Our Quick Day Trip to Indianapolis Museums
Here we are again with another post about museums and our trip. We are afterall a homeschooling family and it is our job to share these things with you, right?
This past Monday was Martin Luther King Jr day. We continued our family tradition of visiting museums in Indianapolis.
As the kids get older it is surprisingly become harder to get them out of the house. I thought this would be easier by now. After all of us over sleeping, debating and arguing if we really wanted to go, and the actual act of getting ready to go, we finally headed out the door into the frigid 11 degrees to drive the 2.5 hours to our states Capitol. Oh golly I hope this was worth it.
Surprisingly, the kids didn't fight in the car nearly as much as I thought they would meaning they are probably saving all of their fury up for one magnificent moment. Thank the Lord.
Our first stop was the Eiteljorg Museum in downtown Indy. This is a Native American museum and while we had visited before, we’d never had a lot of time to enjoy the museum. So we stopped there. The first floor contained a special modern art exhibit by Native American artists, a large collection of wild west art, and a special exhibit of their Jingle Rails: The Great Western Experience exhibit.
We all loved the Jingle Rails section. It is incredible to see all of the landscapes they have made out of natural items! It was especially wonderful to see the places that we have visited: Yosemite, the Missions in Texas, the Rocky Mountains, the Sequoias, and more. So many details to discover and the trains are so fun to watch.
They also had a lot of fine art pieces including sculptures by Remington which were our favorites to examine and enjoy.
The second floor had a lot of art work on Native Americans and an exhibit about Indiana. In truth we didn’t spend too much time on the second floor as we were starting to get hungry for lunch!
The lower level has a fun area for the children but we determined that our kiddos are too old for it now so we decided to forego it. A wild west town, a wagon to pretend in, animal puppets to play with, and more. If you have time to go there with your kids I am sure they will love it!
Our next stop was to right next door to the Indiana State Museum. This museum is all about, surprise, Indiana!
To our shock and amazement Calvin saw a poster featuring the fossils of a Mastedon and was obsessed with it. So we all headed in that direction and I was so smitten to watch him ooh and ahh over it and just be totally enamored by all of the prehistoric artifacts they had that had been found in Indiana. This section included some pretty epic areas including Ancient Seas, Frozen Reign, Natural Regions.
After the prehistoric section (which by the way was enormous) we decided that we needed to leave because, well, LUNCH!
On our way to our next museum we stopped at Yujo which is a Ramen and Boba Tea place. It was very good! It is a counter service-style place and then you sit down and wait for them to bring them your food. Everything was made to order and everything was delicious. If you are a ramen fan and interested in what you got well, here you go:
Ramens:
Nick got the Yujo Signature which he loved because of the lemon zest broth
Emma and Calvin shared a bowl with the signature broth and just noodles
I got the Creamy Tonkutso bowl with a spice bomb on the side. It was really good.
Teas:
They were out of boba and I was not a happy camper but Emma and I still got tea. Emma got the milked Jasmine Tea and I ordered a Peach Oolong. Both were very yummy.
We all shared a large order of Potstickers and those were very good as well.
After our lunch, as we fell into yummy food comas we drove to Conner Prairie which isn’t technically in Indianapolis but is in Fishers, a northern suburb of Indy (and random fact where Nick and I lived before we had kids. Lots of good memories cruising around town).
We love Conner Prairie so much. In the cold Indiana months of winter they only have the indoor accessible (understandable!) so we perused all there was to see. As our children are older (still can’t believe they are 12 and 13!) they liked the more advanced projects. So we spent time putting electrical circuits together, assembled multi-step projects, and tried our hands in their handiwork workshop where this time it was all about sewing.
After that we started back home.
We arrived home around 7 and to our surprise Leroy had survived and hadn’t destroyed the house. I think we are slowly but surely getting this new family member to come around to our ways, ha.
It was a quick trip but a good trip. There have been years in the past when I have tried to get the kids to go to as many as 6 museums in a day and it was all just too much.
We decided that next MLK Jr. Day we will try to go to the zoo and the conservatory for the day.
But who knows if that plan will stick. After all, we have an entire year to change our minds!
Did you do anything fun on MLK Jr. Day? I’d love to know!
And finally we went home.
