Balboa Park and Museums, San Diego CA

Next to the San Diego Zoo is a great park hosting 15 museums, gardens, theatre performances and so much more! My family and I had the pleasure of spending the weekend in April here and enjoyed ourselves so much. Panama 66 is a lovely al fresco restaurant with a menu that was tastier than I ever expected. There are a great variety of museums for almost any interest and the park has lots of places to explore. The park itself is a sprawling area originally used by San Diego to host a Panama - California exhibition celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal in 1915 and also used to host United Nations events in the 1950s. The park visitors center sells different types of passes allowing you entrance to multiple attractions in a day or over the span of a week.

During our visit the San Diego Turtle and Tortoise Society held an event in one of the exhibition halls and they host different events throughout the year so check the schedules for things of interest to enhance your visit. The Turtle exhibition was just our first stop in our day-long adventure to the Air & Space Museum, Museum of Man, Automotive Museum, an al-fresco lunch at Panama 66, and then a tour through the impressive Museum of Natural History (it was a very full day).

The San Diego Museum of Man is the only museum dedicated to anthropology in the Southern California region and you can learn about the history of mankind and even see real mummies and other ancient artifacts. While we were there the museum was hosting a special engagements on the Instruments of Torture Tour - a limited engagement with historical artifacts from the era of the Inquisition in Europe - was thought provoking to say the least and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Another "extra" tour we took was the California Tower Tour within the Museum of Man. The building the museum is housed within was one of the three remaining original buildings from the 1915 exhibition and was designed to look like a classic Spanish Mission with a ten-story "bell tower" (which was purely decorative and never actually housed any bells). There has been no public access to that view for more than 75 years. The tour takes you up 164 steps to the 8th floor of the tower where you will enjoy panoramic views of San Diego. It was wonderful! Instead of large cast bells, the Tower’s music comes from an electronic carillon installed in 1946 and upgraded in the 1990s. A musician sits at a standard musical keyboard and plays the tunes, which are translated to signals for programmed bell-ringing later. The bells are small but highly amplified – real metal is hitting real metal when the Tower’s tones are heard.
















The Air & Space Museum was a huge hit with the family and contained a variety of exhibits spanning the history of powered flight and included artifacts from the Apollo 9 mission around the Moon. The museum includes some hands-on exhibits and knowledgeable docents providing rich details about the items on display.

Stop at the Balboa Park Visitors Center which is open from 9:30am-4:30pm daily. The Visitors Center offers brochures, maps, audio tours, free guided tours of the Park, transportation information, dining advice, and more.

We could not see it all and plan on returning and would need to spend at least four days to enjoy all of the attractions. 

SouthWest Makers Fair

http://www.southwestmakerfest.com/visit/

The second SOUTHWEST MAKERFEST was a one-day festival held in downtown Mesa held on Saturday, March 28, from 12am to 8pm. It was created to celebrate the power in all of us to create, innovate and realize our ideas! The event featured exhibits, workshops and demonstrations by inventors, artists and makers in a wide variety of areas. The event sprawled over several blocks in the downtown area and included live bands, robot challenges, artisans of all types of media showing off their wares, and lots of hands-on activities for kids and adults to learn about and play with technology. This is a great event to go and explore with the family and we look forward to next year's event. 

2015 Emerge Artists + Scientists Re Design the Future

ASU Emerges 2015: Artists + Scientists Re-Design the Future

Each year Skysong ASU - http://skysongcenter.com - hosts an innovation evening. We spent 2 1/2 hours surrounded by science and arts, robots, hands-on projects, interactive presentations, and lectures. NPR RadioLab's co-host Jad Abudram hosted an interactive presentation out under the stars sharing how RadioLab works and it's history as if it was a RadioLab story. There were demonstrations from NASA, ASU's Robotics Lab, and others. This is an event worth adding to your calendar and following throughout the year.

Geeks Night Out - Tempe AZ

Geeks Night Out in Tempe is a wonderful annual S.T.E.A.M event

Geeks Night Out in Tempe is a great geeky family tradition as downtown Tempe hosts an evening of activities in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math for geeks of all ages and interests. The City of Tempe teamed together with Arizona SciTech Festival (http://azscitech.com) to create an interactive evening spread around the downtown mall. While this event is over there are more S.T.E.A.M events throughout the rest of the month including the SouthWest Makerfest (SouthwestMakerFest.com), Emerge 2015: Artists + Scientists Redesign the Future, and Science Night at the Phoenix Zoo. These are just a few of the excellent STEAM events that I enjoy exploring with my family.

The Mob Museum - Nevada

The Mob Museum is three floors of mob history, the law enforcement that tried to reign it in, and the history of the most infamous mobsters and crime families.  You will see actual evidence and weapons used in the era and detailed history of the beginning of "organized crime" in the United States, it's explosive and violent growth during Prohibition, and its diversification into almost all possible areas of commerce and industry after WWII. The museum highlights the rise of coordinated law enforcement from the start of the FBI to the multi-agency Department of Homeland Security engaged in addressing organized crime across the globe. There is also a large exhibit about the growth of Las Vegas and how the Mob may ... or may not ... have played a role in it's history.

