Water and Bones in Raleigh, North Carolina

The beating heart of Raleigh—the cornerstone on which the city’s foundation was laid and the central point by which its grid is oriented—is the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Well … not really. The museum sits some 500 feet from the State Capitol, the actual city center. This inconvenient fact, however, did not trouble my childhood devotion to the science museum. I eagerly seized any opportunity to “go downtown” and stare through glass at poison dart frogs, pet a baby alligator, or gape at dinosaur bones.