, I almost thought I was roller skating in the 80s.  Luckily, the falls were minimal.  We only slipped down a couple times at the end as we were getting very ambitious with our stunts.  That’s when we knew it was time for us to head home for the day.

On our other journey of the week, we again visited the North Carolina Museum of Art in the hopes of finally seeing the  Conservationist in action.  The 3rd time was indeed the charm for us.  We really learned a lot about how they restore and retouch works of art.

Though may be tough to see here, it’s nothing short of amazing the difference between when they start and end as displayed in a previous bit of restoration below.  Almost seems like a dramatic 409 commercial cleaning a greasy stove top.

Unfortunately, this Live work, for the time, has been completed. Hopefully, they will bring it back again in the future.  It was enlightening to learn how the artist sometimes change their minds when painting, covering up an arm here or an ear there which can be seen with X-ray or UV light.  Here the UV or black light indicates where the painting has been retouched over the damaged or flaked off paint portions.

Another surprising and maybe a tad gross bit of information we learned was that some pigments can no longer be reproduced as the original had been.  For instance, Indian Yellow which was said to be produced from the urine of cows which have been fed a diet of strictly mangoes and/or their leaves.  The inhumane practice was declared to be illegal thus true Indian Yellow is no longer commercially available.  However, upon researching to confirm for this blog the knowledge my delicate memory believed to hold, we discovered that this is most likely a myth used when marketing the pigment.  As scientific inquiry has revealed, the material was likely derived from plant material.  However, it does make for a fun story which the kids definitely remembered.  As thus, it makes them aware of the change in the ability to reproduce pigments over time.  Consequently, all is not lost with such a story.

Hopefully, the next time you visit an art museum you will be a little more curious about the back story of the pictures you view.

Although we had to wait quite a while before we synced with the schedule of the museum’s expert, it was well worth the wait.  While we bided our time, we enjoyed the many paintings and spent some time creating some colorful works of our own in an interactive area.  Long Live the creative spirit.  Thank you NCMA.

Join us next time for our trip to Fort Fisher, Kure Beach, NC.