This last week the weather was cooperative here in Iowa and we decided to head out for some tourist activities. We went down to the Mississippi River and visited the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.
When we arrived, I was surprised by how much it cost. It was more than I expected to pay, but we realized that this would be a one time visit and decided to pay the $21 for an adult ticket and $19 for a children’s ticket. Our fee included entrance into both museums on the river and two 4D movies (each movie was about 15 minutes long).
This decision turned out to be the best decision! We loved this museum. With the state of the art touch screens all over the museum, and many short films – this was by far one of the best musuems we have visited. Our Princess really enjoyed the touch screens and finding out information about pollution and our water.
In fact, she is still talking about the bird who had plastic and garbage in its stomach. (It was a pretty graphic picture of a dead bird, but she was fascinated.) She asked us if we can catch a bird and cut its stomach open to see what is inside. Ewww! I told her that when she is older she can be a veterinarian or zoologist and when birds die she could open them up to see why.
The second floor of the museum has a kids section – RiverWorks – that our Princess absolutely loved. She make her own boat and floated it down a river through tributaries, floods, and locks. The highlight of the first museum was of course the 4D movies. The first one was about dinosaurs, which of course she loves. This was a documentary, with excellent 3D graphics. We all enjoyed it. The second one was an animated cartoon about fish underwater and pollution. After this movie ended, she asked if we could watch it again. It was really well done.
We brought food and ate in the cafeteria (which saved a lot of money!) before heading to the second museum. The second museum had sturgeon and crawfish that you could touch, a sand erosion exhibit you could play with and my Princess’ all time favorite thing to do there was feeding the steamboat boiler room logs of wood.
A great family day at the museum. If you are ever in Dubuque, Iowa you really should consider visiting the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.
Sounds really neat! My kids would love that. We have nothing special for kids around here. 🙁
It was really cool, Dede. The one thing we really love about traveling on the road 8 months out of the year is finding fun places to visit.
Thanks for coming by!