One exhibit covers the famous Senator Kefauver Committee's televised hearings which brought national attention to the "Mafia" and exposed its pervasiveness in 1950's America. The museum gift shop included a t-shirt with the slogan "Two sides to every story" and that is what the museum presents. There are a lot of hands on exhibits including listening to actual wire-taps from investigations. My daughter stepped into an FBI weapons training simulator. My son video taped himself in an FBI interrogation room. There are recordings from courtrooms and police stations too. Finally, the museum looks at Hollywood's portrayal of the Mob throughout the years with a short documentary.

There is a large area where you can learn the mob history of your home state. I was, and yet was not,  surprised to read all the details of mob activity here in Arizona (Tucson and Phoenix) including exhibits on several infamous mob killings here in Phoenix including the killing of an investigative reporter in 1982. The museum also looks at the current activities of organized crime which has become a global issue.

 

http://themobmuseum.org

This tour was definitely for me. The museum itself was originally a postoffice and county court building located down by the original Vegas strip now called the Fremont Street experience.

National Atomic Testing Museum -- Nevada

Always searching for a geeky attraction we found the National Atomic Testing Museum - a museum detailing the history of the Manhattan Project and the subsequent testing of atomic weapons in the desert outside of Las Vegas and out in the Pacific between 1945 and the early 1990's when testing was banned by most nuclear nations. The museum contains over 12,000 artifacts within 11,000 square feet of exhibits and memorabilia from the start of the Atomic Age and the first atomic test in July, 16, 1945 (code named Trinity) and through Cold War. Exhibits cover the rise of the "Atomic culture" in the United States in art, toys, television and movies, books, and the development of the "Duck and Cover" era. The museum helps to focus on the human side of the atomic weapons program and the people who worked to help create these weapons and ensure their safety. My husband was positively glowing with excitement and the kids were delighted with the hands on exhibits. 

  

    




In addition to the permanent exhibits the museum has temporary special engagement exhibits and the current one is about the infamous "Area 51" and the history of Unidentified Flying Objects AND the top secret Air Force installation where the nation's most advanced aircraft are designed and tested. The first ever exhibit on Area 51 was developed with the help of the very people that worked there. This exhibit will explore the real truth, the real programs, and address the secrecy that surrounds the base at Groom Lake including a look at the development of some of the US Air Forces more unique aircraft.

There is something for everyone to experience in displays presenting the history of the development and testing of one of man’s most significant feats of engineering - the atomic bomb.

The National Atomic Testing Museum is a repository for one of the most comprehensive collections of nuclear history. As part of its mission, the National Atomic Testing Museum seeks to collect and preserve a wide variety of materials and artifacts relating to atomic testing, the Nevada Test Site, the Cold War, and nuclear and radiological science and technology. The current collection includes thousands of rare photographs, videos, artifacts, scientific and nuclear reports and data and one-of-a kind scientist collections.


http://www.nationalatomictestingmuseum.org

Hoover Dam Tour - Arizona & Nevada border

For years my husband has wanted to tour the Hoover Dam with the family. So last week we packed up the kids, refused to tell them where we were going, and set off another road trip. It was better than I expected. The Hoover Dam, originally named the Boulder Dam, is an engineering marvel of the 20th Century and a testament to the great things the country was able to accomplish even in the depths of the Great Depression. The top of the dam is open for exploration and you can walk across and look over both sides and view all of the cool dam parts on the Arizona and Nevada sides and how the dam was carved into the canyon. You can stand in the middle of the dam and straddle two states and be in two time zones. After checking out the topside we purchased the Power Plant tour and traveled down several hundred feet inside to the Nevada side power plant and saw several of he huge water turbine generators in action. The generators are huge and heavy and the generator room still uses the two original 300 Ton lift capacity cranes that were installed in the 1930's. Throughout the dam there are incredible 1930's Art Deco design details and other hints of a bygone era. Overall the dam tour has a lot of fascinating information and history and can appeal to geeks and kids of all ages.

The Hoover Dam spans the Colorado River in Black Canyon between Arizona and Nevada, some 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas Nevada. Constructed in the 1930s, the concrete arch-gravity structure was intended to prevent flooding as well as provide much-needed irrigation and hydroelectric power to arid regions of states like California and Arizona. It was originally known as Boulder Dam, but was renamed in 1947 in honor of Herbert Hoover, who as U.S. secretary of commerce and the 31st U.S. president proved instrumental in getting the dam built. At 726 feet high and 1,244 feet long, Hoover Dam was one of the largest man-made structures in the world at the time of its construction, and one of the world’s largest producers of hydroelectric power.

http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/