Visit to the Oshkosh EAA Museum

Monday, December 30, 2013

Our town has absolutely nothing for a small child to do in the winter, indoors, unless you are a YMCA member. Even our McDonald's Playland went away during the last round of renovations and a close-by kid-friendly cafe disappeared. We run out of ideas for keeping Peanut entertained in the cooler months sometimes. That is, until we stumbled upon the children's museum inside the EAA museum in Oshkosh.

You see, Oshkosh hosts the biggest aircraft convention in the world every year and so the aircraft museum is a signature part of our city. Since we live here though, we are all too used to that one week in July where our city is completely descended upon and consumed for the love of airplanes. Many of us try to get out of the city and rent our homes out to avoid the hubub of tourism.


Sure, we'd been to the museum before, but not in a long time. One day Hubster decided to take Peanut there for a visit just for something to do. Then, we happened upon the kid's section of the airport. And we discovered that the interactive play area beats out the Mickey D's Playland any day of the week! We immediately purchased a family membership and now enjoy the place as often as we'd like.

Since I've been off of work for about a week and a half with Peanut this Christmas vacation, mostly cooped up in the house with all our new Christmas paraphernalia, we decided to take a day out to the museum to burn off some accumulating steam.

Check this place out.


Test how many pounds of thrust you can generate on this mother of all exercise bikes.


Use this robotic arm to build and move around blocks.


Watch flight simulators


Sit inside a real cockpit with tons of controls and buttons and pretend you're a pilot.


Tilt and lean to maneuver a hang glider, and just across the way, a hot air balloon.


Sit in one of the rows of flight simulators and actually give your flying skills a try.


Then, sit in the viewing tower and see if you can see any action with the provided binoculars.

This place is awesome. It's like science and physical education and math all got together and made this awesome place. An interactive learning experience and boredom buster all in one.

All you adults out there, the regular museum is definitely worth the admission. There are several hangars' worth of aircraft to see and learn about, even for the person who isn't entranced by planes. Hubster and I like to peruse the exhibits once in awhile too and always learn something. If you're ever in Oshkosh, WI, you need to check this place out. And if you live here, especially if you have children, you'll be doing everyone a favor by purchasing a membership and enjoying the exhibits.

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