Harold had visited the Museum of Science and Industry years ago while stationed at Great Lakes. It was time to revisit. In a very kind gesture, the museum offers free admission to active duty military and veterans.
Capitalizing on our new knowledge of the South Shore Line and the Dune Park station, we took the train to the museum. It was $8.00 per person each way. The $32.00 round trip for the the both of us was far less stressful than driving. Assuming that we would have been able to get in the parking garage with our rooftop case on the Jeep, the rate to park was $22.00. The train took a little over an hour and we don't think driving would have been that much faster.
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| Dune Park to 55th-56th-57th |
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| All Aboard! |
About the first thing you see when you enter the museum is the Pioneer Zephyr, a futuristic looking train that completed the Denver to Chicago run in just over 13 hours back in 1934. In some ways, it looks like something that would grace the cover of a comic book, which ties in to the current major exhibit of Marvel Superheroes.
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| Art Deco Silver |
The Marvel Superheroes exhibit is an additional cost of course. Even so, it's very popular and we considered ourselves lucky to get one of the timed entry tickets. The exhibit consists primarily of original art and costumes from all the recent movies. Unless you're a comic book aficionado, you could probably skip the exhibit and not feel like you missed out on too much.
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| Marvel Comics #1 |
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| Iron Man costumes |
We did see the U-505, the only German sub in the USA. This exhibit, one that Harold remembered, was one of the main reasons for revisiting the museum. Captured in 1944, the saga of its capture and its subsequent arrival at the museum is quite interesting. Inside submarine tours were closed because of covid.
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| U-505 |
John Deere fans would love the Farm Tech exhibit. We smiled at the kids standing in the wheel wells of the tractor tires and liked the cutaway view of the combine.
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| Combine cutaway |
Since we were tired, we almost skipped Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle. It was well worth the few minutes we spent viewing it. I lost count of how many times the audio tour mentioned "real" when describing things like the diamond and gold chandelier, the silver coach, the jade statues - all in miniature scale. It cost over $500 thousand to make at the time of it's creation, an estimated $7 million in today's dollars.
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| Fairy Castle |
The museum had such a variety of exhibits - a hand carved circus, model ships, model railroad with a huge diorama, airplanes, a coal mine (closed for covid), and a weather science exhibit in addition to the ones noted above.
We were glad we went. We were glad we took the train. We were glad to be back in Indiana at the end of the day. Chicago is not necessarily our kind of town. ; )
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