Upper Peninsula Children's Museum
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In contrast to a slick, high-tech children's museum, this is a freewheeling, inventive place, designed in large part by children. Rather than being dutifully educational, its playful, handmade, colorful environment appeals to children's natural sense of silly, icky, scary, creepy, and let's pretend. "MicroSociety—it's a city, and it's just for kids. Stroll down the kid-sized street and shop at all the wacky businesses [including] the world-famous Fossil Rock Candy Café featuring such delicacies as Brontosaurus Burgers with Volcano Ketchup." There's a teaching kitchen. Kids get a checkbook for the Reality Store, detail transactions, and consider financial and occupational goals and values. The Recyclatorium has space, materials, and examples for making fun stuff out of discards.
The mystery of what happens when you flush the toilet is tackled in the Go and Learn public restrooms (where boys get to pee in a tree) and "Where's your water?" secton. Kids slide down the huge toilet, through the plumbing and into a septic tank to learn about microbiology. They crawl through the drain field and into an aquifer to explore life under a pond." Real turtles can be handled and every afternoon Tuesday a herpetologist comes with a snake to touch, and more turtles and lizards to see. In "The Incredible Journey," kids walk into a "head," slide down a tongue, and crawl either into a stomach with an intestine slide or into a lung. One lung is black from tobacco damage, the other healthy. Buttons on a sound wall make the sounds of lungs while doing different things.
Call or visit the website, www.upcmkids.org , for more programs, group sleepovers and parties, and ideas for group teaching units. A toddlers' program with many activities is held weekdays at 11 a.m.
The gift shop carries a very popular plush snake, Folkmanis puppets, and many inexpensive things grouped together so economy-minded parents can say, "You can get anything on that wall."
The museum's limited budget—limited by being in a county of 65,000, not 500,000—and kid-based design process account for its zany, cobbled-together creativity. That approach happens to dovetail with the local culture of much of the Upper Peninsula, where nothing is thrown away and home repairs are seldom hired out. The first seeds were planted in the late 1980s. Nheena Weyer Ittner, originally from Midland, was a young mother when she became all too aware of how few places the area then had for parents to take their children. As the art teacher at Ishpeming High, she had been excited about exposing her students to a wider world.
123 West Baraga (the street with the courthouse) on the south side of downtown Marquette. Park in the lot across the street. (906) 226-3911. Current hours: Mon-Wed 10-6, Thurs to 7:30, Fri to 8, Sat 10-8, Sun noon to 5. Closed holidays. Admission $5.00/adults, $5 ages 2 to 17. $25 family rate. Wheelchair-accessible.
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POINTS OF INTEREST
Marquette Mountain. With plenty of snow and some of the state's highest runs, this is one of the better known Midwest ski destinations ... more
Alley Kat's Quilt Shop. Outstanding contemporary shop caters to quilters, fiber artists, home sewers, Lots of examples inspire quilters. Designer fabrics, geometrics, wools (for the primitive look), & linen-cotton blends for garments. ... more
Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center . At the Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center are exhibits on the various immigrant groups who populated the U.P., an historical look at student life at Northern Michigan University, and the artifacts from the life of philanthropist and business magnate Sam Cohodas. ... more
Huron Mountain Bakery . Terrific, unpretentious bakery along the highway just south of Marquette ... more
Marquette Baking Co.. This exceptional bakery complements a delightful cluster of food-related shops ... more
Marquette County History Museum. Choice artifacts, some life-sized exhibits with audio, and a good gift shop make this stand out. See an Ojibwa family group,the Burt survey party, a child-scale street of shops ... more
Risak Pottery. Beautifully complex colors adorn the pieces at this Japanese-inspired gallery ... more
Zero Degrees Artist Gallery. Cool new cooperative of broad array of artists. ... more
Greywalls Golf Course. One of Michigan's finest and arguably its visually most dramatic course, Greywalls attracts golfers from across the nation ... more
Peter White Library. A dream library renovated and expanded through community visioning: restored 1904 reading rooms, an exhibit gallery, a children's room designed by kids, a community art gallery and shop, and a café/coffee bar with fresh Greek specialties ... more
Ridge and Arch Historic District. A well-maintained neighborhood of historic homes in a variety of late 19th-century styles, and two richly detailed red sandstone churches with unusual stained glass windows, one by Tiffany ... more
Lower Harbor. The beautifully designed focus of the city's Lake Superior waterfront, with a fresh and smoked fish shop, a playground/picnic park next to the marina, a historic lighthouse, a breakwall to walk out on ... more
