If you’ve never been to The Ark Encounter, the first thing you’ll notice is that this boat is big. I mean REALLY BIG! I don’t know how it compares to a modern day cruise ship, and I know it’s not as big as the Titanic, but Noah’s Ark is BIG! 500 feet long, 85 feet wide and 51 feet high. And the amazing thing was, this was only the first of amazing things I got to learn that day!
We go inside, and the first thing we see are these wooden cages all set up like they would have been for Noah, with pottery water bottles and the bottoms of the cages set up to let the poop drop out and down to a collection area so it could get taken care of easier. Wow! I had never thought about that, but yeah, there were a lot of animals on the real ark and Noah’s family would have to take care of them and clean up after them. The guys who built this museum thought all those things out.
“What kind of things would Noah have known about in those days?” They asked themselves. “How would he take care of the food and water, and all the poop?” They thought about those things and then built full scale models of how it could have been done. WOW!
They figured out how to keep the snakes supplies with bugs to eat and how many animals there would be on the ark (about 7000 by their estimate), and there were lifelike models of some of the animals they might have had. There were a lot of dinosaur types. Some (like the bear type) looked a lot like animals you’d see in a zoo.
We spent a lot of time reading about the different animal types. Sadly, a lot of them are now extinct. I don’t know why. I think it’s because of people. Think about it: if you saw a T-Rex in your neighborhood, wanting to eat you, what would you do? You’d kill it! I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to the dinosaurs. They were killed for someone’s dinner, or to get their head put in someone’s trophy case, or just to keep them from eating grandma. That’s what I think.
There was a cool model of the ark with all the cages in it. Because The Ark Encounter is a museum, they had to have wide isle for all the visitors and wide ramps to get to the different floors and lots of lights. It explained that the real ark would have been darker and had dozens more cages than what was on display. That made sense. There were only eight people on the original boat. There were thousands there that day to see this boat.
They had a section about creation and the first sin that happened before the flood and the way humans acted to lead up to God wiping out just about everyone and starting over with Noah’s family. Why did people have to mess things up so bad? I’m sure glad God decided he wanted to save the animals. It wasn’t their fault people were so stupid.
On the third floor, they had figures for Noah’s family and showed what life might have been like for them on the Ark. Noah’s wife and kids must have really liked animals. God put them in charge of taking care of earth’s future. What a big job they had!
There near the very end was the door all the animals entered through. Notice anything special about the door? Other than that fact that some awesome people, and a super cool bear, are posed in front of it? Yeah, there’s a cross on it! Noah’s family had to enter the door of the ark to be saved. There was no other way. Just like the cross is the only way to heaven! That was pretty cool!
It was a really awesome day I got to spend with my folks seeing what this awesome boat was like. And Mom and Dad ate up the last of the sandwiches they packed that first day. Finally! Time to find a Chick-Fil-A on the way to the hotel! Save me some of those waffle fries!