A Visit To The Ark

I'm finally getting around to sorting through my pictures and sharing about our trip to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky!

First for a little back story - I've been a Ken Ham fan for a long time, and I had heard so many good things about the Ark, so I knew we eventually wanted to take a trip out there.  Late last year, I heard that they were extending their 2020 deal and offering free admittance for kids 10 and under for all of 2021!  This would be our last year that we could get a kid discount for Wyatt, so I knew I wanted to try to make a trip happen.

However, earlier this year Derek got a new job, and we lost all our vacation time from his previous workplace.  Since we didn't have any time off built up, we didn't take an official vacation, just a few long weekend trips.  Despite the lack of vacation time, I have been scheming all year about how to make a trip out to the Ark work.

Well, we knew our good friends also wanted to visit the Ark Encounter, and so we recruited them to take a trip with us!  I would drive out by myself with the kids and our friends, and Derek would fly out after work to meet us.  Then we'd take a long weekend and all drive home together.  This scheme saved Derek from having to take as many days off, so we were able to make the trip work!  I'm so thankful our friends were up for going on a trip with us, because I don't think we would have made it out there without them, and it ended up being a really wonderful memory to go to the Ark together!

I will skip past the start of our trip, except to say that I almost fell asleep driving through Kansas (flat, straight road, and lots of grain fields).  We did stop and have lunch behind the St. Louis Arch (which is the Gateway to the West, and the location where Lewis and Clark started their expedition - learned that from my 10 year old).

When we finally arrived in Kentucky, my friend's husband went to pick up Derek at the airport, and we were finally all together again!  The next day was the big day, the visit to the Ark Encounter!

This is a very limited amount of pictures, and I don't feel like they do the Ark justice.  Not only was it incredibly huge, but there was so much on the grounds as well.  The entrance is in the shape of a rainbow, to represent God's promise to never flood the earth again. There was a whole area dedicated to restaurants/food trucks, a really cool kids' playground (which included a roller-coaster swing), and a miniature zoo that we barely even had time to check out properly!

Of course, the big attraction was the Ark itself, and walking in was so impressive.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's set up like a three-floor museum with areas to watch educational videos, exhibits, and gift shops. The exhibits were very interactive and interesting for my kids - I don't think they got bored once.  We could have spent much more time inside the Ark than we did.

My favorite exhibits were the ones that explained the really practical aspects of the ark - like how they could automate the feeding and watering of the animals in different ways, the interesting way that the different animal kinds may have looked back then, and an entire exhibit about how a moon pool could have helped with disposing of waste and keeping fresh air circulating throughout they Ark.  

Everything they presented was so well thought out.  I am a young earth creationist, I have believed in a a literal worldwide flood and a literal Noah's ark my whole life, but I never gave much thought to the practical aspects of running the Ark while Noah and his family were on it during the flood.  It was amazing how realistic and researched their presentation of the Ark was.  If you have ever questioned whether Noah's ark could have been real, or wondered about how they handled all those animals, the Ark Encounter is the place to go!  It answered questions I didn't even know I had.

The kids' favorite part of the day was definitely the virtual reality experience!  We decided to pay the extra fee to take a virtual reality trip to Noah's day.  We had real VR goggles to wear, and sat in chairs that moved, while a friendly robot took us on an adventure.  The kids were shouting in glee during the whole thing, and we had one child quite frightened when a dinosaur chomped at us. I've caught the kids playing "time travel" a few times since we got back!

We ended the day enjoying some really good fudge that we bought at one of the shops while we watched the kids get some energy out on the playground, which included a rainbow maze, a rubber whale and other creatures to climb on, a miniature zipline, and the aforementioned roller coaster swing.  They were having nightly gospel concerts while we were out there, so we also got to hear a couple songs before we called it a day.

I'd highly recommend taking a trip to the Ark if you have kids anywhere from 6 and up - my younger girls enjoyed it too, but I think the big kids really got a lot out of it.  Clyde especially has been so interested in how they built the Ark since we got back, and it's been special to see how this trip has sparked his interest. I think for all my kids this brought Genesis alive for them in a unique way, and it was so worth it to go.

Next up will be the Creation Museum!