Day 14 - Westminster, CO

Friday's weather turned out to be questionable, with a 50% chance of rain and thunderstorms, some severe, so our morning motorcycle excursion transformed into a car ride to Broomfield to visit with Jayden and Gina. Gina suggested a trip to the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster so we packed up Jayden's car seat and his lunch and headed out to see some bugs! Outside the pavilion was a very large statue of a praying mantis and with a little coaxing, Jayden was soon saying "mantis" without any trouble. The first exhibit room inside contained a wide assortment of cockroaches (giant flying, common American, Madagascar hissing), scorpions, tarantulas, and stick bugs, as well as a few species of beetles and a hive of honeybees. Jayden was interested in the "bugs" and "piders" for a little while but soon found the panel of light switches near the door more appealing. Margo and I both earned our "I held Rosie" stickers by holding a Chilean rosehair tarantula. Her venom, contrary to a lot of beliefs, is only about as toxic as a bee sting to the average person. Instead, as a defensive mechanism, she has urticating hairs that she can flick from her hind legs that will make the recipient itchy!

The next room held several tropical aquariums, and we saw the cast of Finding Nemo in the clownfish (Nemo) and blue tang (Dory) in one of the tanks. Two touch tanks gave Jayden the chance to feel a starfish for the first time. There was also a horseshoe crab touch tank, but we bypassed that to see the butterflies first.

The butterfly room was like a tropical rainforest, with hundreds of buterflies floating around on the breeze. In one corner was a glass-enclosed case literally filled with chrysalis coccoons and recently emerged butterflies waiting for their wings to unfurl and dry so they could fly away. We say so many different types, sizes, and colors of butterflies (or "bubberfies," as Jayden called them), it was amazing. We were able to take a bunch pf close-up pictures of some feeding on flowers, and we could see them uncurl their long tongues/noses(?) to reach the nectar in the blossoms. There were turtles and insect-eating plants, like sundews, venus fly traps, and pitcher plants, and a land tortoise too. By this time Jayden was getting a little tired so we took our leave of the butterflies, but to exit we had to walk through glass doors and an air wall, into a small room with mirrors for walls. A small sign told us to check ourselves carefully for hitchhiking butterflies so that none of them escaped their enclosure! We then sat on the patio and fed Jayden his lunch before driving back to Broomfield. We stayed until he got up from his nap, but then made our way back to Loveland.

We hit some rain on the way home but by the time we got there, it had stopped and the skies had cleared somewhat. We decided to take the motorcycles on a run to Fort Collins Motorsports to get some oil for my return-trip oil change, and to pick up a few things at Ace Hardware and King Soopers. A few raindrops, but nothing major. We did have to stop for a whole gaggle of 20 or so geese crossing the road in Fort Collins, with one of them bringing up the rear, honking at the rest to hurry up! Tomorrow we take Margo back to the airport and then head back to Broomfield for a family 4th of July picnic, and then Sunday it's back on the road again!