To partake in Free Museum Day, you must request your ticket online through the Smithsonian. You provide your email address and they send you a voucher for 2 admissions to whatever museum you select. Even though you provide your e-mail address, you never get annoying emails from them the rest of year.
I met Ryan and Tracy at the Maritime Museum on Saturday. They have a similar philosophy when it comes to museums as I do – we like to browse and not read every single piece of history. They are bigger browsers than I am. I tend to read what catches my eye where they seem to just look at everything. I also really like hands-on displays which luckily for me so did Ryan and Tracy.
The museum is three stories plus the Submarine outside with the top floor being mainly offices and a rooftop view. We started downstairs after checking out 1 exhibit upstairs. Being the kid at heart that I am, I gravitated towards the Children's Waterway Room where we played with pipes and water. Luckily we were there early enough and no one else was in there so we could be kids again. I tried to race a boat through the the locks but it kept sinking....
After we played with water, we continued exploring the exhibits downstairs including the Wisconsin Built Boat Gallery and Maritime History Gallery. Before heading upstairs, we checked out the Chief Wawatam Steam Engine. Back upstairs, we pretended we were passengers on a 1900s ocean liner before heading to the USS Cobia.
The USS Cobia is the highlight of the Maritime Museum. It is a World War II sub and touring the sub is included in your admission. Our tour guide was very informative and even though the group was large, did a very good job at explaining things and letting us see everything before meeting him on the other end of the sub. It is just a very cramped ship and is hard to have a group of 15 or so adults in one place at a time.
The Maritime Museum is a great place to learn about Wisconsin's Maritime History, tour a WWII sub, and learn about the locks systems throughout the greater Fox Valley. It is very family friendly and if you took the time to read everything, it would probably take you several hours to go through the museum. We did it in about 2 with the sub tour.
I really enjoyed the museum. I am glad that I decided to go to the Maritime Museum instead of the EAA Museum this year. Apparently I was there as a kid years ago but it's fun to go back as an adult. I just wished I had more to say about my experience. It's another museum, with cool stuff in it, that you really need to see. It's one of those museums that's hard to describe I guess. Don't just read my poorly written blog, next Free Museum Day go check it out yourself so you can really see what it's all about since I've not a bad job explaining it.
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