TEXAS, HOUSTON: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF FUNERAL HISTORY

 November 29, 2022

Our last stop in Texas before flying home was one of the weirdest museums we have ever visited (aside from the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico). 

The 35,000-square-foot National Museum of Funeral History opened in 1992 and, according to their website, has the largest collection of funeral service artifacts in the country. (I can not imagine that any other place even comes close.) The museum's purpose is to "educate the public and preserve the heritage of death care."

I have to confess that I was intrigued just walking through the gift shop to buy our tickets. I could tell this was going to be an unusual experience, to say the least. I was happy to see Frida, but a death mask???

We began with the large Presidential Funeral Gallery.

Just after seeing this famous photo of five living Presidents standing together . . . 

. . . we started learning about their deaths and funerals, starting with George and Barbara Bush and moving backwards in time.

FLORIDA: TAMPA

June 9-18 2017

The only benefit I can see of being grounded from travel because of COVID -19 is that I can catch up on posting about some of my previous travels that I have never gotten around to writing about. This adventure happened three years ago--a trip to Tampa Florida to score AP English Composition exams.

I've posted before about the experience of scoring AP exams for the College Board, so I won't go into that very much this time. My focus will be on Tampa, a city of about 400,000 people on the western/Gulf of Mexico side of Florida.

I shouldn't have been too surprised by all the lakes/ponds, but I was!

The College Board always books nice rooms for us, usually in a Sheraton or Hilton or Marriott.  I can't remember which hotel I was in, but I had a nice view from various hotel windows.

The hotel was within a few blocks of the Tampa Convention Center, where I spent eight hours/day for the next seven days.