It’s Museum Monday here at Stuck at the Airport and this week we’re delighted to share some snaps from the Douglas County Museum in tiny Waterville, Washington.
The museum is home to a two-headed calf, a nice collection of delicate spittoons for ladies and a rock gallery with more than 4,500 rock and mineral specimens, including a handful of meteorites and lots of glow-in-the-dark rocks. Take a look.
For the next five years, the airport will be home to a museum-level exhibit from the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum’s meteorite collection.
The 20-foot-long exhibit is located in the gate area and includes 18 meteorites.
Among them is the second-largest piece of the Moon on Earth and one of the largest pieces of Mars on Earth.
(Second largest piece of the Moon here on Earth)
The “Fly Me to the Moon” exhibit also includes an iconic Gibeon meteorite that looks a lot like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
(“The Scream” is on loan from Macovich Collection through the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum)
“This exhibit will be full of beautiful examples of meteorite specimens from the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid 4 Vesta,” said Cari Corrigan, Curator of Meteorites at the Smithsonian Institution. “Having all of these samples on exhibit together in an airport, free of charge to the public, is an amazing educational and inspirational opportunity for those lucky enough to fly through Portland.”
Want to see more of the Moon? The Maine Mineral and Gem Museum is in Bethel, less than 70 miles from Portland, Maine. The museum has 17 interactive exhibits and boasts that it has more of the Moon than all of the natural history museums in the world combined.