For the past 10 years or so, ever since our younger daughter started college at Chicago’s Loyola University and our older daughter began working in the Windy City, my husband and I have managed to visit at least a couple of times a year. We look forward to all the area has to offer: the great food, sports, architecture, zoos and gardens, and entertainment and museums. We’ve visited several venues multiple times, but our most recent trip to Chicago provided our first encounter with the Museum of Science and Industry.

Located south of the McCormick Place Convention Center and Soldier Field along the lakefront, the museum is at some remove from the museum campus near Grant Park which boasts the Field Museum, the Art Institute, the Adler Planetarium and the Shedd Aquarium. It is certainly more than worth the effort to travel the additional distance south of that complex to take in the wealth of exhibits and activities offered here. A large, covered parking complex connects directly to the expansive entry hall, making it a good option on a cold or wet day.

We arrived just after the museum opened on a Sunday morning. During the month of February, most of the museums in Chicago offered free admission to Illinois residents, so our daughter, son-in-law and grandson took advantage of the offer, while Harry and I purchased and printed our tickets on line in advance, making our passage into the exhibits quick and easy. With map in hand, we made a bee-line to the special Legos exhibit, “Brick by Brick,” on the second level. Iconic structures from around the world and over the course of history are recreated with the iconic plastic blocks, to scale, and we enjoyed the information accompanying each one which detailed the number of hours required to design and then build each model, along with the number of bricks used. We saw the Golden Gate Bridge,     Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater,     cutaway depictions of the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Roman Colosseum, and the International Space Station. Of course, there were stations where visitors could get hands-on with Legos, which appealed to all ages.

Because we had an all-boy toddler in tow, the rest of the exhibits we visited focused heavily on anything with wheels: in the Transportation Gallery Sean was impressed with the aircraft suspended overhead (a Boeing 727, a 1903 Wright Flyer replica, a barnstorming biplane and a WWII-era Stuka dive-bomber);   enjoyed climbing up into a steam locomotive; and was completely enthralled with The Great Train Story, a 20-train model train exhibit which represents the expanse of territory between Chicago and Seattle. After lunch we climbed up into an enormous combine and sat in the driver’s seat as we watched a video on the wide screen in front of us, putting us at the center of harvesting a vast field of corn.

We popped into the Idea Factory, a large room with lots of hands-on experiments involving pulleys, tubes, water, wind and blocks, before we checked out chicks hatching in the Genetics lab. By then the museum had really filled up and Sean wasn’t the only one in our group ready for a nap, so we decided to call it a day. I’m ready to go back in a heartbeat, though, for there is so much more I want to see. I’d love to delve into the Science Storms exhibit; I was fascinated to observe the man-made tornado being generated across the rotunda from where I stood. I’d also love to try out the flight simulators in the Transportation Gallery, visit the Coal Mine and take the onboard tour and exhibit of the U-505 German submarine.

Yes, Chicago always offers plenty to do no matter what your interests or the time of year.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor