ell, maybe not quite a stampede, but....

As a resident of San Diego, I have the "good fortune" of living near the ICR museum. In fact, I drive right by it whenever I go up to Mt. Woodson or Iron Mountain to go hiking. (Some of the best rock-climbing and hiking near San Diego can be found there, BTW).

Early this morning, I headed on up to Mt. Woodson for a conditioning hike (got to get myself in shape for an upcoming Sierra backpacking trip). After the hike, I decided to pay a visit to the ICR museum to see how things were going for them during the Republican convention.

The museum parking lot was filled to overflowing when I got there; a number of the cars in the lot had pro-life / religious bumper stickers -- also a couple of GOP stickers.

As I walked into the museum, someone at the door asked me if I was with the Operation Rescue group. I just smiled, politely said no, and headed on in. (FYI, admission is free and worth every penny!)

The museum was crowded. It was filled nearly to capacity, as far as I could tell. (only a fire marshall would know for sure, though..)

Just inside the entrance was a sizeable group of high-school students being lead on a tour (education vouchers, anyone??). They were getting the same stuff that we get from Abiele, ksjj, dford, et. al... I was somewhat encouraged, though, when I noticed that some of the students appeared to be incredibly bored and had that "why am I even here?" look on their faces.

I squeezed by them and spent a couple of minutes checking out the Noah's Ark room (wood-paneled, with a tape-recording of thunder playing in the background). They had a scale-model of Noah's ark, and some other stuff explaining how Noah really did have all the different animals of the world aboard the ark, except that he didn't really have all the animals on the ark, uhh.. well... sort of... Anyway, it all made about as much sense as ksjj on crack...

I also checked out their walk-through Mt. St. Helens exhibit, complete with pictures of canyons carved out of the "solid rock" left by the eruption. The ICR folks just love Mt. St. Helens.

I then went through the ice age room -- they have it all set up with styrofoam ice stalactites and cold blowing air. (Now let me see if I have this right: the ice age that came right after Noah's flood permitted all the animals to get back to their respective continents because the oceans were frozen over, or something like that....) Actually, the ice age room was not a bad place to be after a morning hike. Unfortunately, there was no beer there, so it was on to the next exhibit.

I went around the corner and found my way blocked by a sizeable Operation Rescue contingent, all decked out in full regalia. (Operation Rescue t-shirts, etc.)

One of the museum tour-guides was giving them the VIP treatment. I won't go into the details, but the tour-guide was spitting out all the standard bogus young-earth creationist arguments that folks here have heard numerous times. The talk was interspersed with "evolutionists claim...", and "even evolutionists will admit...", and the Operation Rescue folks were lapping it up.

Anyway, being in the ICR museum, during the Republican convention, whilst being surrounded by more than a score of Operation Rescue operatives was just a bit too much... The Irony-O-Meter 50000(tm) was beginning to overheat, so I was outta there.

Just a few more notes:

• All appearances indicate that ICR is a pretty well-funded outfit. They are housed in a surprisingly large, modern building. And it looks like they spent a pretty fair chunk of money on the museum exhibits. (The museum, while sizeable, takes up only fraction of the building.)
• Every exhibit in that museum is just dripping with hard-core religious fundamentalism. No pretenses are made to pitch a "secular" version of creationism. Everywhere I looked, I saw scripture quotations. Keep that in mind the next time you hear Gish, Morris, et. al. make claims about "scientific creationism".
• The museum was quite busy during the short time that I was there, and it appeared that many of the visitors there were associated with the Republican convention. In addition to the Operation Rescue group and the high-school group, there were a number of reasonably well-dressed adult visitors. (visiting Republican delegates, perhaps?)

And finally, for the creationists who post here, I'd like to say that the ICR museum would be a great place for you guys to get jobs. I didn't hear a single question or objection raised in response even to the most outrageous claims made by the museum tour-guides. There was none of that contentious peer-review stuff that gives real scientists so much heartburn. And best of all, there were no obnoxious Howlers saying,

"Full bibliographic references to the peer-reviewed scientific literature, please."