Marquette Maritime Museum. A colorful museum with lots of great stuff: superb replicas of freighters, three Fresnel lighthouse lenses, hands-on fishing nets and a pilot house, colorful flags from Great Lakes freighters, a miniature reconstruction of a famous WWII naval battle ... more
U.S.S. Darter-Dace Silent Service Memorial. A fascinating computerized, narrated diorama of the Philippine naval battle that crippled the Japanese navy, highlighting the critical role of two subs with U.P. crews and a replica conning tower are part ... more
Marquette Harbor Light. Visitors can now tour this oft-photographed lighthouse on the rocks and take the catwalk 300' out to Lighthouse Point, with great panoramic views of Presque Isle, ore dock, harbor, and town ... more
Lakeside bike path from the Inner Harbor to Presque Isle. You can rent a bike or rollerblades for this beautiful, busy shoreline path from the inner harbor to magical Presque Isle Park, passing a beach and picnic area for students and one for families ... more
Lake Superior & Ishpeming RR Ore Dock. Extending a full quarter mile out into the lake, this huge 75' landmark is where you can watch taconite pellets of iron ore delivered by train and noisily dumped into a waiting ore carrier ... more
Moosewood Nature Center. Started by science teachers, the enthusiastic young staff offers 20 programs and outings a month for families and has some live native reptiles and amphibians to watch. A paved Bog Walk Trail is outside ... more
Presque Isle Park. One of the coolest city parks anywhere, it's a rocky, wooded peninsula jutting into Lake Superior with great vistas, 5 miles of walking paths, swimming pool and water slide, picnic grounds, bandshell ... more
The Village shopping district on Third Street. Between downtown and campus, Third Street has several popular restaurants, an excellent outdoors shop, a terrific fabric shop, a consignment shop, a bead shop ... more
Superior Dome. See the wood framework of the world's largest wood dome, used for athletics and community walking and jogging. Interesting exhibits in its outer corridor feature U.P. minerals, ethnic groups, and Upper Peninsula legends John Voelker, Dominic Jacobetti, Nita Engle, Glenn Seaborg, and Sam Cohodas ... more
DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University. With this facility, the Upper Peninsula has a real art museum, open year-round, with some high-level nationally important exhibits along with local and regional shows ... more
Father Marquette Park/ Chamber of Commerce.. Tourist info with a grand view of a picture-perfect town, harbor, and lighthouse ... more
Marquette County Courthouse. A grand public building from 1902, used with respect. See the impressive courtroom where the Anatomy of a Murder case was tried, the great view from the steps, and the display of Voelker legal memorabilia ... more
St. Peter Cathedral and Baraga Archives. In the cathedral, stained glass windows of saints and scenes from Jesus's life. Next door, the papers of the snowshoe priest from Slovenia involved with the early history of many Michigan communities ... more
Upper Peninsula Children's Museum. Low-tech, free wheeling, imaginative fun in a whacky micro city, a recyclatorium, and a great gift shop. Kids learn about microbiology after sliding down a toilet, fly in a real fuselage cockpit ... more
Marquette Food Co-op. Cheerful one-stop shopping with good produce and more trail mixes, energy bars, soy milk and juices for travelers in the attractive new location downtown ... more
Park Cemetery. Download WMOT deejay Jim Koski's chatty Park Cemetery walking tour and a stroll through this hilly, wooded cemetery becomes a guided tour of the graves of Marquette's founding elite ... more
Jilbert's Dairy. An ice cream parlor is the centerpiece of this headquarters complex of the U.P.'s premier dairy, where you can see milk being processed, picnic next to a giant cow, and shop for various U.P. foods and knick-knacks ... more
Brewmaster's Castle Home. The exterior is exotic, but get a look at what's inside ... more
Mount Marquette Scenic Lookout. A rocky summit provides a glorious views of the city, the bay, and the vast expanse of Lake Superior beyond ... more
Marquette Branch Prison. The 1889 part of the prison that looks like it's out of Victorian England, with pretty inmate-tended flower gardens out front ... more
U.S. 41 road cut with ancient algal stromatolites. Looming above Highway 41, this rocky cliff reveals eroded remains of ancient (2 billion-year-old) mountains once far higher than today's Rockies ... more
Michigan Welcome Center. The picnic area provides a striking view of Marquette Bay and the distant city of Marquette, with helpful tourist info in the log Welcome Center ... more
Blueberry Ridge Cross-Country Ski Trail/Escanaba River State Forest. 12K of trails, 1.7 miles of them lighted, are groomed for ski-skating and diagonal stride ... more
Lakenenland. One of the U.P.'s most unusual roadside attractions, a pipefitter's quirky sculpture park. Part political, part fanciful, done just for fun. No fee, nothing to buy. ... more
Hunt's Map Guide to the Upper Peninsula
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