Quirky Little Museums, Offbeat Destinations, and Sights Less Seen

[Politesse]

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned that one too! Lovely museum, and recently had a substantial remodel. Edge of Cedars is also a short drive from the Hovenweep site and Lowry Pueblo, two beautiful and well preserved sites on the old Chacoan highway into Southern Utah. A little farther away, in Cortez, is the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, which keeps a nice museum and has been active in advocating for preservation and education of the Puebloan legacy for decades now.

 

[James Chapman]

I am an observatory groupie. A number of historic observatories that I have visited are de facto museums. For instance, the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, where Clyde Tombaugh discovered the (dwarf) planet Pluto, is good for a 2-3 hour daytime visit. My personal favorite, since it is in my neighborhood, is the Mt. Wilson Observatory, where the astronomers Edwin Hubble and Fritz Zwicky made some of their pioneering observations. It has guided tours on weekends.

 

[Arctish]

I am an observatory groupie. A number of historic observatories that I have visited are de facto museums. For instance, the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, where Clyde Tombaugh discovered the (dwarf) planet Pluto, is good for a 2-3 hour daytime visit. My personal favorite, since it is in my neighborhood, is the Mt. Wilson Observatory, where the astronomers Edwin Hubble and Fritz Zwicky made some of their pioneering observations. It has guided tours on weekends.

Here's a little place you'd probably like: the Westport Observatory.

It's not historically significant or the engineering feat the observatories you mentioned are, but it's a neat little place built by science teachers and amateur astronomers on an old Cold War era Army radar site.

 

[gmbteach]

I am an observatory groupie. A number of historic observatories that I have visited are de facto museums. For instance, the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, where Clyde Tombaugh discovered the (dwarf) planet Pluto, is good for a 2-3 hour daytime visit. My personal favorite, since it is in my neighborhood, is the Mt. Wilson Observatory, where the astronomers Edwin Hubble and Fritz Zwicky made some of their pioneering observations. It has guided tours on weekends.

@bilby and I recently visited the Parkes Observatory, made famous for his part in the moon landing and also because it featured in a little Aussie movie called ‘The Dish’. It was great.

 

[gmbteach]

Next up: a great little place in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where a natural wonder (Hot Springs Mountain) brought together the rich, the powerful, the criminal, and baseball.

The Gangster Museum of America tells the tale of the town of Hot Springs, where on one side of a creek stood elegant bathhouses catering to the wealthy, the other side featured gambling dens, swanky bars and gin joints (Prohibition was very good for business), dance halls, brothels, etc., and the outskirts featured Spring training for several professional baseball teams, all overseen by two very powerful and well connected bosses who guaranteed the peace and security for visitors like Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, and brokered deals between crime families.

As visitors move from gallery to gallery, a museum tour guide dressed in a flashy version of 1940s style clothes narrates the story. The plain facts are wild enough, but the addition of the catch phrase "Folks here in Arkansas are really good at not noticing things" at some of the more eyebrow lifting parts of the story makes it especially fun.

And, of course, if you're in Hot Springs, Arkansas, visit the bathhouses. I highly recommend the Buckstaff. They use the original equipment to give visitors the Gilded Age experience.

We visited a museum dedicated to Ned Kelly recently. It was all about his life and capture and had a replica of his house, complete with authentic verifiable Kelly belongings. It was interesting to see it and nowhere near as shabby as I had believed.

Unfortunately, the whole town of Glenrowan was a disappointment as I thought it would have been more glamorous given it’s an important location in history. But then I suppose the sight of the Eureka Stockade would be equally as Boring.

 

[Arctish]

There's a little town in Canada southeast of Calgary, Alberta that was founded in the early 1900s and named by a Canadian Pacific Railway surveyor in honor of the Roman god of fire and forges. It's a quiet place surrounded by farms. Like most prairie towns it began to decline in the 1980s as people moved away and townsfolk did their shopping in larger towns nearby. Eventually the only people coming to town who didn't already live there were the ones stopping to get their picture taken at the concrete welcome sign, and eventually townsfolks noticed that odd little quirk. One of them, the director at the town's funeral home who was very active in the efforts to revitalize the community, convinced enough of the town's leaders to go along with a plan to embrace the possibilities their town's name had given them. So now when you see their new Welcome sign you can also get your picture taken by the statue in the park:

Show

And you can visit their cute little museum:

Show

It's the #1 Star Trek destination in all of Canada!