Texas Memorial Museum

Our first full week back in town for summer, and K is suffering from sever allergies :o(  So, with most of our outdoor places off the list, we are hitting some indoor places.

An old favorite of ours is the Texas Memorial Museum on the UT campus.  This free science museum was built in 1939.  And with its hushed halls, it sometimes still feels like that year still inside!

This location also happens to be on the list of Texas Nature Challange, so it was perfect! We printed the challenge before we left, and headed out!

There are four floors with different exhibits. The first floor contains dinosaur fossils and other historic science items, including the 5th largest meterorite to fall in Texas. 

The second floor and main entrance has a large pterosaur, a huge blue topaz and a well stocked museum store. 

The third floor has dioramas of all different sorts of Texas wildlife, including our favorite javalina!  The boys also enjoyed the "night life" section.

And the fourth floor has an exhibit of jar specimans and an interactive exhibit called "Explore Evolution". 

We followed the questions in the Nature Challenge to lead us through al lof the halls - and learned some new things along the way!

Tips and Thoughts

This is a very simple, old-school museum.  Most visitors will tour the entire museum in one to two hours.

While the museum is free, parking is not.  The closest parking is in the San Jacinto parking garage; for a minimal $6 you can park for 2 hours.  The LBJ library parking is further away, but free.

If you were hoping to combine this trip with the LBJ exhibits as well, note that  the library is under major renovation and only a few exhibits are open

If you are participating in the Taxes Nature Challenge, the museum does not have a copy of the questions, so download and print ahead of time.  You receive your completion sticker in the museum store.