Creation Museum & Ark Encounter -- end of our 8 month long adventure

At the entrance to the Creation Museum, in Petersburg, KY just southwest of Cincinnati, I got a picture of Marcia getting ready to take a picture of a dinosaur.  Of course, when I show her I “HAVE” to make the remark, “I got a picture of both dinosaurs, how about you?”  Well folks, for any of you that want to “learn your lesson” through me, that is not the line you want to use…

Of course, the next day when we visit the brand new “Ark Encounter” at Williamstown Kentucky, about 50 miles south of Cincinnati, the remark, “Are you sure your head will fit in there Dave???” pays off the debt.  Well, any of you that know Marcia KNOW she would never say that…but I KNOW she was thinking it, and I am the author of the blog, so I can pretend that she was at least thinking about it…debt paid!!!

Note: Remember, clicking on a picture will bring up a larger version of that picture for better viewing.

Trying to write a comprehensive blog about either of these places, let alone one of them, is not going to happen here.  There is SO MUCH at each place that it is just too hard to do right.  There is also the fact that many readers are going to think/say, “I can’t believe someone really believes this stuff.” 

 Likewise, there is a BIG GAP between those who believe in the creation as told in the Bible, and those who don’t.  I don’t intend to debate any of this, just stating the two sided coin.  What I do want is to share the “museums” as I would share any other museum based on how it looks, how it is presented, and what one can expect to see there.  Both places acknowledge the gap between believers and non-believers by saying that it all depends upon how you look at it.

    

The quality of the exhibits is real good.  To the left there are two anthropologists, looking at the same thing, but seeing a different outcome.  The video above them explains it all in about 2-3 minutes, and then the video repeats.  There are many of these type of exhibits.  On the right is just a passage way that they made a slot canyon out of.  I have been in slot canyons, and this is very lifelike, except the width is a bit wider than most slot canyons I have been in…but after all, this is just a passageway.

This exhibit of “Lucy” is state-of-the art.  The “blue” you see is projected onto a panel which is in front of the face and the hip/leg areas of Lucy, showing the bones which are displayed up on the wall behind her.  This is a real neat way of showing you where the bones would have been located in Lucy.  On the other side of her, it shows different bones. 

Note: I blurred the faces of people in the pictures since I did not ask them if I could include them in the blog…I try to do this anytime we are taking inside pictures.

Of course, one would think, and they would be accurate, that the message of the museum has a heavy slant towards God, towards the Bible, towards the Son of God.  After all, that is what the museum is for…to share the word of God. 

One of the highlights was what they called the Garden Room.  In this portion of the Garden Adam is naming the various types of animals which come to him. 

As the story goes, while in the Garden Adam and Eve are tempted and they sin, and they see their nakedness, and they hide from God…here it is depicted that they “hid” their nakedness by being in the water. 

Of course, the sins are known by God, they are banished from the garden, and hardships fell upon all. 

As one goes through the Creation Museum, it is helpful to know that you are slowly walking down to the lower level…it is so slight that you don’t even know it, but it is helpful to understand that when you try to read the map.  At lunch we heard comments from people who said that they were confused by the map given out at the start of the exhibits…knowing that you are going from one level to another helps to understand the map. 

I have only shown a small amount of the exhibits.  It took us a couple of hours to walk through it, and crowds were large but not so much that it is a burden.   There is a self-serve restaurant there, and we found the food to be alright.  Met a lot of nice people, and there were these four ladies on a tour from North Carolina who were wonderful.  When one found out that we traveled by motorhome, she said that was something she had always wanted to do…almost asked if she could join us until she realized what she was saying.

The Creation Museum was nice, but what really brought us to the area was the brand new Ark Encounter, which opened up in July of this year.  The Ark is built using the dimensions found within the Bible.  It is just shy of being two football fields long!  (Roughly, 520 feet long by 86 feet wide and 52 feet high).  Unlike the Arks shown in picture books for kids, this life-size model is more like a barge…almost like a wooden oil tanker.  The Ark contains 3.3 million board feet of timber. 

