I have been gaining a growing appreciation for the small, lesser-known museums of our country, and your post fits right in with something I was talking about just two days ago.
I know none of us have forgotten our "Bund Trip" to the D-Day Museum (Now the World War II Museum) in New Orleans on the 60th Anniversary of D-Day. That particular museum is a classic example of what I am talking about. Nothing to compare to Washington DC's Smithsonian Museum, or Chicago's Natural History Museum, or New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the British Museum, or the Louve, or Hermitage, or the Cairo Museum, at least not in size and number of exhibits.
But these small, local museums offer an insight that the big ones often seem to lack. That trip to the D-Day Museum is a great example. It cost us what? Two hours of drive time? $11 to park, and another $12 (each) to get in? What did we get for that 57 mile drive and $47 investment?
A full day of completely immersive history, surrounded by the sights, sounds, faces, voices... even the SMELLS of that grey morning in France on 6 June 1945. I will never forget the sound... the actual feeling of the sound... coming from a .50 "Ma Deuce" pounding out a full belt in the middle of a quiet back street in New Orleans, or of speaking with any one of the dozens of volunteers who had dressed in various uniforms to display and explain the minute details of what those men were wearing, carrying, shooting and using from both sides of the battlefield, or to experience the details being shared via that particularly fascinating G2-style briefing that occured every fifteen minutes and which was delivering the same information to the audience that the commanders in the field were getting real-time during the actual invasion.
Want another example? Go to absolutely ANY US Navy Museum Ship that you care to mention. One of my all-time favorites is the USS Alabama, in Mobile Alabama. $5 to park, and $8 per person to spend the entire day walking on one of TWO WWII-era warships (BB-60 "The Big A" or the SS-228 USS Drum), or a fully-stocked aircraft museum which, among a baker's dozen other aircraft, contains one of only FOUR remaining Blackbird SR-71 spyplanes and (the crowning piece in the aircraft collection)... the actual "Calamity Jane" B-52 Stratofortress. Tanks from four US wars and enough field artillery pieces to equip an artillery company, along with the shell and exhaust nozzels for a complete Saturn V rocket body... it's a great freakin' tour, let me tell you.
There are lots of them out there, too. The USS New Jersey is parked in Camden, NJ. The USS Intrepid sits in New York Harbor. The USS Constitution in Boston, MA. The USS Texas, the USS Olympia, USS North Carolina, USS Lexington, USS Wisconsin... its a long and very impressive list of ships available to visit and explore, and they are spread across the country, from Pearl Harbor HI to Hilton Head, NC. From Manitowoc, WI to Key West, FL.
Every major city in this country has some kind of museum, and some of them are worth every effort to see. Add to that the pieces of history scattered across this vast landscape, like Gettysburg, PA or Vicksburg, MS or Saratoga, NY or St. Augustine, FL or Mount Rushmore, SD or the Sullivan Trail across PA and NY, and you have an almost endless list of fun, interesting, and educational things to do with your kids anytime you get in the car to travel.
Good for you, for planning a trip like that with your boys!
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I wanted to add that we are planning on making an overnight stop in Manitowoc, WI next time we go home, just because of the National Maritime Museum exhibit of the USS Cobia (SS-245) which is on permanent display there (it is where she was built in WWII).
All of us here have been to the Drum, so this won't be graphically different... but one thing this tour has that the drum lacks is an OPERATIONAL WWII-era radar that is available for public viewing during normal operating hours.
How frigging cool is THAT?
S-W-E-E-T!
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