My husband and I have been in western Kentucky for almost two weeks helping our daughter, a single-mom with a lot on her plate: two teenagers, her own business and graduate school, just to name a few. While she’s taking our grandson to where his travel baseball team has to be, we are here with our granddaughter, who has her own schedule of activities and has to be shuttled here and there. We’re happy to do it, especially since we used to live here, too. It’s a familiar place.
Travel ball is intense. The season is short–less than two months–so there’s a multi-day tournament every weekend, sometimes hundreds of miles away. When our daughter and grandson came home last Friday for a few days in between tournaments, Dave and I decided to get out of town and give them their space. There’s an old saying I believe to be true: Fish and company go bad after three days. The last thing I want to be is a bother and besides, there’s is still so much of this wonderful world I have not seen.
The Ark Encounter is a place I’ve been wanting to experience for quite some time, and I’ve been pondering why. As I’ve said before in a previous blog, I’m not religious, but I do believe that every word in the Bible is true, and I’ve never questioned the story of Noah building the ark. I just couldn’t fathom it. So maybe it came down to the fact that I’m from Missouri, the Show Me state, and I needed to be shown. What surprised me is that my husband was all for it, even though he’s agnostic. Or at least, that what he says.
Williamstown is north of Lexington and south of Cincinnati, a 4-hour drive and one time zone away from Hopkinsville. I figured we’d get there too late to see the Ark Encounter Saturday, so once we got settled into our hotel room, I got on their website to buy our tickets. I’m glad I did. From our hotel room the next day, I saw cars lined up to enter the Ark’s parking lot more than an hour before it opened at 1:00 p.m. Dads got free admission since it was Father’s Day and there were a lot of dads there with their families. I couldn’t get over the size of the crowd. It was like a Trump rally…way more people than you could ever imagine, and even though there were a lot of people, they were considerate and well-behaved. The people-watching was great! In one of our conversations afterwards, Dave and I talked about the massive crowd and wondered how many were real believers and how many were there, searching for some kind of hope for a fallen world. That would be an interesting survey.
Mere words cannot come close to describing the Ark. Even before I went, I knew I’d want to write about the experience. But here it is, four days later, and I’m still trying to digest everything. There was so much to see and so much information to read. Everything about it was overwhelming at the time, and like trying to drink water out of a firehose. The displays and exhibits were phenomenal, but it was the sheer architectural structure that was the highlight.
The world’s largest free-standing timber-frame structure, the Ark is more than 500 feet in length (for comparison, a football field is 360 feet), 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Its bow–designed to obstruct wind and prevent capsizing–is 104 feet tall, and the stern is 80 feet tall. Some people claim the bow and stern are inaccurate or mislabled, but they don’t understand the purpose of Noah’s ark.
The ark was meant to withstand very rough seas and preserve life during a global flood. It was a lifesaving vessel, and much like Moses’ basket, it was built for protection, not navigation. There was no need to navigate–the entire world was covered with water.
There are three decks of informative exhibits and displays, so a lot of walking is required. The first deck was filled with animal cages of various sizes, clay pots and burlap bags used to store food and water, and everything needed to rebuild life all over again: tools, seeds, plants.
The exhibits on the second deck were fantastic, especially the Animal Care exhibit. Given that there were approximately 1,398 animals (based on researchers’ findings) and only Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives to care for them, the exhibit offers a possible explanation as to how this might have been done.
The architecture was magnificent. Engelmann spruce logs, more than 3 feet in diameter, were used to support the massive internal structure. The ark’s integrity needed to withstand the violent storms, waves and hurricane-like conditions. Could Noah have built something such as this? Considering he was more than 500 years old when he fathered his first child, Noah probably had a lot of knowledge and expertise. He may have hired help to build the ark; they may not have believed in Noah’s cause, but that wouldn’t have prevented someone from working for pay.
The third deck had more exhibits related to the flood and its effect on our world. Some had very interesting comparisons between the evolutionary and biblical worldviews. Questions relative to the ice age that resulted from the unique conditions created by the flood were presented and addressed. By this time my eyes were crossed from all the reading and the the enormity of the experience. We decided to call it a day after about 4 hours and come back the next. We had purchased the 3-day Bouncer Pass, so we weren’t in a hurry. Besides, we left Victor in the hotel room and needed to get back to him.
It was pouring down rain the next morning when we went to the Creation Museum, the sister-attraction to the Ark, and actually built several years before. I was grateful we both had packed jeans, given the rain and the cold front that followed, and that there was an umbrella tucked away in the car. I had zero expectations for this place because I didn’t even know of its existence until we went to the Ark. But, oh my! The world must have been truly exquisite in the beginning.
The Creation Museum brings the history of the Bible to life. It is designed to show geological, biological, astronomical and anthropological evidence that’s foundational to the Bible. Throughout the museum, both Biblical (God’s word) and naturalistic (man’s word) are presented side-by-side. I think that really made an impression with Dave. Creation and evolution are presented; the former as being based in the Bible, the latter based on man’s interpretation of some source. People can make their own choice as to what to believe.
Naturalistic evolution tries to explain everything without God. Creationists and evolutionists share the same data, study the same fossils, trees and stars. Creationists believe the world is about 6,000 years old, and evolutionists believe it’s millions of years old. Because the starting points are different, the conclusions are, too.
Like the Ark, the Creation Museum is a wealth of information on a variety of subjects, and it’s a lot to take in. I am so glad we got the $3 guidebook for each museum. The Monday crowd wasn’t as large as Sunday’s, but there were a lot of people at the Creation Museum anyway. After all the walking we did at the Ark, we got tired after just a couple of hours of being here and decided to head back to the hotel, rest a bit and then go back to the Ark. We still had the third floor to explore, and we were leaving the next day. So, we just saw a short 3-D movie, wandered around past the exhibits and took in the lush outdoor (albeit, soaked) sites before making the long walk from the museum through the gardens and then on to the parking lot. And it was still raining.
By the time we drove back to the Ark it was early afternoon and the rain had subsided. What a difference a few hours made in the amount of cars in the parking lot and number of visitors! We were behind a group that had need to use the elevator, and our ears perked up when we heard that! After all the walking we had already done, taking an elevator up to the third floor sounded like music to our ears. We asked the group if we could tag along with them in the elevator, and they obliged.
We picked up where we left off the day before and took in more information about the aftermath of the great flood: the ensuing ice age, Babel and the origin of our language families, the Rainbow Covenant, and an exhibit on various doors mentioned in the Bible: the Passover door, temple doors, the sheep’s door, the tomb’s door, the narrow door and last, but certainly not least, the Ark door. The series of doors highlights Biblical history, and each door symbolizes a form of salvation. In the case of the Ark door, God sealed the door shut after Noah and his family brought in all the animals, proving His mercy and justice. The wicked world was outside and everything in it would perish, but Noah’s family was saved.
On the drive back to Hopkinsville Tuesday, we remarked more than once that we were really glad that we had taken this trip. Both the Ark and the Creation Museum are fantastic theme parks, and both of us would love to return some day and see what we missed because there was a lot that we didn’t see. But what we did see deepened my understanding of the Bible and history, answered some questions and posed a few others. It really was an incredible experience.