Martinsville, VA (on the way to Blacksburg)
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Rain may not be a normal feature of Martinsville, but it was one of the things I saw most of. Also of note was the Virginia Museum of Natural History, thoroughly worth a couple hours if you ever have time to kill in the area. And the gift shop sells squeaky rocks! Who comes up with these things? |
| The museum is pretty small, but has an impressive collection of modern land mammals and insects, as well as skeletons of various marine animals past and present. Their feature attraction is in the "ice age room" (which also contains snack machines and tables, oddly enough) which aside from cases of fossils and some excellent wall murals, has a life-size ground sloth sticking its tongue out at you. |  |
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I was particularly impressed, in a rather sudden way, by the sauropod tail vertibrae. My ball-point pen is balanced on top of the lable for scale, and I find it pretty amazing to think of a creature that half-way down its tail had bones as tall as my head.  |
| Not at the museum, but in a store I stopped at on the way out, was the most disturbing vending machine I've ever seen: |  |
In this location Carmen Sandiego would probably steal: the Giant Ground Sloth
