Oakland Museum of California

This weekend, we got to visit the Oakland Museum of California. We had no idea a place like this existed and were glad it did!

This was a chance to be part of a group tour (lunch included) to be introduced to the museum with the museum docents. It was like a "behind the scenes" tour with some very knowledgeable people. Given Jr. and the Little One's recent rant on "why do we even need to study history", thought it would be a good idea to do this. 

This place really surprised us. Maybe because of the amount of information that we got from the docents.. maybe because we under estimated the amount of "action" that had happened in California over the last 500 years.. we still cannot put our finger on it. 

All we did was explore one eighth of one floor and even less than that of another floor over two hours. It was time for lunch and our drive back. In that two hours we learned a lot.

Here are some pictures of the exhibits.

 

 There were lots of interactive displays and the kids loved it.

This is the first time we have seen this gas dispenser among so many other firsts.. 

Jr. seems to have this as her signature pose these days, be it posing for Holi colors or Hollywoodland! 

 I was joking with the docent "we must have done something terrible to the grizzlies to have them on our flag" and she laughed. I told her "we cut down every oak tree in the area and call it Oak tree road. Kill every deer and shut off the creek and call it Deer Creek Road, decimate an entire tribe and name the local park after that tribe.." she nodded in approval! 

 

The second "science" floor had a lot of cool exhibits. But we spent 15 minutes there in the "bee" area. We had a busy weekend with lots of other things going on.. so we had to drive back (Okay, I had to do yoga for the day.. but we did have a lot of other stuff going on with the kids having class etc.)

We are definitely going back to this place to give it the time and attention it deserves. Apparently the third floor is a photo gallery! It was a bummer that I missed it. 

There are a few things learned :

1. The Indian tribes were amazing craftsmen when it came to making things with reeds. They could weave it so tight that they had water bottles made of reed! 

2. San Francisco was really built up with money from the Comstock Silver mining.. not the gold rush as I had thought. 

3. The peace sign actually came from the British and has to do with nuclear disarmament.. for a guy who is big on trivia, had got this one wrong!

4. California was actually named after a black queen Califa who appears in a book written in 1510 in Spain. (see one of the pictures above)! 

5. Paper sons! That should be a post in itself..

Strongly recommend the Oakland museum of California. Amazing displays. Great architecture. Well laid out. Especially with the docents telling us the details, it was wonderful!