Our morning out

I hauled my minions all over the 'big city' yesterday running all sorts of boring Mom-type errands. They were troopers and were incredibly well behaved the whole time, so today we did something fun for them.

I would take a kid day over a Mom day any day. How about today. Good day. What?

Admission is free to locals today at the Park City Museum on Main Street, so we went. We're kinda local. Local enough for them. 

The city put $9,000,000 into this museum last year, and since I hadn't been since I was.... 15ish, I was  anxious to see the updates.

This place is awesome! Bouncing Baloonigans, Batman!

We are personally interested in this particular museum because of the family history we have - my Grandpa Tom was raised in Park City back when it was a mining town, and his Father actually died in the silver mine.

The museum has a two story mine cross-section which really shows just how deep the mines went - it has little moving elevators and carts rolling around and everything, and for lack of a better description: It was So cute!

 Looks at these tiny guys! Sorry it's kinda fuzzy. I was thinking clearly enough to bring my camera with us in the car, but not clearly enough to bring it into the museum. My phone had to bear the brunt of the visual recording.

Then it was down into the basement. Duh duh duh....

 This is a non-moving mining elevator that you can climb in if you're brave. It took the kids a minute to be brave, but after that it was cool.

There's a whole bunch of mining stuff down there, including a dynamite simulator that you can set off yourself. It freaked us out the first time we shoved the handle down! Bright lights, big noises, and the ground shakes! The subsequent 74 times weren't so bad.

Our family history moves beyond mining, I'm afraid, to the jail portion of the museum. This is the original jail which was under the county building which is now the museum. 

I emailed my Grandma yesterday and asked her to send me the story of my Grandpa's "experience" in the jail, and since it was brief I'll share it with you, in her words.

"Park City had a curfew time when Ton was a young boy. A loud whistle blew at 9pm and there were not supposed to be any kids out on the streets after that whistle blew. They were pretty strict about enforcing it.

One night he and his friends (or brothers?) were out on the streets after curfew. (around 6 or 7 years of age?) A large scary policeman approached them and told them they would have to go to jail because they were out after curfew. The jail was on Main Street. He took them there and put them in a cell (with bars) in the basement (cold and dark) and they were pretty scared. (I think he said he cried).

Now I can't remember how long they were there, but I think it was just a few hours and their Dad came and got them and took them home."

There are only four cells down there, so one of them must be the one that he stayed in. When he was six. I'd love to see them try that nowadays.

 It is very well lit and very clean down there now, but still totally creepy! I can't imagine how frightened they must have been.
If you think that story's great, you should hear the rest of them. My Grandpa had a whopper of a childhood.

Back upstairs there's a big pony express exhibit with this little spot for youngin's to draw what they think it must have been like. Instead of drawing ponies, my kids drew people in jail. Go figure.

 They were lovely pictures though, very lifelike!

 The train exhibit was a big hit, but what kiddo doesn't love trains?

This is a telephone switch board thingo (pretty sure that's the proper name), and you're supposed to try to keep up with the lights and plug the plugs into the right... plugs. Emmy was fascinated. 

Such a great day at the museum. And on the way out I noted that it will also be free next tuesday (the 26th). If we can muster up some fellow minions to join us we just might go again. 

Back outside on Main Street, Emmy spotted this pink bench across the road, so we of course had to cross to try it out. 

Which of course led into us also visiting the chocolate factory, the family history library, and the bookstore. 

If this is homeschool, I'm so glad we're doing it.