Best Museums

I like the weird museum’s best, but I did list a few big museums that are worth fighting the crowds.

10. Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum – Albuquerque, NM

I didn’t expect this to be anything special, but it was an excellent museum to see the history of balloon and other lighter-than-air flight. Some was older history like balloon flights in France and some were current records.

9. White Sands Missile Range Museum – Las Cruces, NM

This museum is a combination of unsettling items like nuclear detonation and fun things like a Darth Vader helmet. There is an section with minerals and crystal from the area. The best part is the rocket park with 50 different types of rockets, missiles, and aircraft.

8. National Naval Aviation Museum – Pensacola, FL

This is a BIG military museum. It would be easy to spend a week seeing the different displays, planes, helicopters, and carrier sections.

7. The Sixth Floor Museum - Dallas, TX

The museum is full of audio visual displays so that you feel you are back at that time. The museum is in the Texas School Book Depository and near the Grassy Knoll. Lots of memories.

6. T.T. Wentworth Jr. Florida State Museum – Pensacola, FL

It has local history and oddities, but I love this museum just for the Petrified Cat!

5. National Air and Space Museum - Washington, DC

Mostly I don’t like to list the popular sites since it is difficult to enjoy the experience with so many people. But the National Air and Space Museum is incredible. The history of the items is amazing. Brave the crowds and go.

4. US Space Walk of Fame – FL

The Kennedy Space Center is amazing. It is big and expensive with crowds of people. But the US Space Walk of Fame is a labor of love. The museum was organized by the people who worked at Kennedy Space Center. These are the small items that were used in the space program with many of them signed by astronauts. The tour guides are people who worked in the space program.

3. Battleship Cove – Fall River, MA

This museum includes a battleship, a destroyer, a submarine, and a Russian ship along with smaller exhibits. In all of them, you can climb stairs and crawl through hatches to pretend you are living on these ships. Matter of fact, school kids stay the night. Of course, the fact that John served on the USS Joseph P. Kennedy (we even saw his rack he slept in!) has nothing to do with this being added to the list.

2. Old Warren County Court House Museum – Vicksburg, MS

This is a small museum that is full of donations from the locals. Lots of Civil War and Jefferson Davis items. The best is the pregnant minie. This is the one where the minie ball supposedly pieced the man-parts of a solder then traveled into a lady making here pregnant. That’s their story and they are sticking to it!

1. Museum of Osteology – Oklahoma City, OK

This museum of bones is my favorite museum of all time. It’s incredibly educational since you see a unique view of animals. Many of the animals I never heard of before coming here. Plus it has the creepy value of bones. Don’t miss the bugs in the entry area. The display shows live bugs cleaning bones.