Now That's a Museum: The Mariners' Museum

J and K have been blessed to travel to many museums.  We enjoy the offbeat, the classy, the historic, the kitschy--if it is a museum, we probably like it, at least on some level.  We'd been intending to travel to The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, for years, and we got around to it as the centerpiece of our tenth anniversary trip J planned for us.  K's dad was in the US Navy, and he visited here before its last major renovation adding the USS Monitor Center.  He would have been so pleased to see us enjoy it so.

Billed as the premiere US Civil War exhibit, the USS Monitor Center at the Mariners' Museum and the associated exhibits detailing the famous Battle of the Ironclads is extremely impressive.  We spent hours in this exhibit alone.  It presents and contextualizes this history of the war, the associated shipbuilding, and the battle--as well as the finding of the wreckage of the USS Monitor in the Atlantic and its ongoing preservation today.  If you have interests in technology, seafaring, engineering, exploration, war, history, and/or museum science, this exhibit is captivating.   Visitors hear the stories of the shipbuilders and soldiers--and the oceanographers, archaeologists, and others who find those memories.  As an added plus, we visited during a rare "tank draining," as the Monitor turret, kept in saltwater during the current stage of conservation, was in a drained tank when we visited.  If you have particular interests in conservation, follow @USSMonitorLab on Twitter.The teachers in us would find it a very suitable field trip for serious students of Virginia and US history of any age.

Don't miss any other part of the museum, either--including the particularly interesting Crabtree Gallery of miniature ships (there's a great exhibit book to buy), Abandon Ship: Stories of Survival, Defending the Seas about the history of the US Navy, and the fascinating International Small Craft Center, a display of everything from gondolas to canoes to classy motorboats.  Until late summer 2015, there's also a nifty exhibit of deep see exploration, Extreme Deep.

If you go, we're thinking this is a museum that, while interesting for some kids, would require a different touring style with kids under 10--it's better suited for museum readers than museum runners, if you will.  Come prepared to walk the well-landscaped grounds if you are so inclined.  The Grey Goose Cafe onsite serves the delicious food of a local catering company and is pretty reasonably priced for a yummy, well-prepared meal.  If you are traveling with kids, know you are very close to the Virginia Living Museum.