Fellowship of the Ring

One of Master's relatives visited him last week. Connie lives a few hours away and Master'd had to juggle things some to get them arranged. But she made it, staying for the weekend and heading back home Sunday. One of our little outings was to the Museum of Natural Science to see the Fellowship of the Ring exhibit.

Shayla's been drooling over this museum since she first found out about it. Things being the way they are, she's not actually been able to see it. What need does a kettle and mat girl have to go to a museum? This exhibit only piqued her interest. So Thursday morning we went (passing within arm's reach of the Museum of Fine Arts, something else that shayla's been dying to see...Grrr). And shayla tried not to notice just how much it cost to go *into* that series of rooms. But oh, was it nice.

The clothes that Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Galadriel, and Saruman had worn, among others. The varying styles of armor made for the Riders of Rohan, as well as the orcs & uruk-hai. All types of the weaponry, including the gifts that Galadriel had given the Fellowship. The models used for Treebeard and the cave troll. They had two displays of the cave troll. One full-size, complete with mace, filth, & gaping mouth. It was enough to have given young kids the willies. The other was a smaller model that had been made. This one au naturale. No mace, chain collar, or even the loincloth. Shayla was more than a little surprised to note that it had been made, ah.. shall we say, anatomically correct. There was a whole wall devoted to the various prostheses that had been made for the filming. Dozens of feet, ears, you name it. Even a few orc contact lenses. Off in one niche was Boromir's funeral boat. The model was so realistic that, to shayla's eyes (being the medical professional that she is), she could have collected a blood sample from the veins in his hand.

Of course, there was the One Ring. Set off in a room by itself. Just going into the doorway and through the hall to the area the Ring was was an errie experience. The Ring was in a clear cylinder, suspended in gel? water? who knows? Shayla could just barely see the fishing wire (or whatever it was) that kept the Ring in place. Very nice, though.

Connie is one of those people that just breeze through things like this. A quick glance, a read of the plaque that is with the display, & she's off to the next one. Master was only slightly slower than shayla. He studied each piece meticulously, inspecting how it was made, the details, viewing it from as many angles as he could. Master and shayla could have easily spent a week in that building.

But we were on a time schedule, so after we went through the exhibit we had to leave. So shayla only was able to catch a quick browse through the dinosaur display; all she saw of the gold exhibit was the stairwell leading up to it. And a quick wander around the gift shop. Seeing any of the IMAX movies was out of the question.

Come to think of it, Master mentioned on the way home that he'd not seen the One Ring. Maybe this warrants a trip back, sometime when we've got all day. Or two.

shayla