3 Reasons to Visit St. Paul, Minnesota

A zoo, first-class children’s museum and hands-on science museum are three reasons family travelers should take a trip to St. Paul, Minnesota.

The free Como Park Zoo & Conservatory combines for a budget-friendly day’s activities. A trio of polar bears, the Gorilla Forest, playful monkeys, zebras and giraffes are only a few of the animals kids will meet there. You can imagine the fun they’ll have feeding the giraffes themselves.

The recently completed Como Harbor exhibit area features a 250,000-gallon tank with viewing windows, surrounded by tiered seating to watch sea creatures inside. Daily shows by the aquarium’s star seal, Sparky, are a highlight. Take a quick trip to the tropics inside the glass Conservatory, where warm-climate plants and trees thrive in lush abundance.

At Science Museum of Minnesota, kids love hands-on exhibits, where they can learn about tornados by creating one themselves, or step aboard a Mississippi River towboat. Dinosaur-crazy kids can get up close to the reconstructed bones of a real Triceratops and see life-sized scenes of dinosaurs in the environment where they lived. Science and history are considered together in exhibits such as the one on ancient Egypt, highlighting a real Egyptian mummy.

Through May 11, kids can learn even more about dinosaurs and their world at Minnesota Children’s Museum. They can explore habitats, from swampy bogs and molten volcanoes to icy glacial landscapes. Along with these multisensory experiences, they can dig for fossils at Field Research Station. Younger kids can climb on replicas of prehistoric creatures, and throughout the museum, kids can enjoy hands-on learning experiences.