Even when Marcia in the foreground, the size of the Ark is just HUGE.  On the inside there are four working floors, of which three are currently open.  The first two floors give a good example of what the ark “might” have been like.  There is little information about the exact make-up of the ark, so there had to be lots of creative liberties taken.  However, they did a good job of showing cages, storage bins for food and water, living quarters, etc.  Some of the space is also used to tell the story of the flood, of the making of the Ark then and now, and the daily life that Noah and his family had to endure for nearly a year living in the Ark.

The woodworking of the Ark and within the Ark is outstanding.  More than 100 workers from Amish, Mennonite and other Anabaptist traditions — about one-third of the workforce at times — applied their skills with heavy timber to help complete the full-scale replica, which can accommodate 10,000 people at one time.  To the right is just an example of “artwork” found in the entrance to the Ark.  Below are three pictures showing cages, food storage bins and water bins.  This is a good example of how they took creative liberties to show how it “could have been”, since the bible tells little of how the ark was laid out.

    

Besides storing food and water, they also showed how some human food might have been grown, and how water could have been caught from the rains to store for future use.

     

The Bible says that God told Noah to take on the Ark two of every kind of animal, and seven pairs of the clean animals and flying creatures.  Not every species needed to be on the Ark.  Species is a term used in the modern classification system. The Bible uses the term “kind.” The created kind was a much broader category than the modern term of classification, species.  They did a good job of showing and describing what is meant by “kind” of animal.  For instance, Black Bears and Brown Bears and Polar Bears can interbreed.  Here is a Washington Post article of a bear which is 3/4 Grizzly and 1/4 Polar Bear.

I just had to try and show a picture of the middle of this “Ark”…the large wood pillars, and wonderful woodwork just had me in “awe”.  I do want to add that on one side of the Ark, the side not shown in my pictures since getting a picture would be very difficult to do, there are concrete footings and structure connected to the “Ark” which houses elevators and anchors the “Ark” down to the ground.  Remember, this “Ark” is not meant to be seaworthy…it is meant to show “How” it could have been.

    

The “Librarian in me” just had to show this exhibit…Noah’s Ark as depicted in Storybooks.  My good friend and Children’s Librarian “Miss Ann”, who passed away back in 2005 after a 33 year career, would have LOVED this area, with the animals over the entrance, and the many storybooks along the wall. 

    

A portion of the third floor is dedicated to the living quarters of the human passengers on the Ark.  The bottom of the three pictures above depicts the story of Noah and the Dove.

They claim that there are over 200 “legends” of "an ancient global flood" around the world.  Many of these tales speak of "a favored family who built a huge boat and, along with some animals, survived a worldwide catastrophe sent by an angry deity."  I know in our travels that we have seen many evidences of a “flood”, and these evidences have even been talked about on National Park, National Forest, and State Park exhibits.  “When” the flood took place is the big debate.  It is believed by creation scientists that the majority of the Earth's strata was formed catastrophically during the Biblical flood of Noah. On the other hand, uniformitarian geologists hold to the view that most sedimentary rocks were formed slowly and gradually at current rates of erosion and deposition.

So if you believe in the biblical account, or not, the Ark Encounter is definitely a work of “Art”.  From this close up, I had to use the camera’s panoramic feature to get the entire Ark in the picture.  It certainly shows the vast size of the structure. 

At $41 each for a ticket which included both the Creation Museum and the Ark, the visit is not inexpensive.  Parking is free at the Museum, cost $10 at the Ark ($15 for RVs).  We left the campground at 8 am with the RV and car, were at the Ark when it opened at 9 am, and by noon we were on our way.  Yes, we should have stayed longer…but it was crowded (and more crowded at noon when we left), and we sure wanted to get back to Florida after this amazing 8 months of travel.  What a way to end our trip!