Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, MD

You’re history geek occasionally wanders into other areas of knowledge. Rarely, but it happens.

Last Saturday I found myself at the Maryland Science Center (it was a first date so I couldn’t be as analytical as I had hoped to…but even geeks deserve to go out and look for that special someone). For a weekend in Inner Harbor, the MSC was not as crowded as I’d hoped, and we paid the rather modest $15 entrance fee and we were in.

MSC is geared toward children, so tripping over little ones and shin bumps with strollers are hazards of attendance. But, the lack of a crowd helped that not be as much of an issue, and it’s always fun to see little kids react to what they see and don’t really understand. Most of the exhibits were highly interactive and hands-on behaviors were encouraged. The few non-hands on exhibits were cased or too far from reach so there wouldn’t be confusion.

Our first stops were the geography and dinosaurs exhibits, but as most science museums there is no bad way to start the exhibit. The geography exhibit wrapped local and current weather and events into the historical geographical occurrences that shaped the area. The most striking part of this first exhibit was a virtual tornado, with two wind sources and some sand on the bottom. We watched the wind pick up the sand for a while but never saw a tornado form. Then, seeing as this is a museum geared to children, a kid came up and stuck her arm between the wind sources, and a funnel formed almost immediately. The geography exhibit rolls nicely into the dinosaur exhibit, because coming out of the geography exhibit as we did, the first thing encountered were models of footprints, and the opportunity to make our own in sand with rubber dinosaur feet. Repeated several times, the museum had large real fossils made into action scenes and smaller models of the scene repeated to scale AND the scale color coded bones so you knew on the real models which bones were real and which were not. A lot of the exhibit was dedicated to how paleontologists work in the field, what kind of tools they use, and how some mysteries of how they looked and lived are solved.

Next up was Newton’s playground, which was the largest Newton’s playground I’ve ever encountered. If the two of us could have easily spent an hour in there (and we probably did) a family with small enough children could potentially spend the whole day there. There were enough items that we never needed to wait long to try something out, and we could spend as much time as we wanted playing with each of the toys.

The second floor had mostly things about the body on it. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the body exhibit, but we still spent a lot of time playing around with what they did have. Also it wasn’t as sophisticated in the first part of the body exhibit, for example, to show how food digests, they put three balls in a plastic netting and you push them up and down to understand how food moves from each part of the digestive system. Complete with sounds. I suppose it would be good for little kids, but it was very simple for what else they had to offer. Every body system had an accompanying hands-on part which adds to the multi-media aspects of the museum. Further in was a walk through cell, which was well done, but overwhelming to me at least, I couldn’t imagine what a child would feel about the walk-through cell. There was also a wet-lab, which had microscopes and lab coats for small children, but we didn’t go through that part.

There was a temporary exhibit on diabetes there at the time, and it had a fun little game a la whack a mole to show how much coordination it takes to keep your blood sugar stable. Also it showed your risk factor for diabetes based on your height and weight, as well as a “Rap-fridgerator” giving a little tune about the importance of a good diet. Inside of the exhibit had a fun house like feel to show the delicate balance between high blood sugar and low blood sugar, and carnival like games to show how difficult getting research money is and how much testing new drugs must go through. I thought it was a little arbitrary to win the games and move on to the next level, but I suppose it explains why such a common disease hasn’t had much improvement in treatment over the last several decades.

Something else to quickly note is the planetarium on the second floor. It’s free with admission and our narrator was highly entertaining. It’s included, just go to the 34 minute show.

The top floor explained how crabs grow and the high risk and mortality of them before adulthood. This probably explains why the price of tasty crab is so high…but anyway, there were a few aquariums with crabs, male and female, at different times in their life cycle. And a giant animatronics crab. ExxonMoblie sponsored an exhibit about efficient cars but neither of us were impressed with it.

One issue was parking. As I had mentioned, it was only $15 for the basic adult ticket (IMAX is available for an additional price) but parking, after a voucher to decrease the price, was still $15. I suppose if it was $15 for a lot of the day, it would be worth it, but I think it went by a percentage discount. Still it was $30 to visit the museum and I don’t think that number would go down. Its convenient to the attractions of Inner Harbor and many different food options are available. If you have kids, this is a Baltimore must-see, possibly even more than the aquarium due to its increased affordability. If you don’t have kids, but you’re a kid at heart you would most likely enjoy yourself, still as an “adult-only” group I’d think about going to such a kid focused museum without them in tote.

Herbert Hoover Birthplace National Historical Place

So I'll start my first review in almost two years with this revelation that the United States National Park Service is AWESOME. It was during this trip that my policy of searching for NPS sites before anything else started. At this location, I bought a small "passport" that I can put cancellations in for every site I go to. There are several geographical sections that the book is broken into and opportunities for additional cancellations for special events or even the stickers they feature annually.

I found myself in Cedar Rapids, Iowa right before their rainy season picked up in March of 2010. When booking the flights (since this was for work) I quickly searched to see what was around, and I saw that about an hour from the airport was the Herbert Hoover National Birthplace.

The area its in is an interesting little piece of land with a faux village, museum, Hoover's birthplace and final resting place in the area. My first stop was the Museum, which charged about $12 for entry. There was a story about his upbringing, and all of the awards (large and small) that he received due to his work as a diplomat and later president. The Great Depression started when Hoover was in office so some can argue that he was a much better diplomat than president. Like many other presidential museums, the exhibits opened my eyes to what he did that maybe wouldn't have had a direct impact on where my family came from.

The museum itself had enough information to keep someone occupied for a few hours. The exhibits were full of his awards for the first three-quarters of it and it was overwhelming but I can't think of a better way to put it together. The presidency section was small, seeing as he was a one-term president under whom anything that could have gone wrong probably did, but it highlight his work in American agriculture. One thing the presidency section did right was it exposed the infrastructure of the exhibit, an artsy way to put that Hoover had the experience and the smarts to be a good president, things just didn't exactly go right.

Outside of the museum was a small demonstration of the Quaker village that Hoover was born in. There was a meeting house (plain even by Quaker standards) and his birth place. Both had audio for self-guided tours which were helpful and there may have been more but like I mentioned, I wasn't there during high tourist time so it was not exactly comfortable to do all of the walking that the day could have had.

From what I could gather, the Herbert Hoover Birthplace has facilities for camping and RVing so this is a good weekend place in the right weather.

Allright, almost two years off...

I know I don't have a loyal following...yet...but I'll apologize but being a lazy slacker and not updating this sooner.

Since November 2009, I've been to many states and twelve countries. Some of my favorite places that you have to look forward to reading about include...

Herbert Hoover Birthplace NPS (Iowa, USA)
University of Alaska at Fairbanks (Alaska, USA)
A couple of NPS sites in Florida, USA
Daytona 500 Experience (Florida, USA)
British Museum (London)
Dachau (Germany)
Anne Frank House (Amsterdam)
Versailles (Paris)

I may begin to take more of a travel writer route, and I'll see how that fits in, but I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, or if I did I'm back now!