The Fairbanks Museum - The Second Floor

 
The second floor of the Fairbanks Museum is a balcony overlooking the first floor. While the lower floor focuses on preserved animals, the upper floor concentrates mostly on things that were never alive, like artifacts from other cultures, weapons from the Civil War, Victorian-era children's toys, and a collection of rocks and minerals. There's still some mounted heads and horns here, though, as well as a small collection of fossils and other prehistoric treasures.

You may notice some of the photos in this post are bigger and higher-quality than the last post. This is because, while I was in control of my 3DS and its camera, my mother had our true digital camera with her and made good use of it. We'll be returning to the first floor later to see more of her photography. Between the two of us, we managed to capture a great cross-section of the museum.

We entered the second floor from the back left corner of the museum (that's based on the direction you face when you enter). The first exhibit you'll see from this area is a collection of antique toys children played with in the 19th century. Most of the toys were either vehicles or dolls and dollhouses, though there were also a few other types of playthings such as brain teasers and bouncing balls.

  Mom took a big interest in the doll collection, snapping many pictures of it all.

Here's some doll furniture made by the one and only Mark Twain. Mom just about fainted with excitement. Few other things in the museum elicited such a response.

Also present were enough sets of plates and teacups to hold the most spectacular tea party of all time.

After the Victorian toys and dolls, the next suite of exhibits takes you around the world, first with dolls from other countries and then with a series of exhibits of artifacts from exotic and ancient cultures. The oldest culture present is the ancient Egyptians. Fairbanks even has a sarcophagus on display. Other cultures, such as China, the Pacific Islands, and the Mideast are also covered.

Another mom-pleaser was the section covering Japan. Mom has a big interest in Japanese culture and snapped a number of photos of the many little figurines on display.

The samurai outfit got almost as much of a reaction as Mark Twain's doll furniture.

After Japan, the exhibits move on to a collection of rocks and minerals as we round the corner and move back towards the front of the museum. We didn't take any pictures, partly because neither of us found rocks that interesting and partly because this part of the museum was very poorly lit. Fortunately, we were approaching my favorite part of the second floor: the fossils.

In my next post we'll cover the second half of the balcony. Fossils, dinosaurs, the Civil War and a dobsonfly await in the next installment.