As we continue our search in concentric circles for our next adventure, we came across a children’s museum in Nashville, the Adventure Science Center. Aside from dropping the girls or Grandma off at the airport, the girls and I have not spent a lot of time in Nashville, so it was about time we dove into navigating the typical big city that is always about an hour away from Army posts (such as Seattle for Joint Base Lewis-McChord or Tucson for Fort Huachuca). The girls and I were all very excited to spend most of the day here, learning and interacting with science, biology, engineering, and the universe. If you have read this blog before, you probably think this is going to be another post where we all had a good time, the girls happily surprised me, and we all learned a valuable lesson along the way; unfortunately, this is not going to be one of those posts.
As is the norm, we drove to the center early and arrived about 30 minutes before they opened. This plan always works out because it usually gives the girls about an hour to explore before it gets really busy; they still remember Children’s Museum Tucson when they would have the grocery store and kitchen all to themselves for at least 45 minutes every visit. Thankfully, similar to other children’s museums, there was plenty to do outside before they opened the doors.
Gabriella got really into the musical benches, with her predictable ten-minute drum solo, while Elaina found an amphitheater for her one-woman show. So far, things were looking pretty good.
Once we entered, although we already had tickets for the museum, we immediately headed to the front desk to purchase tickets to the planetarium. Elaina has been really into space lately, including having a space-themed birthday party (our next post), so I thought it would be a good opportunity to lean into that potential career choice a little. Plus, who does not love a good planetarium? We also made a reservation for the Kinetic Climber, which is a ropes course.
First off, the Adventure Science Center is huge. There are three floors of activities, and we barely even saw half of the exhibits during our visit. You are definitely getting your money’s worth here. They jumped right into the play area in the center of the complex, climbing rope nets and crawling through tunnels. There were also several augmented reality screens for them to interact with across the museum (such as the one pictured above).
Next stop was the Body Quest exhibit, which focused on the body’s systems and organs. The girls enjoyed seeing real body parts from humans and other animals (“Is that a real human brain, Dad?”), but the doctor / nurse play area was very limited (no scrubs for dress-up). The rest of the area was really fun though, with several interactive games showing how food is chewed and digested, how all the organs fit inside a human body, and how blood vessels work. This last one was particularly interesting, as it used a giant water table to show how blockage inside blood vessels constricted the flow of blood cells throughout the body. All three of us had a lot of fun at this station, hence the lack of pictures.
Overall, the Body Quest exhibit was the most fun for us and where we spent the majority of our time. It probably did not hurt that it also had a giant pad where one could jump on to make “fluffy” noises.
Compared to some of the other Dinosaur exhibits the girls have been to, including the Discovery Park of America, the Mayborn Museum, or even The Thing tourist trap, this one was kind of a letdown. Just a relatively fake looking dinosaur (fossils are a lot cooler and scarier) that slightly moved. Definitely did not impress the girls.
We then stopped for an early lunch break, but all they had inside the center was a Subway restaurant and a frozen yogurt stand. Since the girls rarely eat sandwiches (and this Subway did not offer any soup), the girls unfortunately got frozen yogurt with their granola bars and gummies to keep their energy up. Not my finest hour, but I was a little disappointed in the food offerings here. This where the visit started to go off the rails. First, the lack of food choices, and then Elaina and Gabriella started fighting with each other, which is never fun, especially in a public setting.
Thankfully, our tickets to the planetarium were coming up, so we just walked down the hall to attend the show. We chose to attend the show To Worlds Beyond: Journey Through the Solar System, as Elaina really enjoys learning about the planets. Unfortunately, the girls lasted about five minutes before they were bored, asking multiple times how much longer the show was going to be. Even Elaina was unimpressed and wanted to leave. Guess I oversold them on how cool planetariums were. This also meant they wanted to skip the entire space exhibit, which was also a bummer.
We then moved to the Adventure Tower, which was multiple stories of climbing and slides, which the girls went up and down several times. Unfortunately, they started fighting at the top floor, which required me to go up there to get Gabriella when she refused to move. Later, more fighting led to Elaina locking herself in the bathroom for a few minutes while Gabriella and I tried to enjoy the Beekeeping exhibit (Note: I should probably add that their “fighting” is usually verbal, mostly name calling, and rarely physical before I get a chance to step in).
The last two areas we visited were the Tinkering Garage and the soundBox. In the former, the girls (with a little help from Dad) built some bunk beds for their LOL dolls using a hammer, nails, table saw, fabric, and a hot glue gun. They were really happy with their creations, but we left the area a little before our time ended after they started arguing; I was not going to risk it escalating while they were both armed with hammers. As the name implies, the soundBox focused on music and sound, which was definitely on-theme for Nashville. In the band augmented reality area, the girls’ fighting turned physical after arguing who could play the drums (taking turns and sharing is still very much a thing), which led to Gabriella running off to the other end of the museum. This is where I draw the line, as I am not going to stick around at an away location while the girls are running off mad to separate places. Holding their hands, we immediately exited the museum, completely bypassing both the gift shop and the Kinetic Climber (in which our reservation was in about 30 minutes). Our planned lunch in Nashville also got cancelled, as they continued to argue about where to eat, so I just drove straight home from the center.
While the Adventure Science Center is a great place to visit and I highly recommend it for families, it was a hit and a miss for the Calkins Family during this outing. For some reason, everything turned into an argument between the girls during the trip, from which room to visit, who got to do which activity (spoilers: you can both do it), or where to eat. I certainly did not want to leave early, but sometimes you need to let them know their words and actions have consequences. In this case, they did not receive their usual toy from the gift shop and were not able to go on the ropes course, which they were really excited about. Not the happy ending that usually accompanies these posts, I know, but this is real life, which is not always the perfection most social media posts or pictures would have you believe. Hopefully, we make it back to the Adventure Science Center at a later date, where the girls will certainly behave a little better, because they now know the consequences of fighting amongst each other in a public place.
Thanks for checking in on us.
Cheers!
Adventures in Single Dadding 